Toughness and Trainability

We all know that the ability to sire winners and in particular stakes-winners is what makes a successful stallion, but from the point of view of a racehorse owner, they want not just a horse that can win a race, but a horse that can front up and compete successfully all season, so we've had a closer look at our leading sires for 2018/2019 to find those that deliver toughness and trainability as well as winners.

The world's best racehorse Winx only just retired at the end of her seven year-old season and she raced consistently from age two until retirement competing in usually eight races a year with the exception of her busy three year-old season which included 10 starts and her juvenile season when she started twice for two wins.

It's not unreasonable to expect even a horse of lesser ability to also race at least eight times a year with periods of competition interspersed with downtime.

Horses that are sound enough to achieve a minimum of eight starts in the past season and have won at least twice are the horses we've been looking for, prizemoney and Black Type aside.

These are the horses that brought a lot of entertainment and fun into the lives of their owners and whether they won stakes races, metro races or country races, I'm pretty sure their owners would be well pleased with the result, whatever their base level.

All you can ask a racehorse to do is his best and these horses have given it a red-hot go, so who are their sires?

Below is a list of sires from the last season that produced 15 or more of what we call target winners, those horses that competed at least eight times in the past season and won at least two of those starts.