mid-season review
She was some
Between them, this year the half-brothers Galileo and Sea The Stars are sires of seven Group 1 winners. Main picture Galileo’s son Serpentine gallops away with the Epsom Derby, seen here putting distance between himself and the field around Tattenham Corner. Inset, the amazing Stradivarius (Sea The Stars) wins his fourth Goodwood Cup
mare
Urban Sea’s extraordinary influence continues and the amazing matriarch is dam of the current leading two stallions in Europe. Aisling Crowe offers a mid-season assessment of the European sires’ table
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HERE ARE a number of interesting things to note about the current European leading sire tables at their mid-season state, headed as is customary by Coolmore Stud’s Galileo. Most strikingly the top two positions are occupied by half-brothers – Galileo is leading his younger sibling Sea The Stars. It’s the norm for the best stallions to have more than one leading sire son or for a son to join his father as is the case currently with Shamardal and Lope De Vega, but for a broodmare to produce the two best stallions in Europe is quite an astonishing achievement. Urban Sea’s position at the head of a dynasty is certainly assured and for all the
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legitimate talk of Galileo as an unparalleled shaper of the thoroughbred, the role of his dam cannot be understated. She is rightly praised for her four Group 1-winning offspring, headed by the champion Sea The Stars, but all nine of her foals to run were black-type performers, with three more of them – Melikah, All Too Beautiful and Born To Sea – placed in Classics. Her daughters, granddaughters and now great-granddaughters are producing Group 1 winners, but the achievement of producing the two stallions that currently sit atop Europe’s league table of sires is extraordinary. Through their careers between them Galileo and Sea The Stars have sired over 100 individual Group 1 winners,with the former a record breaker in that department.
This year alone they have sired the winners of the Derby, the Oaks, the English and Irish 1,000 Guineas, the Preis der Diana, the Ascot Gold Cup, the Pretty Polly Stakes, the Tattersalls Gold Cup and the Goodwood Cup, as well as the first two home in the Queen Anne Stakes. At the time of writing, Galileo has had 20 European stakes winners this season, while his younger half-brother has had ten. Between them they have also earned over £5m in prize-money so far this season, quite an achievement given the funding cuts the sport has suffered. Their strike-rates are quite similar, too, with Sea The Stars siring 32 per cent winners to runners and his elder brother achieving 29 per cent. Third this year is Siyouni and he looks
