By John Berry
The recent football World Cup featured a few surprises, with several high-profile teams losing out to supposed lesser lights. That situation is not a mirror of what happened in the General Sires' Table of Great Britain and Ireland in 2022, when the established stars held their position so well that the first five in the 2021 table are the first five in the 2022 table, albeit in a different order. The most notable change in the order is one which many observers will applaud: Dubawi (Ire) has gained his deserved reward for years of consistent excellence by finally claiming the crown after many honourable near misses.
Dubawi's consistency as a stallion has been remarkable. An unbeaten Group 1 winner as a two-year-old in 2004 before taking the G1 Irish 2,000 Guineas and G1 Prix Jacques le Marois the following year, he retired in 2006 to Dalham Hall Stud, where he has spent his entire career bar one season, 2008, when he stood at Kildangan.
One could say that there was guarded optimism about Dubawi's prospects at the outset, witness his first-season fee of £25,000, which at the time was a fair sum, but no more extravagant than that, for a horse with his form. It turned out that there was even less optimism that that figure implies because his fee had dropped to £15,000 by the time that he started to have runners in the spring of 2009. It was easy to see why opinions might have been divided. Dubawi was the star of the one and only crop of the fabulous Dubai Millennium (GB) who had covered for a fee of £100,000 in his only season (2001) but, while Dubai Millennium had been large, magnificent and very imposing horse, the diminutive Dubawi didn't look much like his dad at all.
It didn't take long for Dubawi to demonstrate that a great book doesn't have to have an eye-catching cover. He had a very good year with his first three-year-olds in 2010, most notably thanks to Makfi (GB) winning both the G1 2,000 Guineas and the G1 Prix Jacques le Marois. In the former race Makfi became the first of the three winners (so far) of the first Classic of the British year sired by Dubawi; in the latter he inflicted a rare defeat on the mighty Goldikova (Ire). At the end of the season, Dubawi, despite only having two crops to represent him, stood in a very creditable eighth place in the General Sires' Table. He has never looked back, and from 2013 onwards he has never finished out of the first five. In the ten seasons 2013 to '22 inclusive, his 'form figures' read 3422325231. Under the circumstances, the title of 'Champion Sire' is richly deserved by Dubawi, to be savoured by his connections and his many admirers all the more for how many times he has come close.
It didn't take long for Dubawi to demonstrate that a great book
doesn't have to have an eye-catching cover
As one would expect, Dubawi's fee has been a reflection of his success. In 2011 he covered at £55,000 before his fee rose to £75,000 the following year. By 2014 it was in six figures. It crossed the £200,000 mark in 2016, hit £250,000 in 2017 and, on the back of his first sires' championship, will be £350,000 in 2023. He will be full at that price, although in fairness one should point out that it is likely that only a relatively small number of nominations will be bought because so many are retained for use on the Darley/Godolphin broodmare band.
Until 2021, in all the seasons in which Dubawi was what one might term a 'minor place-getter' in the sires' championship the crown was held by Galileo (Ire). To date, Galileo (who died in July 2021 at the age of 23) has been champion sire 12 times, which means that he is currently one short of the total of titles achieved by his father Sadler's Wells. There is still time for him to equal, or even surpass, that total, but doing so will clearly be far easier said than done.
It was just a coincidence that Galileo's reign as champion sire ended in the year of his death because, obviously, a stallion's representation on the track does not start to drop off as soon as he dies, but a handful of years later. However, in Galileo's case a different obstacle had started to appear in the sense that he had become what one would could call a victim of his own success. So dominant had Galileo been for so long that a significant portion of the best mares in Europe were his daughters (and, in particular, such mares are numerous in the Coolmore band). Consequently he had ceased to be an option for a high percentage of the best mares, hence Coolmore having to look elsewhere and the 'Deep Impact over a Galileo mare' having become so conspicuously successful. In 2020 Galileo became champion broodmare sire of Great Britain and Ireland for the first time (making him the first horse in history to be champion sire and champion broodmare sire in the same season) and he has retained that title in both 2021 and '22.
When Galileo lost his champion sire's crown in 2021, he ceded it to his best son, Frankel (GB). Eight horses had finished runner-up behind Galileo during his 12 championships. Dubawi was the most successful of them with four second-place finishes, while Montjeu (Ire) was the only other stallion to occupy that position more than once. The other six stallions to finish second to Galileo were Danehill Dancer (Ire), Dansili (GB), Teofilo (Ire), Invincible Spirit (Ire), Dark Angel (Ire) and Sea The Stars (Ire). Ironically, Frankel was not one of those runners-up, but even so he had already been consistently successful in the small number of seasons since he had first appeared on the table. Frankel retired to stud in 2013 and entered the upper tiers of the general sires' table merely four years later (2017) when his oldest offspring were aged only three. He finished fourth that year, and from then to his first championship season (2021) he recorded form figures of 43401. When Frankel deposed Galileo in that 2021 season, the latter dropped merely one place to second. Both horses have enjoyed a good year again in 2022, finishing second and fourth in the sires' table respectively.
