By Bill Oppenheim Eight years ago, in 2012, when he had his first 4-year-olds racing, I wrote an article which predicted that Snitzel looked like he could become a major force in Australian racing. At the time I was using a method of rating sires we called APEX Ratings—basically an enhancement of the average-earnings index which suppressed the influence of one or two huge earners, by measuring the frequency with which sires produced runners who figured among the top 2% of earners in a season. Now Snitzel, a grandson of Danehill by three-time Champion Sire Redoute’s Choice, has been Champion Sire four times, and other Champion Sires by Danehill himself, Fastnet Rock and Exceed And Excel, are similarly entering the stages of their careers where we’re analysing them as much as sires of sires and broodmare sires even as they continue to sire top racehorses. So the torch will be passed, possibly, initially, to the incredibly deserving I Am Invincible, runner-up to Snitzel for Champion Sire honours each of the last three seasons. Unlike the Northern Hemisphere, where the emphasis is much more on 3-year-old Classic middle-distance racing, one of our key findings about Australian racing and breeding is that there has been a much heavier emphasis on shorter and earlier racing. After a lot of study, particularly of 2,777 stakes races in Australia over five-plus seasons of racing, 2015/16 through September 8, 2020, we divided the stakes races into three distance categories: short (<1200m as 2yo’s, <1400m as 3yo’s+); intermediate (exactly 1200m as 2yo’s, 1400m-1650m as 3yo’s+); and long (>1200m as 2yo’s, 1700m+ as 3yo’s+). We found the division of stakes races was 38% short (for 28% of the money), 34% intermediate (for 33% of the money), and 28% long (for 39% of the money). Yes, the lower ratio of prize money for sprint stakes can be compensated for if you hit the jackpot with a sire prospect, nonetheless it’s plain to see there are greater relative earnings
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opportunities, with relatively less competition, in the longer stakes races.
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