A GOLDEN GROUP : THE NEXT GENERATION

Medaglia d’Oro
(Photo : Darley Stud)

THIRD CROP STALLION POWER

One thing which constantly exercises the minds of stallion men, is where the next sire of sires is going to come from. After many years of doubting, Sadler’s Wells has truly arrived, and on the other side of the Atlantic, A.P. Indy has stamped his name in bold black type as the pre-eminent producer of young sires.

There’s been considerable conjecture of late in every facet of the racing media, including these columns, on the shift of the balance of stallion power back to Europe, a reversal of a trend which manifested itself for some thirty to forty years between the 1940’s through to the 1980’s. Somehow you wondered what was becoming of the American thoroughbred after so many years of dominance, but it seemed that with the weight of spending power so strongly concentrated in predominantly European hands, there would be no let up in the swing back.

A change in their respective strategies by the two power houses, Coolmore and the Maktoums which led to the establishment of their own operations in the USA, has to a degree, mitigated against the flow eastwards. The result has seen the emergence on the American continent of Coolmore’s Giants Causeway (Storm Cat) as Champion Sire, and for Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley, of the new giants, Street Cry (Machiavellian), and more recently, Medaglia d’Oro a grandson of Sadler’s Wells. Interestingly, both the latter two are by European-raced turf sires.

However, these horses are not alone, and the current group of third crop stallions is where the excitement rests. In a recent article labelled the Hot List, the Thoroughbred Daily News commented that this group was so good that Candy Ride (Arg) (Ride The Rails), sire of five Grade 1 winners, currently sits in fifth on that particular TDN Sire List by way of cumulative progeny earnings, while Birdstone (Grindstone), whose sons Mine That Bird and Summer Bird are both Classic winners, is sixth.

As it stands, with just about two weeks left in 2010, Medaglia d’Oro (El Prado) leads the stellar studs with $15,355,047 in progeny earnings. Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra accounts for $3,506,730 of that total, but of course Medaglia d’Oro is no one-trick pony. He sports a co-leading nine graded stakes winners and a co-leading five Grade/Group 1 winners.

The Darley stallion joins Tapit (Pulpit) and Speightstown (Gone West) as the only horse to be on the leaderboard on all five lists. From named foals, he hits at 5.93 percent clip with black-type winners (20), a 10.39-percent clip with black-type horses (35), a 2.67-percent clip with graded winners, and a 4.45-percent clip with graded runners (15).

Sitting behind Medaglia d’Oro is Gainesway resident Tapit, whose earners have bankrolled $14,330,588. The gray, sire of another top filly in the form of Stardom Bound, rivals Medaglia d’Oro in many statistical categories. His 23 black-type winners equates to a strike rate of 8.27 percent, with his 40 black-type horses checking in at a clip of 14.39 percent. His nine graded stakes winners matches Medaglia d’Oro’s number, but his 3.24-percent clip edges his rival.

In third, with $13,081,052 in earnings, is championsprinter Speightstown, who proved he could sire a Classic-distance horse when his four-year-old son Haynesfield wired the 1 1/4-mile G1 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont in October. The WinStar stallion now has four Grade I winners in all. Lion Heart, in fourth with $12,834,440 in earnings, has been exported to Turkey for the 2011 season, while Candy Ride sits with $11,265,565 in earnings.

Standing at Lane’s End, Candy Ride joins Medaglia d’Oro as the lone stallion of the group with five Grade 1 winners.

Interestingly, the writing was on the wall very early with this group. The top five third-crop sires now were the top five freshman sires then, albeit in a different order. At the conclusion of he 2008 season, Tapit led Lion Heart, Candy Ride (Arg), Medaglia d’Oro and Speightstown. The aforementioned Stardom Bound, heroine of the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, flew the flag for Tapit and was his chief earner, while Medaglia d’Oro’s leading earner that year was a filly named… Retraceable. The Mark Casse-trained filly won the $250,000 Princess Elizabeth Stakes at Woodbine and earned $227,717 that season. Rachel Alexandra, winner of the G2 Golden Rod Stakes, earned $201,440.

AMERICA’S RACEHORSE PRODUCTION ABOUT-TURN

“…with our figures this season pretty much matching those of last year, almost to the mare.”
(Photo : Summerhill Stud)

THOROUGHBRED BREEDING TRENDS

Times like these often see people descend into “retreat” mode, intimidated by the doomsayers and the never-ending stream of “experts”, ready to proclaim financial Armageddon. It’s little surprise then, that the greatest businesses in the world were born out of these circumstances, because they’ve seen the retreat and in it, they’ve seen opportunity.

What’s happened in the northern hemisphere though, in terms of racehorse production, has been in need of retreat for at least five years now. With a situation of hopeless overproduction in the number of foals on the ground each year, it’s no surprise to see significant changes in all but one American breeding jurisdiction.

