The race for the 2010 flat jockey’s title may have gone right to the wire, but there was to be no last minute excitement in the bid to be top UK sire - a contest over long before Doncaster’s season finale.
After surrendering his title to fellow Coolmore stallion Danehill Dancer in 2009, Galileo regained his crown in impressive style amassing total earnings near £5m; almost double that of nearest challenger and another son of Danehill – Juddmonte Farm’s Dansili.
Ballydoyle’s Irish Derby and Irish Champion S. victor Cape Blanco was the top Galileo earner of 2010 with an impressive haul of over £1.3m. Those earnings, when added to his three juvenile victories makes him the third most successful progeny of his sire ever in terms of prize money and the chestnut will bid to help Galileo retain his crown, not to mention improve on his own already impressive record as he races on in 2011.
Another Ballydoyle inmate making a hefty contribution to Galileo’s success was the recently retired Rip Van Winkle, who garnered almost £650k in prize money, but managed only one victory – a last-gasp success over Twice Over in the Juddmonte International at York. Last seen in public when beaten a nose by Godolphin’s Poet’s Voice in the QEII S. at Ascot, Timeform’s highest ever rated son of Galileo now heads to Coolmore’s Irish Stud to stand alongside his sire, at a fee of €20k.
Galileo clearly has plenty of ammunition in his war chest for next season, and it would be no surprise if his most explosive weapon turned out to be Henry Cecil’s unbeaten Dewhurst winner and champion two-year-old Frankel. The much-hyped bay amassed over £266k in his four Juvenile victories and goes into the winter as the clear favourite for both the 2000 Guineas and The Derby. Cecil is not one to be easily carried away, and when he talks of Frankel in the same breath as horses like Wollow and Diesis then people will sit up and take note. However, despite waxing lyrical for some time about the bays ability, Cecil has expressed concerns about his stamina for the Derby trip.
Other Galileo juveniles sitting prominently in the Ante-Post markets for next years Classics include Prix Marcel Boussac heroine Misty for Me, joint favourite for the 1000 Guineas, along with Dewhurst runner-up and Criterium International victor Roderic O’Connor, who sits just behind Frankel in the market for the first two colt’s Classics.
Although Galileo’s nearest challenger Dansili finished a long way adrift in second, the contest may have been closer but for the career-ending gallops injury suffered by Sir Micheal Stoute’s imperious King George VI victor Harbinger. That injury led to his retirement to stud rated the Greatest Racehorse in the World and at the time, hot favourite for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. With prize money in the region of £2m for the winner of Longchamp’s Autumn showcase, a Harbinger victory would have taken the top-sire race right down to the wire.
Proving that he deserves his ‘World Class’ title, Galileo was not only successful on European shores and at the time of writing tops the worldwide sire list of Northern Hemisphere earnings.
Although only seventh in the UK list, Darley’s now French based King’s Best – sire of Epsom Derby and Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe hero Workforce - lies in second place in those worldwide rankings with earnings of £5.5m.
There is no doubt that is an impressive haul, but a closer look reveals that it is almost entirely due to two of his Classic generation, as Japanese bred Eishin Flash amassed £1.2m for his Japanese Derby victory at Tokyo, six days prior to Workforce’s Epsom master class.
Those Derby victories, along with Workforce’s gutsy Longchamp success accounted for almost £4m of King’s Best earnings and although only just adrift in terms of prize-money, his ten black-type victories in 2010 is a long way behind Galileo’s tally of 17 - a notable seven of those coming at the highest level.
With a European record of 36 first-season winners, Darley’s Iffraaj was a clear-cut winner of the freshman sire title, amassing almost £1m from his 70 strong first crop.
His current flag-bearer and sole G1 victor is Richard Fahey’s unbeaten colt Wootton Bassett, who landed two valuable sales races before a pillar-to-post victory in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere-Grand Criterium at Longchamp’s Arc meeting. He will now be aimed at the 2000 Guineas for which he is currently a top price of 16/1, and his trainer, who rates him as the best he’s ever had, is reportedly confident of a bold show in the Newmarket showpiece.
Ringside Action.
