2023 sires' championship: Frankel to regain his title
John Ingles looks at the year's leading Flat sires in Britain and Ireland, with Siyouni and Justify making their mark too.
After a long period of domination by Coolmore, thanks mainly to Sadler’s Wells and then his son Galileo, the balance of power in the British and Irish sires’ championship has switched from County Tipperary to Newmarket in recent seasons. It’s there that Juddmonte’s Frankel and Darley’s Dubawi have been engaged in a tug-of-war for the title for the last three years.
Frankel succeeded his sire when Galileo’s reign finally ended in 2021. Dubawi, who’d been runner-up to Galileo in the championship several times, gained his long-awaited first title ahead of Frankel last year, but now Frankel is all set to regain his crown at the end of the year.
Another interesting aspect of this rivalry is reflected by their mounting stud fees. After winning his first championship, Frankel’s fee rose to £200,000 for the 2022 season and when that was increased to £275,000 for this year, it looked a deliberate challenge to Dubawi’s long-held status as Britain’s most expensive stallion as he’d been standing for £250,000 for a number of years. In turn, though, Darley upped the ante, hiking Dubawi’s fee to a record £350,000 for 2023 but, not to be outdone, after Juddmonte announced their 2024 fees earlier this week, Frankel too will be standing for £350,000 next spring.
With almost £7m in prize money won in Britain and Ireland, Frankel wins his second championship by a clear margin. Westover (rated 131) was Frankel’s top horse of the year on Timeform ratings, and while he was runner-up in the Coronation Cup and King George on his two starts in Britain, he won more prize money abroad thanks to his win in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and two more second placings in the hugely valuable Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and Dubai Sheema Classic.
More successful domestically for Frankel was Mostahdaf, winner of the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and, appropriately, the Juddmonte International for John and Thady Gosden. Their stable also housed three Group 1-winning daughters of Frankel, namely Oaks winner Soul Sister, Falmouth Stakes winner Nashwa (who completed a one-two for her sire, as well as her stable, in the Juddmonte International) and Sun Chariot Stakes winner Inspiral whose other wins came abroad in the Prix Jacques le Marois, for the second year running, and the Filly & Mare Turf where she became Frankel’s first Breeders’ Cup winner.
Soul Sister was Frankel’s second classic winner of the year after 2000 Guineas winner Chaldean (now retired to stand alongside his sire at Banstead Manor), while, besides Mostahdaf, there were two other new Group 1 winners for Frankel at Royal Ascot where Triple Time won the Queen Anne Stakes and Courage Mon Ami, for the Gosdens again, won the Gold Cup. Another significant winner for Frankel was two-year-old filly Ylang Ylang who became a first Group 1 winner by her sire for Coolmore and Aidan O’Brien when successful in the Fillies’ Mile.
It’s interesting that the fortunes of Frankel and the Gosden stable were so interdependent in the latest season, resulting in the trainers’ championship going to Clarehaven. As the flagship sire for Godolphin, on the other hand, Dubawi’s success has largely gone hand in hand with that of Charlie Appleby and, again, it was no coincidence that a relatively quiet season by the latter’s standards coincided with Dubawi losing his title too. In fact, Dubawi has a fight on his hands for the runner-up spot in these closing months of the year.
For whatever reason, Dubawi didn’t have the same firepower to call on as he did the year before. In his championship season he had 99 individual winners in Britain and Ireland from 193 different runners, but so far in 2023 he has had only the 76 winners from the 170 horses who have run for him.
But it bodes well for next season that Dubawi can boast a couple of Group 1-winning two-year-old colts, with Ancient Wisdom winning the Futurity Trophy for Appleby and Godolphin and Henry Longfellow winning the National Stakes (which Dubawi won himself) for Ballydoyle, which would have been hard to imagine not so long ago when Dubawi would have been off-limits to Coolmore.
