Is Anamoe a Smart Play?

Our look into covering statistics last week highlighted plenty of super popular stallions that covered big books, but from a commercial perspective as a yearling vendor being one of a great many is not always a good thing, so we have delved deep into the book of a young stallion carrying a high degree of anticipation.

The influence of champion sire Street Cry (IRE) is apparent every week when we start going through stakes results for pedigree watch stories and in the past week his classy son Street Boss (USA) has been making all the headlines with that Golden Slipper lead up double at Randwick last week with Tentyris and Tempted, plus another new stakes-winner in Elphinstone.

Now 21, Street Boss is very much restricted in the number of mares he can cover and has passed the baton to his champion son Anamoe.

Anamoe was the complete package as a racehorse winning at Group I level at two, three and four - collecting 14 wins from 25 starts with nine of those wins in G1 races that included the Cox Plate.

Is it any wonder Darley priced him at $121,000 making him the highest priced Australian bred first season sire ever with the only horse comparable in terms of race record being Lonhro, who stood his first season at $60,000 in 2004.

Anamoe has covered books of 149 mares and then 140 mares in his first season with some of the smartest commercial breeders in the country gambling that the big fee will produce dividends.

Of those mares that went to Anamoe, 40 are Godolphin owned (19 in the first year and 21 the second) so the offspring from those matings won’t be competing against you in the sale ring.

That first crop for Anamoe has produced 102 foals and 13 of them for Godolphin leaving a pool of around 90 that will compete for spots at Magic Millions, Inglis Easter and the second tier sales where being a big and interesting fish in a smaller pool may be a smart move.

Some of the savvy commercial farms on the Anamoe bandwagon include Cressfield, Fernrigg Farm, Goodwood Farm, Highgrove Stud, Kambula Stud, Kia Ora Stud, Newgate and their clients, North Bloodstock, Rosemont Stud, Segenhoe Stud and their clients and Widden Stud.

Given the success of the high profile nick between Street Boss and Exceed and Excel that has been mined very effectively by Godolphin and produced both Tentryis and Tempted, we thought a look at the dam sires of the mares covered by Anamoe would hold interest.

The nick has the following stats - 33 winners from 46 starters so 71.7% winner to runner and 7 SW’s 15% SW to runner- G1 winner Elite Street the best.

This affinity hasn’t been lost on the broodmare owners as Anamoe has covered 24 mares by Exceed and Excel, 11 the first year and 13 the next with the table below showing the most represented broodmare sires from his first two books. The dams of both Tentyris and Tempted were covered by Anamoe last year.

Anamoe traces back to a stout New Zealand staying female family that has been updated and improved over time with his grand-dam Voltage a game changer for the family and through her mating with champion sire Redoute’s Choice produced his dam Anamato, who won the Group I SAJC Australasian Oaks.

The prevalence of mares that have gone to Anamoe by speed sires is sure to give him the opportunity to produce the sort of early horses the market expects of an elite commercial sire, but his underlying staying blood will hopefully help him get horses more like himself and his mother as well.

With Redoute’s Choice so close in his pedigree it will bring into play a lot of offspring with quite close duplications of Danehill (and in turn Redoute’s Choice) and while that has worked well for a sire like Zoustar (also from a daughter of Redoute’s Choice) it has been detrimental to others.

We will know a lot more about Anamoe this time next year when his progeny hit the sales and even more the year after that.