International influence dominant among top freshmen
The influence of international bloodlines among Australia’s top stallions has grown significantly in the past 30 years and was especially strong at the top end of the 2022-23 first-season sires tables.
When Justify (Scat Daddy) stood his first season at Coolmore Australia’s Jerrys Plains in 2019, he was part of the smallest cohort of shuttle stallions in 25 years.
The percentage of shuttle stallions had been growing over the previous four seasons and in 2018, reached 6.15 per cent (36 of 585) of the total stallion population, its highest level since 2006-07, when the percentage of shuttlers peaked at 7.28 per cent (64 of 879).
But the natural market cycle saw several tried shuttlers fail to return in 2019, while new faces to the list were a smaller, but arguably higher-quality list, highlighted by the Triple Crown winner Justify, and Darley’s multiple Group 1 winner Harry Angel (Dark Angel). The overall shuttle representation in 2019 was just 4.99 per cent of the stallion population.
Four years after they first arrived, that ‘new blood’ has only had one Australian-bred crop to the track, but judging on the first-season sires’ table from the just completed 2022-23 Australian racing season, they are already making a major impression.
Justify claimed the honour as the champion first-season sire, with his progeny, led by the brilliant filly Learning To Fly, winning just short of $2 million. Among his 21 Australian runners were eight winners, three of them at stakes level.
He became the first shuttle sire to win first-season honours in Australia since More Than Ready (Southern Halo) in 2004-05.
Australian first-season sire table
| Sire | Runners | Winners | Wins | SW | SWins | Prizemoney |
| Justify | 21 | 8 | 11 | 3 | 5 | $1,999,312 |
| Encryption | 24 | 6 | 9 | 1 | 2 | $1,230,575 |
| Harry Angel | 23 | 9 | 11 | 3 | 3 | $1,224,860 |
| Brave Smash | 30 | 11 | 17 | 1 | 1 | $1,041,905 |
| Trapeze Artist | 36 | 9 | 10 | 0 | 0 | $976,050 |
| The Autumn Sun | 26 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | $560,542 |
| Written By | 25 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | $494,705 |
| Sioux Nation | 9 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | $414,775 |
| Grunt | 14 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | $338,360 |
| Showtime | 20 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | $321,170 |
The only first-season sire to match Justify in terms of stakes success was Harry Angel, whose three stakes winners were part of a first-crop collection of nine Australian winners. Between them, his progeny earned $1.22 million, enough for their shuttle sire to finish third place on the sires’ list, just $6,000 shy of claiming second place from Eureka Stud’s Encryption (Lonhro).
To put that trend in some historical context, you have to go back to 2006-07, in the peak of the shuttle stallion era, for the last time two internationally bred sires occupied two of the top three spots on the Australian first season sires’ list. In that instance it was Rock Of Gibraltar (Danehill) and Hussonet (Mr Prospector) filling the minor placings behind freshman champ Choisir (Danehill Dancer).
Justify and Harry Angel weren’t the only shuttle stallions to enjoy successful seasons with their first crops. Sioux Nation (Scat Daddy), Real Steel (Deep Impact), Bolt D’Oro (Medaglia D’Oro), Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy), National Defense (Invincible Spirit), Jungle Cat (Iffraaj) and Saxon Warrior (Deep Impact) all had Australian winners from their 2019-conceived Australian crops.
The nine new shuttlers listed above provided 29.3 per cent of the total freshman sire runners in Australia last season, but overperformed compared to their ‘local’ rivals with 34.3 per cent of the first-season sire winners (34 of 99), 35.2 per cent of total wins (44 of 125), 42.9 per cent of stakes winners (six of 14) and 47.1 per cent of stakes wins (eight of 17).
That list doesn’t include an overseas-bred stallion who was crowned the leading first-season sire by winners, one-time Aquis sire and now Yarraman Park resident, Brave Smash (Tosen Phantom).
Brave Smash, who arrived as an imported racehorse in 2017 as a stakes winner in Japan, and then won two Group 1 races in Australia to earn himself a shot as a stallion, has never shuttled. He is forging a relatively new path, as an internationally bred horse who made his racing reputation on Australian shores.
It’s a similar path trod by fellow Japanese-bred Australian Group 1 winners Tosen Stardom (Deep Impact) and Fierce Impact (Deep Impact), and in Brave Smash’s case, it has been a very, very promising start.
With a total of 11 winners, he becomes the most prolific internationally bred first-season stallion in Australia since Shamardal (Giant’s Causeway) in 2008-09, equalling the mark set by the Argentine-bred Husson (Hussonet) in 2011-12, who was the last sire without an Australian suffix to claim the honour of being the leading first season sire by winners.
