Bill's Columns

There are 30 races run over five days at Royal Ascot, which took place this year June 18-22. There are eight Group 1 races, eight Group 2 (so over half of the races are G1 or G2), three each Group 3 and Listed Races, and eight handicaps or conditions races, most of which might as well be black type. Perhaps surprisingly, just five sires were responsible for the winners of half the races: Shamardal sired three winners of four races after Blue Point became the first horse since Choisir in 2003 to win both the G1 King’s Stand over five furlongs, on June 18, and the six-furlong G1 Diamond Jubilee just four days later, on June 22. Galileo and his half-brother Sea The Stars sired three winners each, as did the previously just useful sire, Bated Breath. He is a Juddmonte sire, as is Galileo’s best son, Frankel, who had two winners; and the sire with one winner and the most placings was another Juddmonte sire, Kingman, who had one winner and three Group placings from his first crop of 3-year-olds.

Shamardal was from the first, and only European, crop by Giant’s Causeway out of a full sister to Street Cry, and was undefeated in six starts on turf: three, including a soft-ground 2004 renewal of the G1 Dewhurst, for Mark Johnston, and three after his transfer to Saeed bin Suroor, including the first 2100m edition of the G1 Prix du Jockey-Club (French Derby) and the replacement 2005 G1 St. James’s Palace S., run that year at York during the Ascot re-development. His first crop, foaled in 2007, included Lope De Vega, who won the G1 Poule d’Essai des Poulains (French 2000 Guineas), then emulated his sire by winning the French Derby, and is now a leading sire in his own right. In fact, Shamardal and Lope De Vega almost looked like they were going to have to carry the ball between them to sustain the Storm Cat sire line, until the arrival of Scat Daddy and Into Mischief.

Though he’s indisputably a top-ten European sire, Shamardal is only the second-best European sire whose first foals were born in 2007; his barn-mate Dubawi holds the top spot. But Shamardal is himself the sire of nearly 60 GSW world-wide, and he was the number one sire at this year’s Royal Ascot race meeting, which is the world’s number one racing festival, with three winners of four races. Blue Point, now a 5-year-old, as mentioned won the two sprinting Group 1 races for older horses; the 2-year-old Pinatubo, now three-for-three, won the increasingly significant Chesham S. (Listed, 7 furlongs); and another 5-year-old, Cape Byron, won the top sprint handicap, the six-furlong Wokingham. With a third-place finish for the 3-year-old filly Jubiloso in the G1 Coronation S. at one mile, the average distance for top-three finishes by Shamardal’s progeny at Royal Ascot 2019 was 6.4 furlongs.

The world number one, Galileo, sired three winners and no fewer than ten horses who finished in the first three. His half-brother Sea The Stars had three winners and five top-three finishers, and his son Frankel had two winners and six top-three finishers. Galileo’s winners were all 3-year-olds: the one-mile G1 St. James’s Palace S. winner, Circus Maximus; the 12-furlong G2 King Edward VII winner, Japan (previously sixth and third respectively in the June 1 G1 Epsom Derby); and the 12-furlong King George V Handicap winner South Pacific – a race in which he also sired the second, Constantinople. In all, seven 3-year-olds by Galileo finished in the first three at Royal Ascot, along with 4-year-old fillies Magical and Magic Wand, and the 5-year-old Waldgeist. Tellingly, the minimum distance at which any of then won or placed was a mile, and the average distance for top-three finishes by the ten Galileo winners or placegetters was 11 furlongs.

Sea The Stars, Galileo’s half-brother by Cape Cross, sired three Group 1/Group 2 winners: the 5-year-old Crystal Ocean got his first G1 win in the ten-furlong June 19 Prince of Wales’s S. Sea The Stars had an even better day on June 20: Stradivarius, also now five, won the G1 Ascot Gold Cup (2 ½ miles, or 20 furlongs) for the second consecutive year. It was also the fourth consecutive win on the card, from four races, for Frankie Dettori; it brought the house down – the crowd’s reception was epic, to say the least. The race before, the 12-furlong G2 Ribblesdale, for 3-year-old fillies, was won by Star Catcher, also by Sea The Stars – and also ridden by Frankie for trainer John Gosden. Average top-three finishing distance for the five Sea The Stars place-getters: 13.2 furlongs, with a median distance of 12 furlongs.

The six top-three finishes, including two wins, by Frankel, Galileo’s best sire son to date, were even more extreme: four 4-year-olds and two 5-year-olds, with one top-three finish at 10 furlongs, three at 12 furlongs, and two at 2 ½ miles. Average distance for a top-three finish by one of Frankel’s progeny at Royal Ascot 2019: 14.3 furlongs, with a median, again of 12 furlongs. Average distance for 21 top-three finishes by Galileo, Sea The Stars, and Frankel: exactly 12.0 furlongs. These are all six-figure stud fee sires, so not relevant to the vast majority of commercial breeders, but there may be a hint here that breeders should be thinking about applying the Coolmore model for breeding to Galileo, to Sea The Stars and Frankel as well: breed them to speed. It looks like they’re all supplying plenty of stamina.

