When assessing young sires it is always advisable not to judge them too harshly after the first year with runners. But by the end of their second year when we have seen their first three-year-olds, the future viability of a sire is usually fairly clear cut. The latest intake of stallions approaching the end of their second year are an impressive bunch with two of their number Blue Point and Study of Man siring Group 1 winners on British Champions day through the up-and-coming sprinter Kind Of Blue and the equally progressive middle-distance filly Kalpana.
For Darley’s Blue Point, Kind of Blue is his sire’s third Group 1 winner from his first crop, which is a rare feat not experienced by many stallions at this stage of their career. By my reckoning, since the turn of the millennium only one other sire has had more, and there are no prizes for guessing it was Galileo, who had accumulated four Group 1 winners by the end of his second year. But to be strictly accurate, Galileo had only two on the board at the same stage of his second year, his third coming when Red Rocks won the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Churchill Downs.
Only a handful of others have managed three Group 1 winners in their first two years, and they are Montjeu and his son Camelot, plus Henrythenavigator. The appearance of Henrythenavigator in this list behoves me to say that there are no guarantees of longevity even after two years of racecourse excellent evidence.
In the shape of the high-class Irish 2,000 Guineas and St James’s Palace winner Rosallion, Blue Point has proved that he can be more than just a sire of sprinters, although the majority of his stock will inevitably follow the hoof prints of their top-class sprint sire. And in Big Evs (Timeform 121) and Kind Of Blue (121) he has the two best three-year-old sprinters in Europe to go with his very high-class 127-rated miler Rosallion. His reward for such a bold showing in 2023 was another excellent book of mares in 2024. And I say another because breeders have not really deserted him in the intervening years as is the normal behaviour for the risk-averse commercial investor. He covered 89 mares in his first year that either had black-type or are dams of black-type horses, 79 in his second, 65 in his third and 70 in his fourth. Earlier this year he served 77 more, so there shouldn’t be any noticeable drop off in the quality of Blue Point’s runners for the foreseeable future.
Another member of the class of 2020 is Too Darn Hot, who together with his fellow Darley sire Blue Point is among the top ten sires by stakes winners to have retired to stud since 2013, the year Frankel made his bow. Moreover, all of the other eight retired in different years which underlines the strength in depth of the class of 2020. Too Darn Hot has added significantly to his first-season efforts with six stakes winners and seven Group performers this year. The son of Dubawi is also flying high with his first crop sired in Australia which already features five stakes winners (9.3 per cent) from just 54 runners, including multiple Group 1 winner Broadsiding (Timeform 121), plus recent Group 2 scorers Too Darn Lizzie and Too Darn Discreet.
But for all their many achievements, it is not Blue Point nor Too Darn Hot, who leads this talented group of young sires when we take account of opportunity. That honour goes to Lanwades Stud’s Deep Impact stallion Study Of Man. This Prix du Jockey Club winner has been building a very convincing case that he has what it takes to climb to the top if only breeders would support him more. While it is true that he attracted 123 mares earlier this year on the back of the success of his first two-year-olds, a big improvement on an average of 78 for his first four years, his number of elite mares isn’t high enough for such a gifted sire. Given that his percentages of stakes horses (15.7) and stakes winners (7.1) are higher than the corresponding metrics for Blue Point and Too Darn Hot, Study Of Man ought to be attracting far more quality, particularly when his stakes-winner strike rate climbs to over 14 per cent from elite mares. Moreover, judged on their scores to the end of their second year, Study Of Man’s 4.1 per cent Group winners to runners is a better return than many sires at the same point in time who are now standing for higher fees, including Camelot, this year’s leading European sire by earnings, and Kingman.
Unsurprisingly, it is Frankel who holds all the records for European sires to the end of their second season. There has never been another stallion this millennium that has sired more stakes winners (20), or Group winners (16) than the Juddmonte sire. His strike-rates were are also off the charts at 15.7 per cent stakes winners and 12.6 per cent Group winners. However, with regard to Group 1 winners, Frankel wasn’t the fastest out of the gate with only Cracksman and Soul Stirring winning at the highest level. There are no fewer than six European sires with more Group 1 winners after their first two years, headed by his own sire Galileo who delivered four.
For the record, the most stakes winners delivered by a northern hemisphere sire by the end of their second season was by Uncle Mo with 22, while Gun Runner and Justify share the record of the most Group/Grade 1 winners sired with six each.