The Jockey Club of America has reported that 2,409 stallions covered 45,317 mares in North America during 2009, according to the Report of Mares Bred statistics received through October 13. The number of stallions declined 8.9 percent from the 2,643 reported at this time last year. The number of mares bred fell 13.5 percent from 52,410 reported at this time in 2008. Giant’s Causeway (Storm Cat) and Medaglia d’Oro (El Prado) led all stallions with 194 mares bred in 2009.

Candy Ride (Ride the Rails) (182), Lion Heart (Tale of the Cat) (180), and Corinthian (Pulpit) (171) round out the top five. The only region to realize increases was Pennsylvania. The percentage of mares bred soared 29.6 percent in the Keystone State; stallions were up nine percent as well. “Our mid-August projection of 30,000 registered foals in North America for 2010 was based on initial RMB returns, and these latest statistics reinforce that estimate,” said Matt Iuliano, The Jockey Club’s vice president of registration services. Iuliano added that the largest decline in breeding occurred at the top of the market, where the number of stallions covering 100 or more mares declined for the fourth consecutive year from 113 in 2008 to 85 this year. The Jockey Club expects to receive more RMBs for the 2009 breeding season.

The one state that has reversed the trend, and has bred almost 30% more mares, is Pennsylvania, buoyed by the attractive returns accruing from their state-bred premium programme.

While our own statistics are a little more tardy in coming through, it will be interesting to see the degree to which our population of mares has been crimped by the recession. That said, our circumstances at Summerhill might be a little skewed because of the strength of the stallion line-up, with our figures this season pretty much matching those of last year, almost to the mare.

TOP 10 STATES AND PROVINCES BY NUMBER OF MARES
REPORTED BRED IN ‘09 THROUGH OCTOBER 13

Region	‘08 Stallions	‘09 Stallions	% Change	‘08 Mares Bred	‘09 Mares Bred	% Change
Kentucky	318	307	-3.5	21,317	19,059	-10.6
Florida	202	155	-23.3	5,316	4,041	-24.0
Louisiana	230	216	-6.1	3,515	3,048	-13.3
California	233	201	-13.7	3,817	2,946	-22.8
Pennsylvania	89	97	+9.0	1,237	1,603	+29.6
New York	85	70	-17.6	1,839	1,561	-15.1
Texas	191	174	-8.9	1,722	1,411	-18.1
Ontario	77	72	-6.5	1,272	1,260	-.09
New Mexico	128	124	-3.1	1,546	1,222	-16.1
Oklahoma	126	113	-10.3	1,335	1,222	-8.5

WHERE TO FOR AMERICAN RACEHORSE BREEDING INDUSTRY

Please click above to view
Keeneland Yearly Sales Recap and USA Foal Crop Statistics

KEENELAND SEPTEMBER YEARLING SALE 2009

The dust has settled on Keeneland September, the biggest annual sale of thoroughbred yearlings in the world, and if you are an American breeder, it doesn’t make pretty reading. Psychologically, Americans as a nation have turned their backs on the luxury world, certainly for the time being, and with credit in tight supply, the impact of horse players having to shell out their hard-earned cash to fund their purchases, is clear in the results.

However, the rather dramatic falls of the last two seasons, were not only as a result of the global financial fall-out. It’s apparent from the graphs at the top of this column, that the American racehorse breeding industry has grappled with structural difficulties for some time, brought about by a gluttonous surge in production in anticipation of a no-end-in-sight upward spiral in prices, and the illness American breeders face right now in the form of bloated production costs, starting with stallion service fees which could never be sustained by anything other than a runaway market.

Besides the supply-side issues of the breeding community, the American racing scene is beset with its own problems, arising mainly out of fundamentals connected with the way their racing industry is structured. Too many of the best tracks, which are mainly privately owned or operated, have outdated business models, and in some cases inept management who’ve failed to appreciate the need to reinvent themselves as other businesses have, while some jurisdictions have to cope with unco-operative government legislators within their own states. Even Kentucky, heartland of the American thoroughbred, faces daunting challenges in its horsemen’s attempts to maintain it as the centre of world thoroughbred excellence.

As we’ve already noted, the downward trend in foal production and yearling averages had already kicked in before the global turmoil, and all the current circumstances have done, has been to accelerate the process. The 33% drop in average and the 42% reduction in gross turnover at Keenland September, on the bald facts, is a daunting thought, yet as our good friend, Bill Oppenheim, the foremost commentator on these things worldwide, noted last week, if American breeders were to wake up tomorrow and the industry was kicking off for the first time, they’d have to believe a $61 000 average ($91 000 last year), was not a bad result. But then you’d have to assume the production costs and stud fees had a sensible base to them in the first instance.

His comments at this time are telling; “Aside from Medaglia D’Oro, Birdstone and Candy Ride, its hard to imagine there’ll be any stud fees rising in North America next year. In fact the definition of a “hot” sire might be one whose stud fee drops by a third rather than a half. Of course, there will be lots of hedging among stallion masters “he stands for x, but you can have him for y”, lots of “I know the market is way down, but this horse is an exception” etc.

