First Word

We’ve never seen the likes of him before... will we ever again?

GALILEO DI VINCENZO BONAIUTI DE’ GALILEI was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer. He has been called the “father of observational astronomy”, the “father of modern physics” and the “father of modern science”.

Never has a horse more than lived up to his human namesake than the phenomenon that has been the equine Galileo.

He is unquestionably the father of this generation of racehorses, factually the sire of 92 (and counting) Group and Grade 1 winners, 338 stakes winners and 20 Group and Grade 1-producing sires.

According to physicist and author Stephen Hawking, Galileo the man was responsible for the birth of modern science; 370 years later Galileo the sire has repeated the feat in equine form and taken racing and breeding to new levels.

It is worth recounting his racing career, and reprinting some of the sentences that were used at the time to describe his own racing performances – we have become so accustomed to hearing about the feats of his progeny, it is easy to forget just how good a racehorse he was himself.

Sent off the evens favourite for his debut on October 28, 2000, he converted that support to victory with a 14l success, a performance that led trainer Aidan “He has the speed of a sprinter and the strength of a miler, and this is something I have never seen before in a horse capable of winning a Classic, over a mile and a half. He is very explosive and very special”

O’Brien to be quoted in the Racing Post saying: “He’s definitely top class and is an exciting prospect.”

Galileo’s three-year-old debut in the Listed Ballysax Stakes produced another easy victory, an effort that left Milan trailing in his wake, and the same result was produced in the Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial (G3), the son of Sadler’s Wells stretching out and showing off his action on his first encounter with good ground.

The Racing Post then hailed Galileo’s subsequent easy Epsom Derby victory as a “magnificent performance” – he came home by the widest-winning margin since 1993 with the 2,000 Guineas winner Golan following him some 3l adrift.

“This is a serious horse, who is capable of producing the unbelievable,” declared O’Brien. “He has the speed of a sprinter and the strength of a miler, and this is something I have never seen before in a horse capable of winning a Classic, over a mile and a half. He is very explosive and very special.”

Over the years, O’Brien has regularly enthused as to Galileo’s progeny’s willingness to race and win, their toughness in a battle.

The colt’s subsequent Irish Derby win led the Post to exclaim that Galileo was “a superbly athletic performer, he has nothing left to prove at 1m4f, and deserves to go down as one of the finest horses to have completed the Derby double.”

He was described in The Independent as being “one of the most impeccably bred horses in training”

Those thoughts perhaps began life after the Coolmore-owned three-year-old colt met the Godolphin-owned five-year-old Fantastic Light in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes, the first of two matches between the pair which resulted in one race win apiece, with the younger horse winning the first encounter

Galileo with stallion man Noel Stapleton

The Post wrote: “We already knew he had natural brilliance, and the way he put his head down to see off the potent challenge of an exceptional rival showed he also has the courage to go with it. That bravery will stand him in good stead when he steps back in trip.”

The result was reversed after that epic battle in the Irish Champion Stakes, with the race-winning tactics given to Fantastic Light by Frankie Dettori possibly one of the jockey’s best-ever big race rides.

Galileo’s subsequent trip to the US for the Breeders’ Cup Classic did not reap a result and the colt was retired to stud.

Everything achieved by Galileo, from his racing days to his stud career, has been on a different trajectory to every other horse, apart from his own son Frankel

Initially, Galileo so very nearly went through his racing career unbeaten and then transcended his class to the breeding shed, a rare feat in itself.

His first Classic winner arrived in his first crop of three-year-olds – his daughter Nightime winning the

Irish 1,000 Guineas in 2006. Further Group 1-winning three-year-olds also arrived that year – Sixties Icon was a Classic winner of the St Leger, and Red Rocks took the Breeders’ Cup Turf.

Through his career Galileo has (so far) produced 22 Group 1-winning two-year-olds, but the first was Teofilo when he won the 2006 renewals of the Group 1 National Stakes and Dewhurst Stakes. He retired unbeaten as a juvenile, but unable to run as a three-year-old due to injury.

Two years’ later, as just a ten-year-old stallion, Galileo got his first Derby winner courtesy of New Approach, whose Epsom win was one of the colt’s three Group 1 victories in 2008. New Approach was also placed three-times at the highest level.

