Next year signals first major litmus test for Coolmore’s Justify experiment
Independent commercial breeders happy with first crop yearlings, ready to hit the market
By Tim Rowe
When Coolmore embarked on an extraordinary spending spree to support its newcomer Justify (Scat Daddy), the question for breeders was whether to join the global giant in riding the unprecedented wave of quality mares being sent in the unbeaten US Triple Crown champion’s direction knowing a stallion has never been given a better chance to succeed?
The John Magnier-inspired investment of more than $100 million and climbing reaches a critical juncture in 2022 with his first northern hemisphere crop turning two where the undisputed judge of success or otherwise, the racetrack, starts to make its ruling.
In the southern hemisphere, where Justify shuttles to Coolmore Australia, his first crop yearlings will hit the sales and the buying bench will get its first chance to deliver a verdict.
The market doesn’t always get it right, but there is merit in the wisdom of the crowd, in that the collective is smarter than any one individual, so the value of the market’s opinion will be weighted heavily, at least initially until more evidence comes to light, in this case his progeny’s racetrack deeds over the ensuing years.
As has been well documented, Coolmore Australia backed Justify with some of their best mares, either those already under its ownership as well as those Tom Magnier acquired, such as Eckstein (I Am Invincible), Invincible Star (I Am Invincible), Global Glamour (Star Witness), Srikandi (Dubawi) and Maastricht (Mastercraftsman).
It is a daunting list, and there were many more, but commercial breeders from Australia and New Zealand were not deterred by the potential sales ring competition from Coolmore and sent their own quality mares to Justify in his first year Down Under.
The results of those matings will be seen at all the select sales across Australasia next year, starting at Magic Millions on the Gold Coast in January, New Zealand Bloodstock’s Karaka auction later that month and Inglis’ Melbourne Premier and Australian Easter sales to follow.
Consensus amongst breeders canvassed by ANZ Bloodstock News is that Justify, a big, imposing stallion, has added great bone, strength, balance and scope to their mares’ offspring.
John Muir’s NSW Southern Highlands farm Milburn Creek and Kia Ora Stud will each have colts by Justify on offer at the Magic Millions.
Milburn Creek’s is the second foal out of Soft Kiss (Bernardini), a half-sister to US Grade 3 winner Den’s Legacy (Medaglia d’Oro) who Muir bought for US$300,000 at the 2018 Keeneland November Sale.
“He is a colt with a strong head and short rein,” Milburn Creek’s Scott Holcombe.
“He has good bone, a deep girth, good length of hip and gaskins with a great shoulder and forearm. He is a forward colt with a loose walk who gets low to the ground.”
Kia Ora Stud’s Justify colt is out of champion Canadian three-year-old filly Inglorious (Hennessy) who was purchased by the farm for US$1.35 million at the 2013 Fasig-Tipton Fall Mixed Sale.
From three foals to race she has produced the stakes-placed Miss Canada (Exceed And Excel) and Japan winner Off Width (Fastnet Rock).
“The Justify colt out of Inglorious is a standout type. He’s a good size without being too big and he has great balance and athleticism. He’s very strong through his hip and also has massive forearms and gaskins, which I personally love,” Kia Ora bloodstock manager Shane Wright said.
“He looks a very sound type with good bone and also has an abundance of quality. He is a very forward, naturally athletic type with a great attitude, so Magic Millions seems the perfect sale for him as I dare say he will be up and running quickly.”
New Zealand breeder Tony Rider of Milan Park will have the distinction of offering one of the few yearlings by Justify at Karaka next year and the colt has a pedigree to match, being a half-brother to 2019 VRC Matriarch Stakes (Gr 2, 2000m) winner Oceanex (Ocean Park) and exciting Jamie Richards-trained four-year-old Miss Aotearoa (Per Incanto).
“That first year was invitation only, so we had to put our mare up. We went through the bloods (pedigree matches) and she was the best one we had, but it was scary at the time because she is a big mare and we thought we might’ve got a monster yearling, but it turned out very well,” Rider said.
