The great Dubawi may be in the twilight of his career but he is still delivering a steady stream of quality horses. In 2025, he sired more stakes winners (33) than any other northern hemisphere stallion. His tally is nothing out of the ordinary for he has eclipsed that score on six previous occasions and his record haul in 2022 consisted of 45 stakes winners, two fewer than the great Galileo who still holds the record with 47 sired in 2017.
Dubawi’s 33 stakes winners featured six at Group/Grade 1 level including the top-class three-year-old Delacroix, globetrotting Rebel’s Romance, Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Notable Speech and Lead Artist, winner of the Lockinge Stakes. It is the mark of a great sire that he can sire top-class horses late in his career and Delacroix (Timeform 129) fits that bill. There are only three other Dubawis that rank higher on the Timeform scale, namely Ghaiyyath (133), Postponed (130) and Makfi (130).
The second most successful sire of stakes winners in 2025 was Dubawi’s son Night Of Thunder, the champion sire in Britain and Ireland who sired 30 stakes winners. Like his sire, Night Of Thunder started out at a much lower fee (€30,000) than he now commands, and one that dropped to £15,000 in year four.
In his fifth year, breeders flocked to him at an incredibly low fee of €25,000 and it is interesting to note that in all the years since at much higher fees he has not bettered the number of elite mares he served in 2020, and it is that 2021 crop that has propelled him to the big time. The top-class Ombudsman (Timeform 130) is from that crop as are Economics (126) and US Grade 1 winner Dynamic Pricing, three of his total of eight Group/Grade 1 winners to date.
Night Of Thunder is currently delivering stakes winners at a rate of 13.1 per cent, which is still some way shy of his sire’s 18 per cent. However, when you compare the two at the same point in their career, we note that Dubawi was sitting on a 13.3 per cent stakes winner strike-rate. Night Of Thunder’s 6.7 per cent for Group winners is behind Dubawi on 8.7 per cent after their first seven years, but it is still an excellent achievement, given that being out of a Galileo mare would have ruled out so many good mates.
Night Of Thunder also owns the best stakes winner strike-rate of any European sire in 2025. His ten per cent is marginally ahead of his sire’s 9.9 per cent with Frankel coming in third on 7.9 per cent. Needless to say, 2025 was Night Of Thunder’s best year, his 30 stakes winners comfortably ahead of the 19 he sired in 2024 and that was all down to horses like Ombudsman, plus 1,000 Guineas winner Desert Flower and Dewhurst Stakes scorer Gewan.
The leading sire by number of Group winners in 2025 was Wootton Bassett with 25. Among European sires only Galileo, Dubawi and Frankel have ever had more in a single season.
For context, Galileo also owns this record with 32 Group winners in 2017. Wootton Bassett was also the top sire by percentage of Group winners to runners on 6.5, some way below the record 9.8 per cent established by Frankel in 2017. Wootton Bassett had nine Group 1 winners in 2025, the most of any sire in the northern hemisphere and three clear of his closest pursuers Dubawi and Frankel, both of whom sired six. French Classic winners, Camille Pissarro (Prix du Jockey Club) and Henri Matisse (Poule d’Essai des Poulains), both now stallions at Coolmore, headed a team of top-flight winners that also featured dual Group 1-winning Whirl, his only filly among his nine top-flight winners. Talented older horses Al Riffa and Maranoa Charlie also scored at the highest level as did juvenile Puerto Rico in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere and Criterium de Maisons Laffitte.
On a count of stakes horses, there was no better sire in the northern hemisphere than Ballylinch’s Lope De Vega as the sire of 68 in 2025. His 12th year with runners, his 2025 tally was the best he’s ever achieved and it’s a total that only Galileo and Dubawi, among European sires, have bettered in the past – Galileo’s 75 in 2017 being the standard setter. And just as 68 stakes horses is his best ever tally, so too is the 19 Group winners sired in 2025.
All in all, the past four years have been very fruitful for Lope De Vega, with 51, 56, 64 and now 68 stakes horses. The Prix de Royallieu heroine Consent may have been his sole European Group 1 winner in 2025, but the son of Shamardal remains as popular as ever and will stand at an increased fee of €200,000 in 2026.
In terms of two-year-olds, it is Wootton Bassett who holds nearly all the northern hemisphere records since 2000, having sired 20 stakes horses, 13 stakes winners and ten Group winners in 2024. He also led all these categories again in 2025, as the sire of 17 stakes horses, nine stakes winners and eight Group winners. The only record this century he does not own is for two-year-old Group 1 winners, having to give way to Sadler’s Wells (the sire of five in 2001).
When he sired four Group 1-winning juveniles in 2024, Wootton Bassett equalled the number sired in a year by Justify. Wootton Basset also posted more juvenile winners (53) than any other northern hemisphere sire in 2025, six clear of runner-up Mehmas. However, he must give way to Mehmas in terms of the record, as the Tally-Ho sire managed 70 in 2024, four years afetr his first season record of 56.
