At season’s end we justifiably praise the sires that end up on top of each region’s prize-money table, but there always remains an unease about the efficacy of such a method for classifying sires. One of the reasons for this is that not all sires are fairly treated when it comes to the distribution of prize-money. That is precisely why the achievement last year of Dark Angel – a stallion whose stock tend not to compete over distances where money is plentiful – is so meritorious. Personally speaking, I do not think there is a case for splitting Britain and Ireland when deciding who should be champion sire, whatever you think of the method employed. For the record, Dark Angel was still top by earnings in Britain, while Frankel was best in Ireland. The European champion was Camelot, helped enormously by the Arc victory of Bluestocking whose seasonal haul made up 44 per cent of Camelot’s European total prize-money.
Limiting championships to relatively small geographical areas always discriminates against those sires that have a worldwide reach, so let’s look at some metrics that measure a stallion’s global achievements.
From an earnings perspective, Dubawi was the best British sire with a haul of £17 million, while Lope De Vega was the best based in Ireland with £14 million. On the individual winner log, the Ballylinch Stud patriarch dominated with 198 winners from perennial high scorer Kodiac on 173, followed closely by Dark Angel with 170, thus a clean sweep for Ireland where there tends to be bigger mare books. For context, commendable as they are, neither the 2024 earnings nor the individual winner totals match Galileo’s £22.8 million in 2016, nor Dark Angel’s 225 individual winners in 2022.
Looking at what we can call quality rankings – stakes winners, Group winners and Group 1 winners – it is Lope De Vega who again steps up yet again with 35 stakes winners, the best of any European sire and one clear of Dubawi’s 34 and six ahead of the 29 recorded by Sea The Stars. Again for context, Galileo sired 47 stakes winners in 2017. Dubawi sired the most Group winners in 2024, his tally of 20 being well clear of Lope De Vega (16) with four other elite stallions – Galileo, Sea The Stars, Frankel, and Wootton Bassett all with 15. Unsurprisingly, Galileo also holds this record with 32 sired in his standout year of 2017. For the record, the Europe-based leader by percentage of winners from 100-plus runners, and for stakes winners is Zarak, supplying 56.9 per cent winners and 11.9 stakes winners.
There is no doubt that 2024 has proven to be Lope De Vega’s best ever year. His three-year-olds son Champagne Prince scored at Listed level in mid-December to draw his sire level with Dubawi, but he overtook the Darley kingpin with two very late Listed scorers, one at Morphettville in Australia and the other at Al Rayyan in Qatar. Perhaps most impressive of all is that Lope De Vega led all active northern hemisphere sire by individual Group/Grade 1 winners with six, sharing that score with the mighty Galileo. The last three years have been nothing short of outstanding for the Ballylinch sire, having provided 26 stakes winners in 2022 and again in 2023 and now a career-high of 35. These scores are at least eight more than he’s ever previously achieved, and they all coincide with a big increase in mare quality when his fee rose to €80,000 in 2020, his ninth year at stud. In his first eight years, Lope De Vega covered an average of 54 elite mares and in the six seasons since he has averaged 110.
Lope De Vega’s 123 career northern hemisphere-foaled stakes winners comprise 36 (29 per cent of his total) juvenile black-type winners, 60 (49 per cent) three-year-old stakes winners and 68 (55 per cent) who won stakes races as older horses. His sire Shamardal, meanwhile, has the following breakdown: 27 (19 per cent) two-year-old stakes winners, 78 (53 per cent) three-year-olds and 83 (57 per cent) older horses.
So Lope De Vega’s runners are very much more likely than Shamardal’s to be stakes-winning youngsters, while his sire’s three-year-olds and older horses account for a higher percentage of his own black-type winners. In 2024, 25 of Lope De Vega’s 35 stakes winners were older horses, while three-year-olds accounted for just six and two-year-olds for only two. Three of his six Group/Grade 1 winners were Caulfield Cup winner Duke De Sessa, plus North American scorers Carl Spackler and Program Trading. All added to Lope De Vega’s fan base in America and Australia, where his has sired some of his most talented runners.
Back in Europe, Lope De Vega’s three Group 1 winners this year are Dewhurst-Middle Park Stakes winner in Shadow Of Light, Europe’s top-rated juvenile, plus French Classic winners Look De Vega, winner like is sire and grandsire of the Prix du Jockey-Club, and Poule d’Essai des Pouliches heroine Rouhiya. The Timeform 120-rated Shadow Of Light is his sire’s sixth top-flight two-year-old winner, and he has excellent prospects of providing his sire with a fourth Classic winner following Phoenix Of Spain (Irish 2,000 Guineas), Rouhiya and Look De Vega.
All told, Lope De Vega’s 123 stakes winners conceived at Ballylinch have come along at a rate of 11.4 per cent from runners, which marks him down as an elite sire in the modern era, albeit a fair bit removed from the three super elite stallions of recent years, Dubawi, Frankel and Galileo, all of whom typically deliver stakes winners at around 17 per cent.
Significantly though, he gets more from his mares that do all others sires who have produced runners from them and despite being a Prix du Jockey-Club winner by a Prix du Jockey-Club winner, Lope De Vega gets plenty of zip from his runners. His progeny aged three and older have an average winning distance of just 8.9 furlongs, which is below the average winning distance of his runners’ siblings, while his Group winners are comprised of 40 colts and geldings compared with 23 fillies and mares. That’s a sizeable gap but it has to be acknowledged that his best female progeny are well up to the standard set by his colts and geldings. Will 2025 bring him a new highest-rated runner to replace the 125-rated Belardo, perhaps one capable of a 130-plus Timeform mark?