“They are not as big as you would expect. I wouldn’t be scared to send a big mare to him. How many stallions around the world have done what he’s done? For us here in New Zealand, it was a privilege to be able to get into him and use him.”
NSW breeder Mark Towell of GT Park, located on the NSW Central Coast, is another one who jumped on the Justify bandwagon, but there was plenty of thought given to his choice of mating.
“The mare (Layton Abbey) is a three-quarter sister to (Group 1 winner) Nakeeta Jane, so we had high hopes for her as a broodmare and she’s delivered that with the Justify colt she’s produced. He’s an absolutely stunning colt,” Towell said.
“Obviously Justify’s record overseas speaks for itself on the racetrack. He was an outstanding racehorse, a Triple Crown winner, who was unbeaten. He’s probably one of the best-credentialed stallions to come to Australia, and at the $70,000 he stood in his first year, he was quite good value.
“We run all our mares through (pedigree analysis database) G1 Goldmine as well and she rates very well on the system with them, so it was a bit of a no-brainer.”
The resultant colt will not be put up for auction until April when he heads to Inglis’ Riverside Stables to be sold at the Easter sale.
“He is a very well put-together, good size, good strength and we’ve had both of the sales companies come around and look at him and both of them have said he’s just an outstanding individual,” Towell said.
“There were no problems with any sale we wanted to put him in from both Magic Millions and Inglis, but a horse with the pedigree such as he’s got, he just fits in to Easter, so he is going there at this stage.”
Group 1 Bloodstock’s Mathew Becker is closely associated with Ben Cooper’s Victorian farm Merricks Station and he recommended the mare Whistle Baby (Magnus), a Group 3-placed, seven-time winner, be sent to Justify in her third season at stud.
“Personally, I was very keen to find a nice mare for Justify as I was a great fan of the horse and on a commercial level I had a suspicion that they would sell very well and be well received,” Becker said.
“The reason we picked that particular mare out, she was one that Merricks Station-raced and she was a stakes-performed mare. She is quite a nice type of mare, but she is a neat mare. She doesn’t have a lot of scope.
“Her first two foals, a Written Tycoon and a Pierro colt, were both are on the smaller side so I was looking for a stallion to put a bit of size and scope into her progeny and I thought if Justify couldn’t do it, nobody could, given the size of horse he is.
“In saying that, we didn’t want to get a giant of a horse, we got the most magnificent, well balanced, strong colt. He’s correct, he’s got great bone, he’s got a great mind and he’s a very intelligent horse. I think he is going to really appeal in that Melbourne market.”
Becker predicts the horse will be a standout amongst the Merricks Station Inglis Premier draft and fellow Victorian stud Two Bays Farm will be offering a Justify filly out of the winner Excelsior Island (Exceed And Excel) at the same sale.
Excelsior Island is a half-sister to New Zealand Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Warhorse (General Nediym) and Listed-placed Epona Princess (Fastnet Rock).
Two Bays Farm manager Rob Carlisle said the filly’s broodmare sire Exceed And Excel (Danehill) had also been influential in producing the classy yearling.
“She is only a little Exceed And Excel mare and what she’s managed to do is finesse him a little bit and he’s added the strength and the good bone – she’s refined him probably,” Carlisle said.
“She looks sharp and Justify is a big, strong horse who suited that mare at the time. She’s jet black with a white star, she just looks a picture and she is as good a first foal as I’ve had on the farm for a long time.”
Part of the allure of the racing and breeding industry is that no one can be certain of success, despite what pedigrees and racetrack performance may indicate, but Carlisle has almost been left stunned by how much Coolmore has got behind Justify, who was raced by partners including WinStar Farm, China Horse Club and Starlight Racing before Magnier’s high-stakes acquisition of the colt.
“Well, if he doesn’t make it, it’s going to be a very expensive exercise. They have spent a lot of money supporting him and that’s not only Coolmore (in Australia), that’s the guys in the US as well,” Carlisle said.
