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John Wathen-Berry
JOHN WATHEN-BERRY @JohnWathenBerry
Dubawi a deserved champion, of course
Last week this column looked at the fi nal standings in the General Sires’ Tables for 2022 in both North America and Japan.
In both of those jurisdictions the champion of 2021 retained his crown.
That wasn’t the case in Great Britain and Ireland. In fact, the new champion sire is one that had never previously won the premiership. Even so, there too the year ended with a strong sense of déjà vu.
To the satisfaction of many bloodstock enthusiasts, Dubawi ended 2022 as champion sire of Great Britain and Ireland, thus putting right the notable omission of that title from his CV, the mighty little son of Dubai Millennium having been a part of the furniture of Europe’s elite sires’ ranks for more than a decade.
While he had remained title-less, it was easy to describe him as the best sire in Europe never to have been champion sire. Now that he has taken the crown at the age of 20, we can put away the old cliché ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride’ for a horse who had four times fi nished runner-up behind his regular rival Galileo (as well as having been champion sire in France in 2015).
In the 10 seasons 2013 to 2022, Dubawi’s ‘form fi gures’ in the General Sires’ Table have been 3422325231. During Galileo’s 12 championship seasons, eight horses fi nished second to him, with Dubawi’s four secondplace fi nishes making him easily the most successful of this elite group.
Montjeu, twice runner-up to Galileo, was the only other horse to occupy that position more than once, with the other six being Danehill Dancer, Dansili, Teofi lo, Invincible Spirit, Dark Angel and Sea The Stars. Under the circumstances, nobody could begrudge Dubawi his breakthrough championship.
Thus, even with a new champion, the British and Irish sires’ championship of 2022 still has a very familiar feel. This impression is further reinforced by the fact that the fi ve horses who occupied the top fi ve positions in 2021 fi lled the same places in 2022, albeit in a diff erent order.
Galileo’s 12th championship season was 2020 before he was usurped the following year by his best son, Frankel. In 2022 Galileo dropped two more places, but he still enjoyed a very successful season in fourth place, with Frankel and Sea The Stars ahead of him in second and third respectively. The fi fth horse to feature among the principal places was the ever-reliable Dark Angel, occupying fi fth place for the second year in a row.
The most successful new arrival in the top tier was sixth-placed New Bay, a son of Dubawi who did very well considering that he only had three crops racing for him, his oldest off spring being four-year-olds in 2022. Winner of the Prix du JockeyClub in 2015, New Bay retired to Ballylinch Stud in Ireland in 2017 and is now recognised as one of the most progressive stallions in Europe.
He enjoyed a red-letter day in the autumn when responsible for a Group 1 double at Champions’ Day at Ascot, his fi rst-crop son Bay Bridge landing the Champion Stakes (currently Britain’s most valuable race) over 10 furlongs and his second-crop son Bayside Boy taking the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes over a mile. Aside from these two good horses, New Bay’s other stars of the season included the Jane Chapple-Hyam-trained fouryear-old mare Saff ron Beach, among whose several good runs were victories in the Group Two Duke of Cambridge Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Group One Prix Rothschild at Deauville.
She was subsequently sold for 3,600,000 guineas at Tattersalls’ December Sale, bought as a broodmare by Najd Stud, an international breeding operation owned by the Saudi Prince Faisal bin Khalid bin Abdulaziz.
Dubawi’s son My Oberon wins the Group 2 Crystal Mile at The Valley on Cox Plate day. REG RYAN/ RACING PHOTOS
Sensational Siyouni scores a local victory
Because the champion sire of France is so often a horse standing overseas who wins it by virtue of the disproportionately high earnings of one outstanding horse, the bloodstock community in France generally recognises two championships: champion sire of France and champion French sire, the latter title going to the leading French-based sire.
In 2022 that honour went to Siyouni, who was second in the overall championship. A quick glance at the tables of recent years makes crystal-clear the dominance of Siyouni in the ranks of French stallions.
Winner of France’s top two-year-old race, the Prix JeanLuc Lagardere, in 2009, Siyouni retired to the Aga Khan’s Haras de Bonneval as a four-year-old in 2011 (at a fee of 7,000 euros, which in retrospect looks eye-wateringly appealing as he now commands 150,000 euros). The son of Pivotal fi rst fi gured in the upper reaches of France’s sires’ table in 2015, when his oldest off spring were aged three. In the eight seasons 2015 to 2022 inclusive, his ‘form fi gures’ in the premiership were 43422112; take out stallions based outside France and his fi gures become 12111111, his sole ‘defeat’ coming in 2016 when he fi nished second to Le Havre among the French sires.
The breakthrough which saw Siyouni take the overall title for the fi rst time was in 2020 when his son Sottsass won the ‘Arc’. When he won his second title the following year, the sire of the ‘Arc’ winner ‘only’ fi nished second but that was because the race was won by the German-bred Torquator Tasso, whose sire Adlerfl ug was responsible for only 12 individual winners in France all year.