Besides Shamardal, Galileo, and Sea The Stars, the other horse to sire three winners at Royal Ascot 2019 was a surprise: Juddmonte’s 4th-crop sire (first foals 2014, first 5-year-olds 2019) Bated Breath, a consistent sprinting son of Dansili, who, like his, sire never won a G1 race, though he did place in five Group 1 sprints, including twice to Dream Ahead and once to Society Rock. Up until last week Bated Breath had only sired two Group Race winners, but he’s now up to five, with two of his three Royal Ascot winners being Group races, plus for good measure his 4-year-old filly Simply Breathless captured the G3 Wilshire S. at Santa Anita. At Ascot, the 2-year-old filly Daahyeh won the six-furlong G3 Albany S.; Space Traveler scored in the G3 Jersey S., for 3-year-olds at seven furlongs; and Biometric won the one-mile Britannia H., also for 3-year-olds. That was a very big week for Bated Breath; career-changing, so to speak.

Five second-crop sires had Royal Ascot winners, most prominently Kingman, like Frankel and Bated Breath a Juddmonte sire. Kingman sired G3 Hampton Court winner Sangarius (he had the one-two in that race) and three other 3-year-olds placed in Group races. No Nay Never sired the 2-year-old six-furlong G2 Coventry S. winner Arizona, as well as the 2-year-old filly Celtic Beauty, second in the six-furlong G3 Albany. French sire Olympic Glory sired the upset G1 Coronation S. (3-year-old fillies, one mile) winner Watch Me; Slade Power got his first black-type winner courtesy of the five-furlong (fillies), G2 Queen Mary winner Raffle Prize; and Mukhadram, a very good and consistent ten-furlong horse by – wait for it – Shamardal, trained by William Haggas for Shadwell who had already sired a black-type winner in America, is the sire of Thanks Be, upset winner of the one-mile Sandringham H. for 3-year-old fillies.

Two first-crop sires hit the board at Ascot: the 2-year-old colt Southern Hills won the five-furlong Windsor Castle S. (Listed); and the 2-year-old colt Highland Chief ran 3rd in what looked a good renewal of the seven-furlong Chesham S. (also Listed), for Gleneagles. The other place-getter by a freshman sire belonged to Brazen Beau, sire of Dubai Station, third in the five-furlong G2 Norfolk. Two other sires who deserve special mention: F2015 (first crop 2015) Farhh, whose small first crop of 4-year-olds includes the one-mile G2 Duke of Cambridge S. (fillies and mares) winner Move Swiftly and G1 Gold Cup and G1 2018 Epsom Derby runner-up Dee Ex Bee; and Showcasing, the Whitsbury Manor resident who sired his second six-furlong G1 Commonwealth Cup winner in Advertise. This very useful sprint sire, son of Oasis Dream, also sired Soldier’s Call, who finished a good third against olders in the five-furlong G1 King’s Stand.

At the close of the OBS June Sale of 2-Year-Olds and Horses In Training, Brianne Stanley of the Bill Oppenheim Group calculates that 2,190 two-year-olds in training have sold since March 1, for a total of $209,488,200, an average of $95,657. This was nearly a $25-million gain (+13%) from 2018, when 2,014 two-year-olds brought $184,580,500, and averaged $91,149. But the European sales (613 sold) were down around nearly $5-million (9%), from $47.6-million to just under $43-million. Combined, the 2019 2-year-old in training sales saw 2,803 two-year-olds sold, for a gross of $252,484,400, a gain of $20-million from last year. Complete sire statistics for this market sector follow.

We also include a table with data about the sires of the 362 yearlings catalogued to the Fasig-Tipton July yearling sale. Of these, 111 – almost exactly 30% - are by 25 first-year sires. The highest representation among these 25 sires is a tie for first between two WinStar stallions, 2015 G3 Dwyer S. winner Speightster (Speightstown) and their 2016 G1 Wood Memorial winner, Outwork (Uncle Mo). Gainesway’s G2 Kelso winner, Anchor Down (Tapit), has 10 catalogued, as does Taylor Made’s Not This Time (Giant’s Causeway). Among the high-profile sires with their first yearlings selling, Darley’s Nyquist (Uncle Mo) and Frosted (Tapit) have three and five catalogued, respectively; Taylor Made’s California Chrome (Lucky Pulpit) has five; WinStar’s Exaggerator (Curlin) also five; and Claiborne’s Runhappy (Super Saver) has four catalogued.