Review of the 2021 Flat season from a bloodstock perspective

The King is dead…

ITV Racing viewers on Eclipse day at Sandown will no doubt have mixed memories from that Saturday afternoon at the beginning of July. On the one hand, they would have witnessed a top-class performance in the big race from St Mark’s Basilica who ended the year as Timeform’s highest-rated horse. After rounding off his two-year-old season with victory in the Dewhurst Stakes, St Mark’s Basilica was unbeaten in a further four Group 1 contests at three, completing a classic double in France prior to the Eclipse, and then ending his racing career by beating the future Arc runner-up Tarnawa and the 2000 Guineas winner Poetic Flare in the Irish Champion Stakes. The son of Siyouni retires to stud at Coolmore where he’ll stand at a fee of €65,000.

But also on Eclipse day, news broke during the tv coverage that Coolmore had lost its greatest ever stallion; at the age of 23, Galileo had to be put down on humane grounds due to a chronic foot injury. Galileo was champion sire for the first time in 2008 and when he won his title back in 2010 it remained his until the latest season, making 12 championships in all. Siring the first three home in the 2016 Arc – when Found beat Highland Reel and Order of St George – must rank as one of Galileo’s most notable achievements as a stallion. That result was also, of course, a triumph for Aidan O’Brien who trained all three, and it’s hard to think of another trainer who has owed so much of his success to one stallion as O’Brien has to the colt he trained to win the Derby and King George back in 2001.

But a stallion’s success can easily outlast his own lifetime and it will be a while yet before Galileo’s name stops appearing as the sire of runners in race-cards. He has produced Group/Grade 1 winners in every one of his crops from 2003 (his first) to 2018 – his current score is 92 – so there could easily be others in waiting among his current crop of two-year-olds. They include the Ballydoyle colts Aikhal, who was fourth in the Criterium International, and Stone Age, runner-up in the Criterium de Saint-Cloud, who are his leading youngsters on Timeform ratings.

Incidentally, one stallion – from the same family as Galileo, as it happens - who enjoyed a significant posthumous success in the latest season was German Derby winner Adlerflug who died in April, six months before his son Torquator Tasso caused an upset in the Arc. Ballydoyle’s 1000 Guineas and Oaks winners, Mother Earth and Snowfall, were also by deceased sires, Zoffany (who died in January) and Deep Impact respectively.

…long live the King!

By his exceptionally high standards, though, Galileo had a relatively quiet season in 2021. His only Group 1 winner in Britain was Love in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, though Empress Josephine (Irish 1000 Guineas) and Joan of Arc (Prix de Diane) became his latest daughters to win classics elsewhere. Joan of Arc, incidentally, was her dam You’resothrilling’s third classic winner after Gleneagles (2000 Guineas/Irish 2000 Guineas) and Marvellous (Irish 1000 Guineas). It was inevitable that Galileo’s dominance would be challenged sooner or later and, fittingly, his reign as champion sire is finally set to be ended by one of his own sons. Frankel might have been Galileo’s masterpiece on the track, but, even with the best of opportunities from the word go at stud, that didn’t guarantee him reaching the same heights as a stallion.

However, Frankel had a superb year in 2021, largely thanks to a three-year-old crop that included Godolphin’s classic winners Adayar and Hurricane Lane. Adayar became the first since his grandsire to complete the Derby/King George double, while Hurricane Lane, who’d actually been the better-fancied of the pair at Epsom, then reeled off wins in the Irish Derby, Grand Prix de Paris and St Leger. Hurricane Lane finished third, a place in front of Adayar, when both were leading contenders for the Arc and the pair are sure to be key to Frankel retaining his title next season. Also at the forefront of that defence is likely to be leading classic contender Inspiral who ended her two-year-old season as an unbeaten winner of the Fillies’ Mile.

Between them, Galileo and his own sire Sadler’s Wells have won most of the sires’ championships for the last 30 years but Frankel, standing at Juddmonte’s Banstead Manor Stud in Newmarket, ends a long period of Irish (or more precisely, Coolmore) domination as he’ll be the first reigning champion sire standing in Britain (his new fee has just been set at £200,000) since the days of another of Timeform’s greats, Mill Reef, who stood at the National Stud.

Two huge losses among the ranks of owner-breeders

Sadly, Frankel’s owner and breeder Khalid Abdullah didn’t live to see Frankel’s breakthrough season as a stallion. Likewise, Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum never got to witness the brilliant unbeaten campaign enjoyed by his top-class miler Baaeed. Hamdan Al Maktoum died in March at the age of 75 just a couple of months after Khalid Abdullah passed away in January aged 83. While both enjoyed success worldwide since becoming established as owners in the latter decades of the twentieth century, the losses of both men were keenly felt in the British Isles in particular where much of their activity was based. Khalid Abdullah was champion owner in Britain three times and Hamdan Al Maktoum seven, most recently in 2020.

