What makes a good stallion? Racing pedigree expert Cassie Tully puts the spotlight on sires who were unexpectedly successful at stud.
What makes a good stallion?
Being a top racehorse to start. With all those added bonuses of a good pedigree, good looks and soundness. Subsequently permitting them to stand for a higher fee, attracting the best mares and therefore getting more quality soldiers on the ground. Easy.
Let’s take Frankel as a prime example. A son of the greatest sire in the world and an unbeaten, 10-time Group 1 winning champion on the track. Retired at a fee of £125,000 and the best mares throughout Europe obviously flocked to him. The perfect package and the results speak for themselves with 10 Group 1 winning progeny to his name already.
Ultimately, it is widely accepted that quality mares and opportunity are the best platform for any horse to launch themselves from, and one who does not receive these at the beginning are certainly starting at a disadvantage.
There are always exceptions though. Those top racehorses that did not pass down their successful genes and also those who did not excel at the highest level on the track but produced many who did.
So what about the latter? What about those who did not impress enough to attract the best possible mates?
There are quite a number of horses who have gone down in the history books as greats production-wise, but whom most of us would need a power-point presentation to recall any form of their racing careers.
There are many different scenarios of horses retiring to stud without a top-level win. Perhaps an injury cut their racing career short, maybe they were consistent at a lower level, or else just weren’t good enough but had a combination of good looks, soundness, pedigree and so on.
So to take a look at some of those who have overcome their shortcomings, to develop into names that we are more familiar with today, it would be prudent to begin in the past.
There are two famed names of past in particular that stand out a mile and have shaped much of the breed as we now know it. They would be Danzig and Mr Prospector, and neither one won a Group 1 during their time on the track.
Mr Prospector, who raced in the 70’s, won two Listed handicaps and placed second in a Grade 2 in his native America. He did happen to come along in the same year as Triple Crown winner Secretariat, but being injury plagued, he did not even make it to the series to race against him. Retiring to stud in Florida, he was relocated to Claiborne Farm in Kentucky once some of his progeny started to prove him more than just a regional sire.
Mr Prospector ended up going on to become one of the most influential, breed-shaping individuals of the modern era producing 47 Group/Grade 1 winners as a sire and 46 Group/Grade 1 winners as a broodmare sire. Not only this, but he also became an outstanding sire of sires, with well over 60 of his sons producing Group or Grade 1 winners (for some context - Sadler’s Wells has 40 sons produce Group/Grade 1 winners and Danehill has 52), and this was in the time of much smaller stud books.
One could write a hardback delving into his sons and daughters and the influence he has had on pedigrees today, but if selecting only a few that have had notable significance for us here in Europe - Three of our top sires, Galileo, Dubawi and Shamardal are all descendants.
It was one of Mr Prospector’s sons, Miswaki, that just happened to give one of the greatest mares of all time – the ‘arc’ winner Urban Sea, who has produced no less than four Group 1 winners including Galileo and Sea The Stars.
Dubawi is a great-grandson through Mr Prospector’s son, Seeking The Gold. And another son of Mr Prospector, Machiavellian, not only gave us the likes of Street Cry as a sire (sire of wonder mares Winx and Zenyatta), but his daughters produced the sires Shamardal, Zoffany and Dark Angel.
One more son to point out that had a strong European influence is the Niarchos family bred Kingmambo. He produced performers to the calibre of Henrythenavigator as a sire, but also Camelot, Duke of Marmalade, Best Solution, Ulysses, Cloth of Stars and so on as a broodmare sire.
As a broodmare sire himself, one of Mr Prospector’s most notable results was Scat Daddy. A US Triple Crown winner and an army of Royal Ascot horses later, Scat Daddy doesn’t need explaining.
Lot 138: Mags O'Toole spends 55k on Sufoof, daughter of G3 wnr Walayef (Danzig), a sibling to G2 wnr Haatef & champion 2yo Shimah pic.twitter.com/xRCMhmirgs
— Tattersalls (@Tattersalls1766) July 12, 2017
Next the second sedulous sire of note, Danzig.
Similar to Mr Prospector in many ways, Danzig was also unable to show his true ability due to unsoundness, and he too retired to Claiborne after winning his only 3 starts. The rest is history as Danzig similarly produced close to 50 Group/Grade 1 winners which included the current stakes-producing record holder, Danehill.
He may not match Mr Prospector on the broodmare sire front, but he did also yield over 60 sons that produced top level winners. The best of course being Danehill and his army of descendants.
But another son of Danzig’s is War Front, who, like his father also failed to win at the top level. He did surpass him in the fact that he won a Grade 2 though. And this Grade 2 winner has done reasonably well on this side of the Atlantic, giving us the likes of Declaration of War, Air Force Blue, Roly Poly, U S Navy Flag, Lancaster Bomber and so on.
A third influential branch of Danzig that we cannot go without mentioning is from his son Green Desert. The father of three prominent sires Oasis Dream, Invincible Spirit and Cape Cross.
Not bad for two lesser racehorses that started at the bottom and ended up creating two mammoth dynasties.
They certainly provided significant motivation for others to take a chance on standing a mediocre racehorse at stud, as well evidence for the mares to visit them.
There are currently six prominent sires who are standing at stud today that similarly overcame their poor beginnings and they will be discussed in part two.