It’s up to the breeders if they fall for that or not. At the end of the day, they’re the ones who sign the contracts. There is, really, one overwhelming reason why stud fees really need to be cut in half, and now; because there’s no reason to believe the horseracing industry in North America will recover in the same way as the general economy”.

What about South Africa?

Our own domestic market has been substantially healthier than any of those in the northern hemisphere, and to be fair to South Africa, we’ve fared relatively better than our southern hemisphere counterparts, Australia and New Zealand. Not unlike our general economy, South African thoroughbred breeders have other fundamentals which have rested their business, and they arise in the first instance from the fact that for least the past decade, we’ve been undersupplied in terms of the foals we’ve produced. It is so, that with the burgeoning markets of the last few years and the development of our export markets, more foals have been produced, but in relative terms they represent a substantially smaller increment than that which other markets, north and south, have witnessed.

The result is, fuelled by both the balance in our supply and demand equation and the value our horses represent internationally, the South African racehorse market probably stands as the most stable in the world at the moment, and unless there is another major “intervener” in the foreseeable future, we expect this stability to carry itself through to the next uptick. Make no mistake, it’s not easy in our game right now, but it’s certainly bearable.

MR PROSPECTOR : The Influence of a Giant

Chocolate Candy winning the 2009 El Camino Real Derby (Gr3)

In as vivid a proclamation of the virtues of a sire of sires as you might imagine, the 2009 Summerhill Sires Brochure read:

“The fact that the blood of Mr. Prospector courses through the veins of eight of the eleven men in our barn, betrays a belief that borders on worship”.

This past week, a horse by the name of Chocolate Candy put up his hand as a live candidate for this year’s American Classics, with a rousing display in the El Camino Real Derby Gr.3, and this attracted the attention of the world renowned pedigree expert, Andrew Caulfield. We quote a few extracts from his article in the Thoroughbred Daily News on the Mr. Prospector influence over this year’s prospects for the Kentucky Derby.

“There are no prizes for guessing which male line supplied the majority of the 23 horses included in last week’s Kentucky Derby Future Wager Pool. With a total of 14 representatives, the ubiquitous Mr. Prospector line was much too strong for the A.P. Indy and Storm Cat clans, which combined to provide seven contenders.

Mr. Prospector, of course, was one of those rare stallions who supplied winners of each of the Triple Crown events, and his male-line descendants have so far won more than 30 editions of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness or the Belmont, with the Fappiano branch leading the way with seven winners of eight races. This is reflected in the Future Wager Pool 1, which has no fewer than eight Classic hopefuls from the Fappiano branch. Needless to say, the majority of these descend from Fappiano’s son Unbridled, who matched Mr. Prospector’s feat of siring winners of all three legs of the Triple Crown, thanks to Grindstone, Red Bullet and Empire Maker.

No one can be surprised to see the likes of Empire Maker and Unbridled’s Song justifying their substantial fees by siring Derby contenders of the quality of Pioneer of The Nile, Old Fashioned and Midshipman. But how many breeders would have predicted back in 2005 that the first-season sire Candy Ride would also develop into a major flag-bearer for the Fappiano line, with two sons in the 23-horse pool?

After all, Candy Ride started out at only $10,000 at Hill ‘n’ Dale in 2005 and, in assessing his prospects, it was a case of some good news and some not so good.

The good news was that Candy Ride had been a highly talented racehorse - talented enough to have been one of three horses whose rating of 127 made them the highest-rated American-trained older horses on the 2003 International Classifications (the other two being Johar and Mineshaft). Being considered the equal of Mineshaft among the dirt performers was some compliment, as Mineshaft not only took the Eclipse Award for handicap male, but also the Horse of the Year title.”

The "Argies" have arrived

The first load of Argentinian imports to come to Summerhill arrived in the early hours of this morning. While they are a very impressive group, they must also represent some of the best bred horses to leave Argentinian shores. Mike de Kock’s contingent alone includes a half sister, by Dubai World Cup winner and leading sire Singspiel, to Champion American racehorse, Candy Ride; a half brother to arguably the best 3 year old in the world, Asiatic Boy; and an outstanding daughter of Interprete out of a full sister (by Candy Stripes) to South African Horse Of The Year, Eventuail. This is the famous “E” family which includes the likes of Empress Club, Ecurie, Epoque, Emerald Beauty and current South African Champion Elusive Fort.

Champion trainer Mike de Kock is unusually excited about this group of horses, and will be visiting them at the farm early the week after next, on his return from the UK, where among others, he’ll be turning his attention to Asiatic Boy and our own Mullins Bay, in preparation for their big Summer campaigns.

EVENESS - from the famous ‘E’ familyASIATIC PEN - Asiatic Boy’s Brother