Frankel retired to stud in 2013 and entered the upper tiers of the general sires' table merely four years later when his oldest offspring were aged only three
This table obviously only includes performances in Great Britain and Ireland. Additionally, both stallions have had considerable further success overseas. Galileo's most notable international success of 2022 came when Oaks heroine Tuesday (Ire) supplemented her Classic triumph by taking the G1 Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf. Frankel was the sire of the Irish Classic winners Homeless Songs (Ire) and Westover (GB), not to mention the outstanding juvenile Chaldean (GB), but his tally of overseas victories is even more impressive. Seven of the 13 Group/Grade 1 victories for his offspring in 2022 came outside the British Isles, headed by the victory of Alpinista (GB) in the G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and also including the triumph of Nashwa (GB) in the G1 Prix de Diane. These two wins have helped to ensure that Frankel ends the year as Champion Sire of France by a margin of over €2 million over second-placed Siyouni (Fr), who thus takes the title of leading French-based sire of the year.
Dubawi, of course, also enjoyed significant international success again in 2022. The highlight of his spring came when he was responsible (with three different colts) for the winners of the G1 2,000 Guineas and its equivalent in both Ireland and France. In the autumn, he couldn't quite match his previous record (achieved in 2021) of three Breeders' Cup winners but still had two, courtesy of that Poule d'Essai des Poulains hero Modern Games (Ire) in the GI Breeders' Cup Mile and Rebel's Romance (Ire) in the GI Breeders' Cup Turf. The latter had already scored twice in Group 1 company in Germany earlier in the season.
Aside from Dubawi, Frankel and Galileo, the other two horses to feature in the top five on the sires' table are Sea The Stars (third) and Dark Angel (fifth). These two are also proven to be thoroughly dependable, with the strengths of each clearly defined. Sea The Stars has put himself firmly in line to take up the mantle of his half-brother Galileo as the most reliable source of high-class stamina in Europe; while Dark Angel has proved himself a master at siring tough, fast horses who can come to hand quickly and also continue to progress over a number of seasons. Each is firmly established in the elite tier of European sires: not only did each finish second to Galileo in one of his championship seasons (in 2019 and 2017 respectively) but they (like Dubawi, Frankel and Galileo) are both part of the same quintet which has now dominated the table for two years running.
There must be a strong chance that Dubawi and Frankel will again 'fill the quinella' in the 2023 sires' table, not least because many onlookers regard Frankel's son Chaldean as Europe's most impressive two-year-old of 2022. Furthermore, one can expand that observation to say that if the past is a good guide to the future, all five of the principals from the standings of both 2021 and '22 are likely to enjoy yet another good season in the year ahead. All have reached the stage of seeming to be part of the furniture of the top tier of the leader-board, which makes the sixth-place finish of Dubawi's young Ballylinch-based son New Bay (GB) all the more creditable.
Winner of the 2015 G1 Prix du Jockey-Club, New Bay retired to stud in 2017 so he has reached this eminent position with his eldest offspring still aged only four. In an era in which the established stallions dominate the standings, it is encouraging to see so young a sire so prominent, particularly as his winners-to-runners ratio (49%) is second only to the figure recorded by his father Dubawi (51%). New Bay's excellent season, highlighted by the Group 1 double on QIPCO Champions Day at Ascot of his first-crop son Bay Bridge (GB) and his second-crop son Bayside Boy (Ire), marks him firmly down as potentially a leading sire of the seasons ahead.
The same comment could also apply to the only other 'third-season sire' in the top 20: Mehmas (Ire). His finishing position (19th) is particularly creditable because, notwithstanding that he won two Group 2 races and was placed in two Group 1s in 2016, he didn't have the chance to put together a full racecourse CV because of his retirement after only one season in training. That meant that that Mehmas wasn't necessarily everyone's tip for the top at the outset, as is shown by the fact that he was covering for as little as €7,500 as recently as 2020. (The extent of the blossoming of his reputation is shown by the fact that he will cover for €60,000 in 2023).
The most successful 'second-crop sire' in Great Britain and Ireland in 2022 has been Churchill (Ire), who finishes the year in 23rd position and whose potential was splendidly advertised during the season by the Cartier Champion Three-Year-Old Colt of Europe, Vadeni (Fr). The latter's victory in the G1 Eclipse S. at Sandown helped Churchill to be the best of this bunch of young stallions, while the Aga Khan homebred's G1 Prix du Jockey-Club triumph enabled Churchill to finish as high as fourth in the sires' table in France. Leading first-crop sire (by a wide margin) was Havana Grey (GB) who was represented by 36 individual winners of 56 races within Great Britain and Ireland. Collectively, his two-year-olds earned in excess of £1,000,000, a magnificent achievement which sees him finishing in a very creditable 39th place in the General Sires' Table.
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