The respective bloodstock empires they each built up – Juddmonte and Shadwell – live on, and while it has been business as usual at Juddmonte so far, Hamdan Al Maktoum’s breeding operation has quickly undergone major restructuring in recent months. Shadwell was always much the more active of the two entities at the yearling sales but in 2021 it became a vendor in a big way, dispersing much of its stock – horses in training, broodmares and yearlings – at the sales to leave a much leaner operation in future in which Sheikh Hamdan’s daughter Sheikha Hissa will play a more prominent role. Baaeed promises to be the flagship horse of the trimmed-down Shadwell in 2022. The three-year-old didn’t see a racecourse until June but won all six of his races, culminating in a defeat of the reigning top miler Palace Pier, in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, when he was one of three winners for Shadwell on the Champions Day card.

Two more top-class sires

Behind Frankel and Galileo, Dubawi and Sea The Stars complete a top-class quartet of stallions in the British and Irish sires table. Dubawi’s domestic winners were headed by Creative Force who gained his fifth win of the year in the Champions Sprint at Ascot. But Dubawi also demonstrated his importance to Godolphin’s success on the world stage. Victories for Modern Games, Space Blues and Yibir made Dubawi the first sire to be responsible for three winners at the same Breeders’ Cup meeting. Besides Modern Games, Autumn Stakes winner Coroebus looks an exciting classic prospect for Dubawi and Godolphin next year.

Baaeed ranks among the best horses produced by Sea The Stars but as a top-class miler he’s hardly a typical product of his sire who’s largely a stamina influence. In that respect, Sea The Star’s next-best three-year-old Mojo Star, runner-up in the Derby and St Leger, is more in the Stradivarius mould. Another staying type by Sea The Stars is Hukum who, although outshone by the exploits of his younger brother Baaeed, enjoyed a fine season himself, winning a listed race and three Group 3s, including the Geoffrey Freer and Cumberland Lodge, and showing form verging on high-class.

Broodmare of the year candidates

The campaigns enjoyed by Baaeed and Hukum make their dam Aghareed a strong contender for broodmare of the year. A listed winner in France, she’s a daughter of the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf winner Lahudood and comes from the family which provided Hamdan Al Maktoum with the likes of Nashwan, Nayef, Unfuwain and Ghanaati.

All of those result from the purchase by Sheikh Hamdan of the Queen’s Princess of Wales’s Stakes winner Height of Fashion in the 1980s. One of the current broodmares at the Royal Stud enjoyed a particularly successful season with her offspring too. Golden Stream is not only the dam of the Solario Stakes winner and Champagne Stakes runner-up Reach For The Moon (and his smart elder brother Chalk Stream, who won four handicaps) – another talented pair of brothers by Sea The Stars – she’s also the grandam of the filly Twilight Gleaming who showed tremendous pace to win the Juvenile Turf Sprint for Wesley Ward at the Breeders’ Cup.

Other broodmares with successful pairs of offspring during the year were Reckoning, the dam of Gold Cup winner Subjectivist and Jockey Club Stakes and Princess of Wales’s Stakes winner Sir Ron Priestley; and Sweepstake who had one of the leading Irish two-year-olds Point Lonsdale and his elder brother Broome who won the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and went close in the Breeders’ Cup Turf.

Caravaggio leading the first-season sires

No Nay Never was the leading first-season sire for Coolmore in 2018 and it’s another son of Scat Daddy from the same stud who looks set to take the title at the end of the year. Caravaggio had a couple of Irish-trained fillies mainly to thank for his position at the top of the prize money table, with Tenebrism, who'd been her sire's very first winner back in the spring, winning the Cheveley Park Stakes on just her second start and Debutante Stakes winner Agartha going close to giving her sire another Group 1 success in the Moyglare Stud Stakes.

Other first-season sires who did well were Cotai Glory (leading the way by number of wins among first-season sires at the time of writing), Ardad and Profitable. Ardad’s star two-year-old was Perfect Power who added to his Royal Ascot success in the Norfolk Stakes by completing a Group 1 double in the Prix Morny and Middle Park Stakes. The other first-season sire with a Group 1 winner in his first crop of two-year-olds was 2000 Guineas winner Galileo Gold whose son Ebro River won the Phoenix Stakes.

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