The four further Epsom Derby winners by Galileo means the sire is now the winning-most sire of Epsom’s Blue Riband event.

Galileo’s own sire Sadler’s Wells produced a career total of 71 Group 1 progeny winners, Galileo achieved that target by the age of 20.

He then went on to beat Danehill’s career Group 1 record of 84 Group 1 winners in 2019 with Magic Wand’s victory in the Mackinnon Stakes. By then Galileo had been at stud for just 17 years.

The mighty stallion has been a conveyor belt producer of top-class horses, a maker of class horses in numbers just not seen before

What will his legacy be?

With those numerous sons and daughters at stud, and assuming we are still racing and breeding thoroughbred horses in 300 years’ time, he will be discussed by the breeding experts of that era regarding the extraordinary infl uence he has had on the breed in the 21st century in much the same way that today’s breeding experts still write about and discuss the likes of St. Simon and Eclipse and Northern Dancer.

If there are such things as magazines in the future, perhaps there will be in the series much like the one that we kicked off in the last issue on the predominance of stallions and how they became as such. Galileo and his sire Sadler’s Wells will be the pivotal names that bloodstock historians will remind readers changed the course of European bloodstock industry.

Galileo was a racehorse and stallion for whom all the stars aligned – he was the best bred horse of his and of several generations, he was out of a mare who has created her own extraordinary maternal infl uence, whose legacy has been encapsulated by her son’s achievements, he was trained by the best trainer of the era and was on the stallion roster of the largest global, and possibly most ambitious and most commercially run, international stallion operation.

Galileo’s record as a sire of sires, as a sire of fillies and as a broodmare sire, will ensure that his legacy is continued on both sides of the pedigree tree.

He has had 40 Group 1-winning fi llies and he has only had 12 crops of fi llies breeding so far – he will have 19 crops in total. Even if no other super-sire son by Galileo appears amongst the younger sires already at stud, or the ones still to come, Galileo will still be in the second generation of many leading racehorses right through until the 2050s

With those levels of quality at the top of the Galileo pyramid of ability, as well as with such numbers of incredibly well-bred fi llies and colts through his ranks, Galileo’s continuing immortality and infl uence on the breed will undoubtedly be lengthy.

Next year’s crop will reach their three-year-old year in 2025. It means that his youngest colts and fi llies will then have approximately 15 to 20 years of breeding ahead of them, still active towards the 2050s.

The stars are now realigning to his 13-year-old son Frankel, who has six crops of racing age.

He has had another breakout year in 2021 getting his fi rst two Derby winners and he will surely be the “go to” middle-distance stallion for Europe’s leading mares – at least those who are not a paternal sibling.

Frankel, all being well and if he continues his current trajectory, should be covering leading mares for around another 10 years through to 2031. Frankel’s own off spring, grand-daughters and grand-sons of Galileo, could be running and then breeding for another 20 or so years on top of that.

Even if no other super-sire son by Galileo appears amongst the younger sires already at stud, or the ones still to come, Galileo could still be in the second generation of many leading racehorses for some time, and he will see many of us out.

Of course, the ever-changing world of sport, bloodstock and business means that while we mourn the loss of one, opportunities will open for another.

There will be a son of Galileo, who won’t be priced as highly as Frankel (who it is assumed will be given a price increase for next spring) and for whom breeders might start to view as a more aff ordable option, the son of the king and who might just start to click with his mares.

The beauty of the breeding industry is that we just don’t know which one it could or will be... if indeed there will be one at all.

And with this year’s arrival of the talented St Mark’s Basilica maybe those leading mares might be diverted his way, depending on the career profi le he creates.

He is out of a Galileo mare himself so he can’t be one for all those Coolmore Galileo fi lies, some of that starlight has already shone Wootton Bassett’s way.

And looking away from the Coolmore barn, the Aga Khan Studs’ Siyouni is surely going to have his chance to rise and shine?

The son of Pivotal is already carving out a good relationship with Galileo fi llies, Group 1 winners Sottsass and St Mark’s Basilica showing this could be a new path for breeders to trace to Group 1 glory.

If I had a good-looking yearling colt by Siyouni with something of a stallion’s pedigree and out of a nonGalileo mare, I might just be giving Coolmore a call to see if they might like to come and take a look.