“I haven’t done any stats, but I’d love to see how many mares and the quality of mares that he got in his first books.”
Those requested statistics show Justify covered 149 mares in his first southern hemisphere season, which came after serving a stunning book of mares, 53 of them Group 1-winning or Group 1-producing, at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in his maiden season in the US in early 2019.
That subsequent first northern hemisphere crop of yearlings has, to date, averaged a remarkable A$521,567 from the 70 lots to be traded. He has had eight A$1 million yearlings and sold to a top of $2.12 million. They have been purchased by the likes of Japan trainer Hideyuki Mori, while Justify has had representation at Arqana in France, Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland in the US and the JRA Select Sale in Japan.
Naturally, Aidan O’Brien will train a big proportion of Coolmore’s best-bred Justifys, a group which includes fillies out of Group 1-winning two-year-olds Ballydoyle (Galileo) and Clemmie (Galileo), as well as a three-quarter-sister to Tenebrism, Caravaggio’s (Scat Daddy) recent Group 1-winning juvenile.
Part of Magnier Senior’s and the company’s unwavering belief in Justify is the fact his own sire Scat Daddy (Johannesburg) stud career was cruelly cut short in December 2015, aged just 11, as he was entering his prime.
Scat Daddy, as of yesterday, has a tally of 136 stakes winners, 31 of them at the highest level, including Queen Of The Turf (Gr 1, 1600m) and Coolmore Classic (Gr 1, 1500m) winner Con Te Partiro and Caravaggio, whose only Australian-conceived crop are two-year-olds.
The Scat Daddy sireline of Group 1 winners is solely controlled by Coolmore, with Caravaggio, No Nay Never, Sioux Nation and Mendelssohn all on rosters in Ireland or the US.
Agent Becker pointed to fellow Coolmore sires So You Think (High Chaparral) and Pierro (Lonhro) as examples of the market embracing stallions whose progeny are not noted for their early juvenile season precocity.
“I don’t know if they are going to be jump-and-run horses, what they call in America, those two-turn Scat Daddy horses. They’ve got a bit more scope than that,” said Becker.
“I think our market is maturing more and more. It doesn’t have to be all about pre-Christmas speed to get a good sales result.
“Horses like So You Think and Pierro are starting to turn the tide around and if you have a good type, you are going to get paid for it whether it’s a mile horse or whether it’s a two-year-old.
“Obviously the big colts syndicates do want to target those big, early two-year-old, jump-and-run pre-Christmas two-year-olds and that’s fine, there will always be a premium for those, and while I don’t think Justify is going to be in that category so much, I do think they will still average out quite well in comparison to their service fee.”
Carlisle agreed that there was “a swing in the market” to a point where it was paying more respect to horses who may not be early two-year-olds.
“As long as they show promise at the breaking-in and two-year-old stages, I don’t think people are crucifying them as hard. People are just starting to understand that our two-year-old racing is totally different to the two-year-old racing in the northern hemisphere,” the Two Bays Farm manager said.
“We have too much expectation on these horses coming from overseas. Now, there is a better understanding of the time that it takes these horses. A bit like Dubawi, they came out like himself.
“He’s 15.2hh, they are short-backed, they’re short-necked, pocket-rocket looking horses, but they are tough milers, 2000-metre horses even though they come out looking like five-furlong sprinters and they just weren’t.
“People are holding their breath a bit longer. As long as they show that they have got talent to go on with, the expectation won’t be super high as two-year-olds.”
To this point the aforementioned breeders have no intention of jumping off the giant wave of momentum created by Coolmore with the dual-hemisphere stallion.
As Kia Ora’s Wright said: “Given the calibre of racehorse he was and the types of offspring he is throwing, it’s impossible not seeing him being very strong in the market and evidence suggests he’ll take that momentum on to the racetrack.”
Only time will tell if they, and Coolmore’s, investment in the stallion will be justified, but you may not be wise to be betting against them.