It has been a busy period on the sales circuit of late, with plenty of recession-busting bidding taking place around the World.
One recently retired colt whose first progeny were destined to cause a stir is last years champion and half-brother to Galileo, Sea the Stars. Busy plying a lucrative trade at The Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud following his authoritative Arc success, Christopher Tsui’s superstar has reportedly covered in the region of 120 mares at a fee of €85k each.
To date, nine mares confirmed in foal to the superstar son of Cape Cross have sold at an average price a little over £450k, with the first of those appearing at the Fasig-Tipton November Breeding sale in Lexington, Kentucky following the Breeders’ Cup meeting. Love to Dance, an impeccably bred daughter of Sadler’s Wells and sister to 2007 Arc winner Dylan Thomas, now holds the accolade of being the first to be sold through a public sales ring after bloodstock agent Ryan Bell went to $1,050m for the ex-Ballydoyle five-year-old on behalf of John Clay’s Kentucky based Alpha Delta stable.
The first to pass through a UK ring was another ex-Ballydoyle Sadler’s Wells mare in the form of Soinlovewithyou. UK based bloodstock agent, and advisor to Lady Bamford, Hugo Lascelles paid 950k gns for the half-sister to Duke of Marmalade at the Tattersall’s December Mares sale. Apparently purchased on behalf of owner-breeders in the US, Lascelles indicated that the foal might return to a UK sale in the future.
The two recent Tattersalls December sales included 34 horses from the dispersal of Lady Tavistock’s Woburn based Bloomsbury Stud, which is to cease operation after 45 years.
First, a daughter of Highest Honor out of the 1980 Queen Mary S. winner Pushy, realised the highest price when sold to agent Charlie Gordon Watson for 1.1m gns. Bought on behalf of an undisclosed ‘big new investor’ in British bloodstock, the 12-year-old dam of Michael Stoute’s Ascot specialist Perfect Stride is confirmed in foal to Cape Cross.
Topping the previous week’s foal’s sale at 320k gns was another from the Bloomsbury dispersal - a March 12 colt by the ill-fated Singspiel out of the above mare First. Following a rare Coolmore - Darley duel, it was Pat Shanahan and Michael (M.V.) Magnier who came out on top for the Tipperary heavyweights.
Bloodstock agent David Redvers signed for the top lot at the December mares sale with a bid of 1.3m gns for Diary - a daughter of Green Desert and the dam of 2009 Prix de l’Abbaye winner Total Gallery. Confirmed in foal to Galileo, the mare was purchased on behalf of Qatar Royal, Sheikh Fahad Al Thani.
The first foals of 2008 Breeders’ Cup Classic hero Raven’s Pass have been well received, with particular success across the Atlantic at the Keeneland November sale. Averaging just over £100k from 15 sales, the highest price paid is currently $335k for a March 14th colt out of Japanese mare Eishin Bridle who was part of the dispersal of Jerry Bailey and Lance Robinson’s Gulf Coast Farms. A major player near the top of the U.S. breeding and sales industries in recent years, Gulf Coast are perhaps best known as the breeder of champion two-year-old and Preakness S. winner Lookin At Lucky, who will now stand at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Kentucky for a fee of $35k in 2011.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and bloodstock advisor John Ferguson showed support for their Darley stallion when going to 170k gns each for two colts at Tattersalls December. The second of the colts purchased is out of Italian Oaks winning mare Zanzibar and as such is a half-brother to American Stakes performer and ex-Michael Bell inmate Spice Route.
The top first-season sire at Keeneland November was four-time G1 winner Henrythenavigator who stands for $65k alongside Giant’s Causeway and Lookin At Lucky at Coolmore America. With an average of $208k from five lots, a March 17th foal out of American G1 winning mare Versailles Treaty was his top-priced colt fetching $450k.
Duke of Marmalade, another of Coolmore’s new multiple G1 winning Stallions has also been well received with a current average sale price of £57k from 21 sold lots. Timmy Hyde’s Camas Park Stud paid a high of €215k at Goffs November for a February 26th colt and fourth produce of Bowstring, a group placed ex-Juddmonte daughter of Sadler’s Wells.
Gavin Dobson, December 2010
