In Australia, Arrowfield Stud have pursued a program of sending elite mares to
visit Deep Impact in Japan in recent years and while the results of that
exercise are still to be realised given the oldest progeny from the experiment
are two year-olds, Coolmore have already hit the target from a similar exercise
in the Northern Hemisphere.Coolmore sent Group I winning Galileo mare Maybe to Japan to visit Deep Impact and while the first mating achieved success in producing stakes-placed Pavelenko, the second smashed it out of the park when Saxon Warrior arrived on the scene.
Trained by Aidan O'Brien, he was undefeated at two winning three from three including the Group I Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster and returned as a three year-old to win the Group I Newmarket Two Thousand Guineas before placing in several other Group I races.
Saxon Warrior combines the blood of two of the world's best sires in Deep Impact and Galileo, while his second dam is by Danehill and is a three-quarter sister to Group I Epsom Oaks winner Dancing Rain.
The family is top class through and through having also produced triple Group I winner and Epsom Derby hero Dr Devious and interestingly has had success in Australia producing Fastnet Rock's Group I winning son Awesome Rock.
Priced at $24,750, Saxon Warrior has the classic pedigree often missing from Australian stallion rosters combined with the precocity and turn of foot that made him an outstanding miler at two and three.
Arrowfield Stud have supported the Deep Impact sireline both in terms of
sending mares and standing his sire sons and while Real Impact (Jpn) is having
a break this season after shuttling here for the previous three, they do offer
his Group I winning sprinter miler Mikki Isle (Jpn) back for a third season at
a fee of $13,750 and the newcomer Real Steel (Jpn).A blue-blooded Group I winner over 1800m on turf, Real Steel is a full brother to Group I winner Loves Only You and stakes-winner Prodigal Son being from Loves Only Me, an unraced Storm Cat half-sister to dual Group I winner Rumpelstiltskin.
Loves Only Me is a grand-daughter of legendary matriarch Miesque, a champion on the track and blue hen at stud that has left champion sire Kingmambo and descendants including Champion European 3YO Filly of 2018, Alpha Centauri and French Group I winner Study of Man, who is also by Deep Impact.
Real Steel is priced at $16,500.Woodside Park Stud in Victoria present the fourth son of Deep Impact in Tosen Stardom (Jpn), who proved his worth on Australian soil winning the Group I VRC Emirates Stakes and MRC Toorak Handicap.
A tough strong competitor that raced successfully from age two to seven, Tosen Stardom comes from a big Black Type family and is completely free of Danehill blood.
He covered 123 mares last spring in his first season and is priced this year at $19,250.
Footnote: Real Impact, who won the Group I ATC George Ryder Stakes here in Australia and has been shuttling to Arrowfield for the past three seasons is currently the leading first season sire in Japan this year with six winners from 18 runners as seen in the table below.
The finest son of champion sire Sunday Silence, Deep Impact is utterly dominant in his homeland and has been the Champion Sire in Japan in every year since 2012 and is setting the pace again this year as you can see in the table below.
