In a bid to put what follows into perspective, the world-famous Galileo–Danehill nick is currently credited with an impressive 17% black-type winners, with 76% starters and 56% winners. And Galileo's flourishing partnership with Danehill Dancer mares is challenging the status quo, with 16% black-type winners. But even these celebrated nicks are currently being overshadowed by [...]

Resumes don't come much more impressive than the one compiled by Khalid Abdullah's Juddmonte Farms since Known Fact gave the Prince his first Classic success, in the 1980 G1 2000 Guineas. There have been three more wins of the 2000 Guineas, thanks to Dancing Brave, Zafonic and the mighty Frankel, and the famous green, pink [...]

If nothing else, last week's action-packed program of Group and Graded races provided ample validation for the fees charged for some of America and Europe's high-priced stallions. In Europe, England's highest-priced stallions in 2016 were Dubawi at £225,000 and Frankel at £125,000. Dubawi's chances of winning the Arc were strengthened by two of his most [...]

Wonderful though it is to have a stallion of Galileo's extraordinary achievements, his near-total dominance has prevented several other worthy stallions from adding those magic words “champion sire” to their CVs. Galileo currently seems assured of recording his eighth Anglo-Irish championship in the last nine years, the only blip coming in 2009, when Danehill Dancer [...]

Six million, two hundred and eighteen thousand and a hundred and sixty dollars sounds like an awful lot of money to pay for a 20% share in an 11-year-old horse. However, Hill 'n' Dale did exactly that in May last year and the North Yarnalton Pike farm surely can't have had a single regret in [...]

Prince Khalid Abdullah has achieved a huge amount as a breeder, including an unusual double which would probably have escaped the attention of anyone who doesn't work for Juddmonte. Having become the first person to breed a stakes winner by Galileo, when Innocent Air won the 2005 Washington Singer S., the Prince has now become [...]

No owner-breeder can be totally happy when a mare or filly culled from their broodmare band goes on to shine for her new owner. The practicalities, though, are that quite a few fillies and mares have to be sold simply to keep an operation's numbers manageable–especially so if the breeder is keen to keep adding [...]

At the risk of being accused of an acute lack of imagination, I'm afraid the topic once again has to be the extraordinary Galileo. How could it be anything else, when the Coolmore champion was responsible for four group/graded winners in the space of three days last week, including top-level winners on both sides of [...]

Tapit's legions of fans in the U.S. may be surprised that this remarkable stallion, who appears to be well on his way towards a third consecutive sires' championship, is still awaiting his first black-type winner in Europe. This omission, I should add, owes quite a lot to the fact that Tapit hasn't had a lot [...]

Bearing in mind that Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson lost the sight in his right eye in 1794, his right arm in 1797 and was finally mortally wounded as a 47-year-old at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, he couldn't be considered the luckiest of individuals. Still, his exploits were so glorious that his name [...]

When a truly great stallion becomes so dominant that stud farms clamour to stand his sons, you would think that his broodmare daughters would find it that little bit harder to make a similar impact. Think again! Despite having endless successful stallion sons, the two-time champion sire Mr. Prospector notched up a lengthy sequence of [...]

One of Europe's largest telecom companies used to declare that “the future is Orange.” Well, judging by events at Belmont Park three days ago, the future of the Thoroughbred could well be gray (or grey if–like me, you are in Europe). As many as five of the 13 runners for the GI Belmont S. were [...]