Narrow miss for the amazing Frankel
Frankel’s second place in the British and Irish table meant that he came close to achieving the double of being champion sire of both GB/Ire and France in the same season.
This double is not as rare as one might expect, largely because, while French prizemoney across the board is very good, the prize of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is so big that whichever stallion sires the ‘Arc’ winner is very often the country’s champion sire. And the ‘Arc’ is often won by a horse sired by one of the leading stallions based in the British Isles.
This year’s ‘Arc’ was, of course, won by the fi ve-year-old Frankel (pictured) mare Alpinista, trained for her breeder Kirsten Rausing by the doyen of Newmarket’s training ranks, Sir Mark Prescott.
As she had already won another of France’s biggest weight-for-age races, the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and as another of Frankel’s daughters, Nashwa, had taken the country’s premier fi llies’ Classic, the Prix de Diane, it went without saying that Frankel would take the crown. This he did by a wide margin: 37 of his sons and daughter collectively won 50 races and recorded 103 minor placings in France during 2022, with total prizemoney of 6,269,245 euros. Secondplaced Siyouni was considerably more prolifi c with 63 individual winners of 98 races, but his prize-money total was considerably less: 2,999,650 euros.
Giving a useful illustration of the situation which often pertains in France, Siyouni was the only French-based stallion to fi nish in the top fi ve in France’s General Sires’ Table for 2022. Third and fourth places were fi lled by Irish-based sires (Lope De Vega and Churchill) while fi fth place was taken by a stallion Dubawi, like Frankel based just outside Newmarket.
Churchill did particularly well as he had only two- and three-year-olds running for him. The same comment applies to Churchill’s season in Great Britain and Ireland, where he fi nished in 22nd place in the General Sires’ Table. The lion’s share of the credit for his successful season is held by one horse, his three-year-old son Vadeni. This Aga Khan home-bred is trained in France by Jean-Claude home-bred and earned plenty of money in both England and Ireland as well as in France.
In his homeland Vadeni won the Group 3 Prix de Guiche at Chantilly in the spring before taking the country’s premier three-year-old race, the Prix du Jockey-Club, and, on his fi nal start of the season, fi nishing second to Alpinista in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
In between times, Vadeni was a Group 1 winner in England in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown and fi nished third in the Irish Champion Stakes. His eff orts through the season resulted in him being given the Cartier Award for Europe’s leading Three-Year-Old Colt.
He remains in training as a fouryear-old in 2023. and it would be no surprise to see him dominating Europe’s weight-for-age ranks. during the coming season.
To illustrate the extent to which the destination of France’s sires’ premiership can be decided by the ‘Arc’, one need look no farther than to Nathaniel, sire of the mighty mare Enable who took the race in ’17 and ’18. Nathaniel, who stands 40 km from Newmarket at Newsells Park Stud, was France’s champion sire in both of those years despite scant representation in the country: in 2017 he sired 10 individual winners of 14 races in France, while the following year he was responsible for 13 individual winners of 18 winners.
Those fi gures would usually be a recipe for languishing well down the table — unless one of the races won is the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Similarly, Treve won the ‘Arc’ in both 2013 and ’14. Although Frenchbred and -trained, she had been conceived in England, where her sire Motivator stood at the Royal Stud at Sandringham.
As intimated above, taking the sires’ premiership in both GB/Ire and France in the same season is not as uncommon as one might expect. The two recent dominant sires of the British Isles (Coolmore’s great patriarch Sadler’s Wells and his similarly great son Galileo, both deceased) each did it more than once.
Sadler’s Wells was champion sire of Great Britain and Ireland a record-breaking 14 times, his fi rst championship season being in 1990 and then (after his fellow Coolmore inmate Caerleon had taken the title in 1991 largely thanks to the wins of Generous in the Derby, Irish Derby and King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes) he headed the list for 13 consecutive seasons, 1992 to 2004 inclusive. During this period he thrice headed the General Sires’ Table of France, in 1993, 1994 and 1999. In both 1994 and ’99 he was responsible for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner, courtesy of his top class sons Carnegie and Montjeu (both of whom, of course, subsequently enjoyed signifi cant success at stud in Australasia).
Galileo’s tally of sires’ championships in Great Britain and Ireland currently stands at 12, two fewer than that of his father, a total which may end up being his fi nal (posthumous) tally. He fi rst claimed the crown in 2008, ceded it to Danehill Dancer in 2009, regained it in 2010 and then reigned supreme up to and including 2020.
During this period, he was twice champion sire in France, in 2016 and 2019. He sired the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner in each of these seasons, with the Aidan O’Brientrained Found in 2016 and with the Andre Fabre-trained Waldgeist three years later.
Danehill was another stallion to head both lists in the same season, in 2007. His best runner was the four-year-old Dylan Thomas, who had fi nished an agonisingly close second in the Derby the previous year before easily taking the Irish Derby and following up in the Irish Champion Stakes. He was then dominant in Europe’s best weight-for-age races as in 2007, when he won at the highest level in France (taking the Prix Ganay and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe) and in both England (the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes) and Ireland (Irish Champion Stakes).
