Daughters building their sires’ international influence
By The Numbers looks at how strong the influence of the world’s best stallions is in Australasia through the progeny of their daughters.
The inspiration for a By The Numbers column can come from many different places. Sales or race results often set the scene, while other times it can be a tweet or a message that sets the mind off in a certain direction. Sometimes, it can be a phone call and a very simple question.
A successful syndicator called me during the week and asked: ‘How many daughters of Galileo are active as broodmares in Australia?’
The answer, thanks to a quick look at the Australian stud book, cross referenced with some other sources, was 95. It was probably a bit higher than I had expected, but in this caper, it pays to keep your expectations in check. ‘Assume nothing and prepare to be surprised’ is an unofficial motto.
A curious mind takes you to some interesting places. Given Galileo’s (Sadler’s Wells) profile as a stallion who stood in Australia for five seasons before he rose to become the most successful Group 1 producer in history, I wondered how many of those 95 daughters were bred in Australia or New Zealand?
The answer to that was 50, compared to 45 from the Northern Hemisphere. Another dive into Galileo’s broodmare sire stats revealed that his daughters had produced 55 individual stakes winners (from 822 starters) in Australia and New Zealand. Among that list are 13 Group 1 winners.
So where were the Galileo daughters which produced those 13 Group 1 winners bred? The answer broadly reflects the broodmare numbers above, with seven out of Australian-bred mares and six out of mares bred in either Great Britain or Ireland.
Two years since his death, Galileo’s progeny are still adding to his record-breaking feats as a sire, but his stats as a broodmare sire are accelerating at a much faster rate. He now has 297 global stakes winners in that role and on the pace that they are being added – 42 in 2023 alone – that total will soon surpass his total of stakes winners as a sire, which currently stands at 368.
He has been champion broodmare sire in both Great Britain and Ireland for the past three completed seasons and leads the way comfortably in both countries again this year.
Galileo’s record as a broodmare sire
| Subset | Runners | Winners | SWs | G1w | Prize-money |
| Overall | 4089 | 2505 | 297 | 50 | $337,787,540 |
| Aus/NZ only | 822 | 524 | 55 | 13 | $77,554,718 |
In Australia, Galileo finished 17th on the broodmare sire table in the just completed 2022-23 season. That put him sixth best of the 44 broodmare sires in the top 100 who didn’t have a (AUS) or (NZ) suffix.
Top of that list of internationally bred sires was More Than Ready (Southern Halo), who finished fourth overall on the broodmare sires table.
What is interesting about Galileo’s Australian broodmare stats compared to his global numbers is that they have plateaued in recent years in terms of runners and winners. This has occurred as his volume of Australian mares, chiefly bred before he stopped shuttling in 2006, have declined.
More Than Ready, in contrast, shuttled up until 2019, and has 369 daughters active as broodmares in Australia. Only 19 of that contingent were bred outside of Australasia.
Street Cry (Machiavellian), who finished eighth on the Australian broodmare sires table last year and last visited Australia in 2013, has 195 daughters registered as active broodmares in Australia, 18 of those bred elsewhere.
High Chaparral’s (Sadler’s Wells) final crop have just turned eight. He was 14th on the ranking of damsires in Australia last year and has 221 of his daughters at stud in Australia. Only eight of that total were not bred in Australia and New Zealand.
Shamardal (Giant’s Causeway), who finished shuttling to Australia in 2010, and who finished 13th on the Australian broodmare sires table last season, has a similar number of broodmares in Australia as Galileo, 93. But his split of locally bred to imported daughters is also skewed towards the Aus-NZ suffix 67-26.
Leading internationally-bred broodmare sires in Australia – 2022-23
| Broodmare sire | Overall position | Runners | Winners | SW | Prize-money |
| More Than Ready | 7 | 531 | 229 | 10 | $21,005,087 |
| Street Cry | 8 | 303 | 136 | 16 | $17,971,133 |
| High Chaparral | 14 | 235 | 101 | 6 | $11,732,229 |
| Shamardal | 15 | 153 | 64 | 5 | $10,715,566 |
| Royal Applause | 16 | 8 | 2 | 1 | $9,654,935 |
| Galileo | 17 | 220 | 90 | 8 | $9,465,313 |
| Montjeu | 22 | 84 | 44 | 4 | $8,547,125 |
| Hussonet | 26 | 243 | 112 | 5 | $7,638,125 |
| Dubai Destination | 27 | 63 | 28 | 2 | $7,496,769 |
| Rock of Gibraltar | 30 | 224 | 99 | 0 | $6,170,321 |
The most similar trajectory to Galileo of the current top European sires is probably Dubawi (Dubai Millennium), in that they started out their careers shuttling to Australia, with modest success, before they experienced enormous success on the other side of the world.
Dubawi’s influence as a damsire, highlighted by Mostahdaf’s (Frankel) win in the International Stakes (Gr 1, 1m 2.5f) this week, is building quickly. Earlier this year, the Darley superstar marked his first Australian Group 1 winner in that role, through Militarize (Dundeel). He has ten stakes winners as a damsire in Australia.
Dubawi has 71 daughters active as broodmares in Australia, but less than half, 35, were bred in Australia or New Zealand. Among the list of 36 internationally bred daughters is Militarize’s dam, Amerindia.
Another interesting stat about Amerindia is that she is one of 12 internationally bred mares to have a Group 1 winner in Australia last season, but one of only three to have actually foaled that Group 1 winner in Australia or New Zealand.
Invincible Spirit’s (Green Desert) Australian stud career largely paralleled Galileo in terms of timing. The former stood from 2003-2006, while the latter came to Australia from 2002-2006. And while Invincible Spirit’s Northern Hemisphere career didn’t quite match Galileo’s, he has still produced 148 stakes winners, 22 of them at Group 1 level. He also had a more significant influence in Australia as a sire of sires, chiefly through his champion son I Am Invincible.
Invincible Spirit has 41 global stakes winners as a broodmare sire, with Australian-bred Group 1 winner Masked Crusader (Toronado) among his five elite winners in that role.
There are 49 daughters of Invincible Spirit active as broodmares in Australia, 27 of them bred in Australasia and 22 of them bred overseas.
It appears that a sire having stood in Australia at some stage does tend to help their profile in terms of breeders backing their daughters to get the job done at stud. Of the 44 Northern Hemisphere-bred sires in the top 100 of the 2022-23 Australian broodmare sires, only five never stood in Australia.
The highest ranked of these was Royal Applause (Waajib), whose 16th position was almost solely due to Giga Kick (Scissor Kick). The others were Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer), Dansili (Danehill), Hernando (Niniski) and Oasis Dream (Green Desert).
The ‘non-shuttler’ we can expect to break into this group in the coming years is Galileo’s champion son, Frankel. While Frankel has only had two winners in Australia as a broodmare sire and four stakes winners globally, the number of progeny from his daughters is expected to explode in coming years. He has 33 daughters who are active as broodmares in Australia, 20 of which were bred in the Northern Hemisphere and just 13 bred in Australia or New Zealand.
Numbers/breeding locations of Australian broodmares by selected internationally bred sires
| Broodmare sire | Active Aus-based broodmares | Aus/NZ bred | NH-bred |
| Galileo | 95 | 50 | 45 |
| Dubawi | 71 | 35 | 36 |
| Shamardal | 93 | 67 | 26 |
| Invincible Spirit | 49 | 27 | 22 |
| Frankel | 33 | 13 | 20 |
| More Than Ready | 369 | 350 | 19 |
| Street Cry | 195 | 177 | 18 |
| High Chaparral | 221 | 213 | 8 |
| Danehill | 24 | 18 | 6 |