Street Cry success continues to flow in Cox Plate
The 2023 Cox Plate was yet another vindication of the influence of Street Cry in Australia’s greatest weight-for age race.
After four victories as a sire and one as a grandsire, the title of Cox Plate-winning broodmare sire can now be bestowed on the remarkable Street Cry (Machiavellian) thanks to Romantic Warrior (Acclamation).
The Irish-bred and Hong Kong-based star prevailed by just one hundredth of a second, officially a nose margin, from Mr Brightside (Bullbars), in the tightest finish to a Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) in history.
In doing so, he extended the extraordinary record of Street Cry, who has featured in the pedigrees of six of the past nine winners of the race, all since his premature death in Australia in 2014.
He has had 12 Cox Plate runners in all either as a sire, grandsire or damsire, and not only has he had six victories, but two seconds and a third as well, giving him a 75 per cent placing record.
Cox Plate runners featuring Street Cry in their pedigree
| Horse | Year | Role | Finish |
| Whobegotyou | 2009 | Sire | Sixth |
| Whobegotyou | 2010 | Sire | Third |
| Long John | 2013 | Sire | Ninth |
| Winx | 2015 | Sire | Winner |
| Winx | 2016 | Sire | Winner |
| Winx | 2017 | Sire | Winner |
| Winx | 2018 | Sire | Winner |
| Anamoe | 2021 | Grandsire | Second |
| I’m Thunderstruck | 2022 | Grandsire | Second |
| Anamoe | 2022 | Grandsire | Winner |
| Pinstriped | 2023 | Grandsire | 11th |
| Romantic Warrior | 2023 | Damsire | Winner |
However, Street Cry’s association with the Cox Plate didn’t begin as had been hoped.
Whobegotyou, from his second crop at Darley Australia, had given Street Cry his first Australian Group 1 win when he claimed the 2008 Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m). That success prompted the sire’s return to Kelvinside in 2009 after a two-year break.
That would prove an important decision in the history of Australian racing – more on that later – but the expectations were high for further success in the spring of 2009.
Whobegotyou had missed the 2008 Cox Plate as a three-year-old, instead contesting the Moonee Valley Vase (Gr 2, 2040m) on the same day, winning it in a time which was 1.6 seconds – around ten lengths – quicker than his stablemate Maldivian (Zabeel) ran in winning the weight-for-age feature.
The Mark Kavanagh-trained four-year-old was a long-term favourite for the 2009 Cox Plate, winning the Feehan Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m) and the Caulfield Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) en route to his date with destiny at The Valley. He jumped a $2.80 favourite but never caught sight of all-the-way winner So You Think (High Chaparral), finishing sixth.
Whobegotyou returned to the Cox Plate in 2010, this time as a $15 outsider, with So You Think now the benchmark horse in Australian racing and a $1.50 favourite. Bart Cummings’ four-year-old lived up to the price, but Whobegotyou put in a terrific run to finish third.
It would be a further three years before Street Cry would have another Cox Plate runner, and it was another Caulfield Guineas winner, Long John. The Peter Snowden-trained three-year-old started third favourite, but again, it was an all-the-way three-year-old, Shamus Award (Snitzel), who prevailed as Long John finished ninth in what was his final Australian start.
However, after that 0-3 start, things were about to get a lot better for Street Cry.
Winx had been bred from the second crop of his second spell in Australia and her very existence owed a great deal to Darley’s decision to bring Street Cry back to Kelvinside after Whobegotyou’s heroics.
In the same month her sire was euthanised due to a neurological condition, Winx became his 78th individual stakes winner with victory in the Furious Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m).
When Winx contested her first Cox Plate in 2015, not even those closest to her could expect that she would make the race her own over an extraordinary four-year-old period. She won that Cox Plate by 4.8 lengths and returned the following year to win by eight lengths.
Winx’s final two wins in the race weren’t as authoritative, by 0.4 lengths and two lengths respectively, but were no less dramatic as she first matched, then surpassed, the great Kingston Town’s (Bletchingly) effort of three Cox Plate victories.
Such was Winx’s dominance, she powered Street Cry to victory in the 2015-16 Australian Sires’ Championship, making him the only internationally bred sire apart from Danehill (Danzig) to win that honour this century.
But Street Cry was far from finished with the great weight-for-age race. In 2021, Anamoe, by his son Street Boss, went within 0.02 of a second of winning the Cox Plate, edged out by State Of Rest (Starspangledbanner) in a result ultimately determined in the stewards’ room.
A year later, Anamoe would atone for that defeat, holding out I’m Thunderstruck, who was by another of Street Cry’s sire sons, Shocking. On the same day, Bella Nipotina, who is by Street Cry’s son Pride Of Dubai, streeted the field in the Manikato Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m), underlining the extraordinary versatility of his bloodlines.
In Saturday’s race, Street Cry had another of the progeny of his sire sons engaged in the Cox Plate, Feehan Stakes winner Pinstriped (Street Boss), while he also had his first ever runner as a damsire, Romantic Warrior, who is out of his daughter Folk Melody.
Pinstriped never really figured, finishing 11th but James McDonald’s late desperation on Romantic Warrior delivered not only Hong Kong’s first Cox Plate success, but a banner result for Street Cry as a broodmare sire.
It is a role which has already seen his daughters produce 23 Group 1 winners, including Saturday’s Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) victor Tom Kitten (Harry Angel).
Danny Shum’s now four-time Group 1 winner is the best of a list that also includes triple Australian Group 1 winner Cascadian (New Approach), dual Group 1 winners September Run (Exceed And Excel) and Con Te Partiro (Scat Daddy), Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) victor Farnan (Not A Single Doubt) and Blue Diamond (Gr 1, 1200m) winning pair Daumier (Epaulette) and Lyre (Lonhro).
The diversity of sires represented among those Australian Group 1 winners is reflected globally, with the 23 individual Group 1 winners out of Street Cry’s daughters by 21 individual sires, the only double ups coming with Dubawi (Dubai Millennium) and Scat Daddy (Johannesburg).
Broodmare sire stats for Street Cry
| Location | Runners | Winners | Stakes Winners | G1 winners | Prize-money |
| Global | 2347 | 1526 | 147 | 23 | $266,872,167 |
| Australia | 587 | 381 | 35 | 9 | $70,376,489 |
Romantic Warrior is one of only four runners out of Street Cry mares by Rathbarry Stud’s evergreen Acclamation (Royal Applause). Shum’s star has proven an amazing flagbearer for his sire, who is set to enter his 21st season at stud in Ireland in 2024.
Foaled in 1999, a year after Street Cry, Acclamation has not only sired six Group 1 progeny himself but has another two as a broodmare sire. His sire sons have been even more successful producing 24 Group 1 winners between them with Dark Angel leading the way on 15.
Dark Angel has already produced three Group 1-winning sires, including a newly minted one on Saturday at Randwick, when Harry Angel’s Tom Kitten claimed the Spring Champion.
Saturday’s two Group 1 results vaulted Street Cry to third on the Australian broodmare sires’ table, while he leads that category when it comes to stakes winners, with six, and stakes wins, with eight.
Globally, across 2023, he now has 23 stakes winners as a broodmare sire, placing him sixth of all sires. Fifteen of those stake winners have raced in Australia.
Global runners with both Acclamation and Street Cry in their pedigrees
| Runners | Winners | Stakes winners | G1 winners |
| 46 | 23 | 2 | 2 |