What Goes Around Comes Around

The bloodstock world is a fickle place that is often hard to please and while Australian speed on speed has saturated the upper echelons of the market here for a long time, change is coming and that change starts with the racetrack and the winning post.

‘Colonial speed is what works here’ – if you’ve heard that once, you’ve heard it a thousand times and it does, until you keep going around in the same circles for so long the end result is a small, squat horse with little scope, serious distance limitations and frequent issues with soundness and wind. It might be fast, but for how far and for how long?

It happened last century when the all-conquering Star Kingdom (IRE) line went as far as it could go before being swept away by an avalanche of Northern Dancer blood most notably through the legendary shuttle sire Danehill (IRE), who arrived here for the first time in 1990.

35 years on and the Australian gene pool of our elite speed mares is ripe for updating with fresh blood and the current cohort of shuttle sires are chipping away to great effect as we can see in our Australian sire tables and the likely Magic Millions 2YO Classic field.

First Season Sires (Australia as at 5/1/2025)  Sires bred in Northern Hemisphere in Bold.

Second Season Sires

Third Season Sires

The Magic Millions 2YO Classic was won last year by Storm Boy, a son of Coolmore’s Triple Crown winning sire Justify (USA) and this year the favourites are Icarian Dream, a daughter of Darley shuttler Blue Point (IRE) and Gallo Nero, a dashing colt by Wootton Bassett (GB).

Last Saturday’s $3million Magic Millions Sunlight Plate was also a triumph for the shuttle sires with the unbeaten winner Private Harry sired by Harry Angel (IRE) from a daughter of another shuttle sire in Congrats (USA).

Stallions bred in the Northern Hemisphere have also given us last year’s Champion 2YO Broadsiding (Too Darn Hot (GB) and Champion 3YO Riff Rocket (American Pharoah (USA) along with Group I MRC Blue Diamond Stakes winner Hayasugi (Royal Meeting(IRE) and Group I ATC Spring Champion Stakes winner Tom Kitten.

Magic Millions will mark the Southern Hemisphere yearling sale ring debut for several new shuttle stallions including the high profile trio of St Mark’s Basilica (Fr) (Siyouni), Pinatubo (IRE) (Shamardal) and Palace Pier (GB) (Kingman), all of them champion racehorses by champion sires.

Palace Pier only came out for the one season and it appears unlikely he will return to Darley Australia, so this crop of yearlings are very much a limited edition and his oldest Northern Hemisphere bred progeny have just turned two and will race in 2025.

Pinatubo started off at stud a year earlier in the UK so has already had two year-olds racing in the Northern Hemisphere in 2024 and his statistics are 22 winners from 52 starters (foal crop 111) with one SW Tipinso in France and four more stakes-placed horses.

St Mark’s Basilica will have his first Northern Hemisphere runners in 2025 and had 20 yearlings sell in 2024 at Tattersalls, Arqana and Goffs for 200,000 or more euros/guineas so was obviously well received. He also achieved something special at the Arqana sale when his blueblood filly from blue hen Prudenzia topped the sale at 1.7million euros.

As a comparison, Palace Pier had five yearlings sell for 200,000 or more euros/guineas at those sales and the second crop of Pinatubo offered in 2024 produced five youngsters to sell for 200,000 or more euros/ guineas.

To get an insight into these sires and the types they are throwing in Australia do check out our first season sire gallery for quick comparison of type.

Click here for St Mark’s Basilica.

Click here for Pinatubo.

Click here for Palace Pier.