The end of season is a great time to look back and assess what has happened in terms of sire results and what may happen in the future and more importantly what all of that might mean for Australian racing.
Breednet like to compile a set of distance sire tables that overlap at various distance points to offer insight into the stallions whose progeny perform best at varying distances so let’s take a look at them.
Zoustar is our overall champion sire for 2024/2025 and tops the 1200m or less division ahead of our past champion sires I Am Invincible, Written Tycoon and Snitzel.
Zoustar was also on top in the 1200 to 1600m division beating out Snitzel and I Am Invincible, but he had only one stakes-winner at 1600m and it was the Listed winner Regal Zeus.
The switch up from 1600 to 2000m is where we see the big change with past champion Australian sire Fastnet Rock sitting on top of the leaderboard thanks to his champion daughter Via Sistina (IRE) and another Group I winner in Buckaroo (IRE), both of them bred in the Northern Hemisphere from his years of shuttling to Coolmore Ireland.
Also highlighted is the considerable loss of Cambridge Stud’s Tavistock (sire of outstanding WFA horse Ceolwulf), who looked set to leave a great legacy before his premature death in 2019 at age 14.
The long distance table is again topped by Fastnet Rock thanks to the mighty Via Sistina, who won four G1 races at 2000m and the Cox Plate at 2040m with many people, including me, believing she would also have won the Melbourne Cup had she been given the opportunity.
What is interesting in this list is the appearance of Pride of Dubai, who is the only stallion to appear in the Top 10 of all four distance divisions highlighting his genuine versatility. He was a dual G1 winner at two by Street Cry from an elite Euro female family that is also responsible for I Am Invincible's sire Invincible Spirit.
He had the Everest winner in Bella Nipotina as well as Group I winners Deny Knowledge (IRE) and Dubai Honour (IRE) both conceived from his shuttling years to Coolmore Ireland.
The bulk of prizemoney on Australian races is offered on short course events with the $20million The Everest (1200m) and $10million Golden Eagle (1500m) our richest races, but further down the food chain the majority of races on any country / provincial program anywhere in the country are usually 1400m or less.
As a result of this evolution, sires geared towards strictly sprinting have enjoyed a remarkable rise and now for the past nine seasons our Champion Australian Sire has been a stallion that cannot get a classic horse (Derby /Oaks/Cups).
Here I digress, as someone is bound to be thinking, ‘but Snitzel got a Cox Plate winner’ (Shamus Award)… Yes he did, but one swallow does not make a summer!
Past Champion Australian Sires
2025 Zoustar
2024 I Am Invincible
2023 I Am Invincible
2022 I Am Invincible
2021 Written Tycoon
2020 Snitzel
2019 Snitzel
2018 Snitzel
2017 Snitzel
Australian sprinters are great, we all love them, but our champion stallions of the past, by and large, had a lot more to offer and they now populate the Broodmare Sires List.
Fastnet Rock not only had the best racehorse in the country last season in Via Sistina, he was also the Champion Broodmare Sire by earnings and tied for winners with his archrival Redoute’s Choice.
Fastnet Rock and Redoute's Choice are the very best sons of Danehill, who was Champion Australian Sire on an astonishing nine occasions between 1995 and 2005 with his freakish run only broken twice in that period and that was by Zabeel.
Champion sires invariably migrate across to the broodmare sire list over time and of the Top 10 broodmares sires for 2024/2025, seven have previously been Champion Australia Sire – Fastnet Rock, Redoute’s Choice, Snitzel, Encosta de Lago, Street Cry (IRE), Exceed and Excel and Lonhro all taking the title this century.
These sires form the mainstay of the commercial Australian thoroughbred and when you pick up any yearling catalogue these are the names that jump out at you in the first three generations of pedigree.
If we extrapolate that thinking forward in time we can expect to see Zoustar, I Am Invincible, Snitzel and Written Tycoon gradually taking their place and we are already seeing it now.
They are great stallions and I’m not looking to lessen their achievements or legacy in any way, but they all have the same shortcoming and it is inability to sire elite horses that can run past a mile.
Is it any wonder Australian owners have to look outside Australia to source the sort of horses that can win Classics, WFA features and Cups.
Speed on speed on speed on speed will only take you so far and Australian trainers and racehorse owners have found that out.
