Results over the past 12 months highlight the growing success of some sires that do not fit the accepted profile of speed on speed, proving that a multidimensional racehorse can in fact be a very good sire.
A juvenile stakes quinella on Saturday for Shamus Award, has put the spotlight on this Cox Plate winner, who is now clearly the best proven son of Snitzel at stud.
His Listed VRC ANZAC Day Stakes winner Flying Award (read about him here) is his seventh stakes-winner giving him a 5.3% stakes-winner to runner strike rate with his best horse the Group I Queensland Derby winner Mr Quickie.
Shamus Award started his career at Widden Stud standing at a fee of $27,500, but was in the same year as Zoustar and suffered in comparison.
He was slow off the mark with only six first crop winners and no stakes-winners, while his barn mate Zoustar was Champion First Season Sire with 10 winners including three stakes-winners headed by superstar Sunlight.
Shamus Award was relocated to Rosemont Stud last year in Victoria where he covered 149 mares at a fee of $11,000.
A stallion that has probably been underestimated by a lot of people, he could easily take another step forward now that he is out of the shadow of Zoustar and charting his own course in a new location.
Coolmore won the Cox Plate the year after Shamus Award’s victory with a super talented son of champion sire Galileo in Adelaide (IRE).
He’s covered over 500 mares in his first five seasons starting at $22,000 and for the last two seasons has been at $11,000.
He’s had just 35 starters and of those 18 have placed and 12 have won with his highlight horse this season’s Group I winning filly Funstar, who has banked over $860,000 in prizemoney..
It’s very early days for Adelaide, but with other promising winners like Flinders, Torrens and Pride of Adelaide it seems likely Funstar will not be his only stakes-winner for long.
The year before Shamus Award’s Cox Plate it was the turn of Kiwi powerhouse Ocean Park, who won four consecutive Group I races that spring from 1400m up to the 2040m of the Cox Plate.
The son of Australian bred, but New Zealand based sire Thorn Park, retired to Waikato Stud at a fee of $30,000, which had dropped to $15,000 at this time last year when his achievements were appearing somewhat limited.
That all changed this year as Ocean Park has come of age as his progeny have matured into older horses and particularly in Australia where his offspring include Group I winners Kolding and Tofane, Group II winner Oceanex and Group III winner Star of the Seas, all of them four year-old except for the last mentioned who is five.
Waikato Stud have set his fee for this year at $20,000.
So You Think won two Cox Plates in 2009 and 2010 and retired with 10 Group I wins on the board, five of them coming in the UK and Ireland.
He was a champion and priced accordingly when he went to stud at Coomore at a fee of $66,000.
Now the sire of 24 stakes-winners, six of them Group I winners, So You Think has settled into a very successful career as a proven high class partner for Danehill line mares with four of his six Group I winners bred this way.
He puts size and scope into his progeny and invariably gives them a good head similar to his own, making him a very predictable sire to use in terms of what he physically brings to the table.
Priced at $44,000 and $38,500 in his past two seasons, So You Think has covered his two biggest books of 225 and 234 mares as breeders are now well awake as to how to use him to advantage.
In the sale ring, So You Think has had his best ever results this year with 42 yearlings averaging $186,428.