Dubawi’s other domestic Group 1 successes came from Modern Games in the Lockinge Stakes and Eldar Eldarov in the Irish St Leger. Modern Games was retired after his next start in the Queen Anne Stakes, and while Master of The Seas took up the baton as Godolphin’s top miler and was Dubawi’s highest-rated horse in Europe (rated 125), his biggest wins of the year came across the Atlantic, notably when emulating Modern Games to become Dubawi’s third consecutive winner of the Breeders’ Cup Mile. Lord North was another of Dubawi’s best horses to gain his biggest success overseas, winning the Dubai Turf for the third year running.
At the time of writing Dark Angel is just ahead of Dubawi in the battle for second place behind Frankel and he may well consolidate that position given he seems sure to be well represented on the all-weather for the remainder of the year. Dark Angel’s previous best placing was third in 2020 and, along with another member of the top ten, Kodiac (currently ninth), he owes his prominent position in the table mainly to weight of numbers. That said, both Khaadem and Art Power (at 122 his highest-rated horse of the year) supplied him with Group 1 sprint successes at Ascot, both at long odds.
Galileo, the only deceased stallion in the top ten, and his half-brother Sea The Stars round out the top five in the table, with Galileo now on the verge of siring a hundred individual Group/Grade 1 winners worldwide after Warm Heart, later also successful in the Prix Vermeille, became his 99th such winner after taking the Yorkshire Oaks.
The only new name in the top ten compared to last year is Siyouni who joins in sixth place which is some achievement for the Aga Khan’s French-based sire who had fewer runners in Britain and Ireland than any of the other top ten sires. But he made up for relative lack of numbers with the Irish Guineas winners Paddington and Tahiyra whose campaigns netted each of them more than a million pounds in prize money, with the 128-rated Paddington going on to win the St James’s Palace Stakes, Eclipse and Sussex Stakes. Like his own sire Pivotal, Siyouni has made huge strides through the stallion ranks, starting out at a fee of just €7,000 but standing for a new high of €200,000 next year.
Kingman, Lope de Vega, Kodiac and No Nay Never complete the top ten by prize money much as they did last year. No Nay Never, incidentally, was the leading sire of two-year-olds by prize money for the second year running, his highest-rated youngster being Ballydoyle’s Mountain Bear (110) who ended the year finishing second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.
Knocking on the door of the top ten were Wootton Bassett and Dubawi’s son Night of Thunder who seem sure to figure more prominently in seasons to come. Wootton Bassett is going from strength to strength, and for his fourth season at Coolmore will be standing for €200,000 after a year when he had Champion Stakes winner and Derby runner-up King of Steel to represent him along with smart two-year-olds Bucanero Fuerte, Unquestionable (who beat Mountain Bear at the Breeders’ Cup) and River Tiber.
Heading the first-season sire list was Blue Point who is runner-up to No Nay Never in the two-year-old table. He was helped by having a lot more runners, and therefore winners, than his fellow first-season sires but there was quality among his first crop too which included the likes of Big Evs and Rosallion whose biggest successes came abroad in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint and Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere respectively. Too Darn Hot was the other first-season sire to stand out from the rest, with the pick of his runners being Moyglare Stud Stakes winner Fallen Angel and Dewhurst Stakes runner-up Alyanaabi.
Talking of the Dewhurst, there is another sire who deserves a mention even if he didn’t have enough runners in Britain and Ireland to make much of an impact in the tables. It was a breakthrough year for 2018 US Triple Crown winner Justify, based at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Kentucky, who had just his second crop of two-year-olds in 2023. They included City of Troy whose impressive Dewhurst victory capped an unbeaten campaign for Ballydoyle which made him the season’s top two-year-old.
Elsewhere, stablemate Opera Singer won the Prix Marcel Boussac and two more of his daughters, Just F Y I and Hard To Justify, won the two juvenile fillies’ races at the Breeders’ Cup, proving their sire to be a force on both dirt and turf. Little wonder, then, that Justify’s fee has been doubled to $200,000 for next year.
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