Brave Smash also became the first Japanese-bred stallion in Australia to have his locally bred progeny earn over $1 million from their first season on the track, while he was the only non-Australasian stallion (of all stallions) to have more than ten two-year-old winners this season.
Internationally bred stallions ranked by Australian first-crop two-year-old winners (since 2008)
| Sire | Runners | Winners | Wins | Season |
| Shamardal | 33 | 12 | 13 | 2008-09 |
| Brave Smash | 30 | 11 | 17 | 2022-23 |
| Husson | 26 | 11 | 13 | 2011-12 |
| Harry Angel | 23 | 9 | 11 | 2022-23 |
| Justify | 21 | 8 | 11 | 2022-23 |
| Maurice | 34 | 8 | 10 | 2020-21 |
| Night Of Thunder | 18 | 8 | 11 | 2019-20 |
| Medaglia D’Oro | 19 | 8 | 8 | 2013-14 |
| Ad Valorem | 27 | 8 | 11 | 2010-11 |
The efforts of his first crop earned him a spot on Yarraman Park’s roster, alongside reigning Australian champion sire, I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) and the rising star Hellbent (I Am Invincible). It also earned him a substantial service fee bump from $16,500 in 2022 to $33,000 in 2023.
The success of the internationally bred freshman stallions was not due to a lack of competition from locally bred stallions. The 2022-23 season also saw the first crops of two very high-profile Australian-bred stars, in Widden’s Trapeze Artist (Snitzel) and Arrowfield’s The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice).
The progeny of both performed well, with Trapeze Artist finishing with nine winners and The Autumn Sun four, including two at stakes level. Similarly Group 1-winning two-year-old Written By (Written Tycoon) made a good start with four winners, including two stakes winners, from his first crop.
The likes of Encryption and Stratosphere (Snitzel) also outperformed expectations with six first-season winners apiece.
So, how does the overall performance of this crop of stallions stack up? You may recall this column recently looked at historic performances of crops of first-season sires over the past decade.
The total of 99 Australian winners from freshman sires in 2022-23 is the lowest since 2016-17, while 125 wins is also the lowest total since that season. It’s the same story for the total number of winning freshman sires, of which there were 25.
However, the number of stakes winners, 14, was historically high, eclipsed in the past decade only by the first-season two-year-olds of 2020-21, which featured 15 stakes winners.
Seen in the context of opportunity, we see that the number of individual runners by first-season sires in 2022-23 was the lowest it has been in the past decade at just 375. That means that the rate of runners/winners (26.4 per cent) from this cohort was at its highest in the past ten years, while the number of stakes winners to runners (3.7 per cent) was also significantly higher than it has been in that time.
It is also notable that the champion New Zealand first-season sire on both earnings and winners, U S Navy Flag (War Front), is also an internationally bred stallion. That is a far more common occurrence than it has been in Australia and it is the third season in a row an internationally bred stallion has won New Zealand first-season honours, following on from Almanzor (Wootton Bassett) and Belardo (Lope De Vega).
U S Navy Flag’s total of seven first-season winners matches the feat of Per Incanto (Street Cry) in 2014-15.
First-season sire progeny records in Australia by season
| Season | Runners | Sires with winners | Winners | Wins | SW | Swins | W/R | SW/R |
| 2022-23 | 375 | 25 | 99 | 125 | 14 | 17 | 26.40% | 3.73% |
| 2021-22 | 494 | 26 | 117 | 142 | 5 | 7 | 23.68% | 1.01% |
| 2020-21 | 729 | 38 | 173 | 220 | 15 | 19 | 23.73% | 2.06% |
| 2019-20 | 472 | 26 | 117 | 149 | 8 | 8 | 24.79% | 1.69% |
| 2018-19 | 564 | 26 | 145 | 195 | 10 | 11 | 25.71% | 1.77% |
| 2017-18 | 486 | 27 | 105 | 137 | 14 | 16 | 21.60% | 2.88% |
| 2016-17 | 385 | 22 | 74 | 100 | 5 | 6 | 19.22% | 1.30% |
| 2015-16 | 516 | 26 | 84 | 102 | 4 | 4 | 16.28% | 0.78% |
| 2014-15 | 492 | 31 | 111 | 148 | 10 | 12 | 22.56% | 2.03% |
| 2013-14 | 530 | 27 | 100 | 130 | 9 | 9 | 18.87% | 1.70% |