What the Timeform ratings say about this year's first-season sires
John Ingles uses Timeform ratings to assess the performances of this year's leading first-season sires.
With only a couple more months of the turf season to run and the autumn’s Group 1 contests for two-year-olds fast approaching, now is a good time to assess the state of play among sires who are represented by their first crop of two-year-olds this year.
The race to be leading first-season sire in Britain and Ireland last season was already pretty much sewn up by this time last year, with Mehmas already well on the way to claiming the title while breaking the European record for the most number of individual first-crop winners along the way. This year’s contest, on the other hand, has a much more open look. Following racing on Saturday afternoon, less than £14,000 separates the top two in the British and Irish earnings table, Galileo Gold and Profitable. It’s also tight between the leaders by number of individual winners. Cotai Glory, fourth by prize money, leads the way here with 20 winners (of 28 races) ahead of Profitable and Ardad (fifth by prize money), both on 16.
Prize money is the usual measure for assessing stallion performance and determines the first-season sires’ title, though its drawbacks are well documented. Very valuable contests, such as sales races, can skew the figures, while crop sizes can vary enormously between stallions meaning that weight of numbers can make quantity as much a factor as quality. There is a lot to be said, therefore, for an assessment of stallions based purely on performance of their offspring which makes for a more level playing field. Timeform ratings enable such comparisons to be made.
The sires listed below are currently the leading nine first-season sires by prize money (and by number of winners/wins as it happens) but we’ve ordered them instead by the average Timeform rating of their offspring’s performances in Britain and Ireland.
The Coolmore pair Caravaggio and Churchill, currently third and sixth respectively in the prize-money standings, fare much better by this assessment, being comfortably clear of the next six sires who fall within the 57-62 range, with Aclaim bringing up the rear. It is probably no coincidence that Caravaggio and Churchill also stood for the highest stud fees (both at €35,000) of these sires when their first two-year-olds were conceived in 2018 so these ratings partly reflect that they covered better-quality mares on the whole. But that makes Cotai Glory’s third place in this list all the more praiseworthy as his initial covering fee was just €6,000. For the moment, at least, he’s outperforming the likes of Ribchester (€30,000), though Cotai Glory, a five-furlong specialist who won the Molecomb at two, was always likely to make a fast start with his two-year-olds, more so than Ribchester who was no mean two-year-old himself, winning the Mill Reef Stakes, but who matured into a high-class miler at three and four.
Comparing first-season sires among themselves is all well and good but it would be more informative to know how the new boys are shaping up in the wider context of all sires of two-year-olds. That’s something else that Timeform ratings can tell us. For sires with two-year-olds who have run a total of at least 60 races this season, the mean average rating is 60, so most of the first-season sires in the above list are around that mark. In the wider scheme of things, though, it should be remembered that they are up against such well-established and successful sires of two-year-olds such as Oasis Dream, Dark Angel, Acclamation and Kodiac, as well as Mehmas who is churning out the winners again with his second crop of two-year-olds.
The pair who stand out in the above list, Caravaggio and Churchill, on the other hand, have some of the best averages of all sires of two-year-olds this season. Caravaggio is second only to No Nay Never (70.5) by this measure. Caravaggio and No Nay Never (himself a former champion first-season sire, in 2018) have more in common than just standing alongside each other at Coolmore. Both are sons of Scat Daddy (as is another on the above list, American dirt performer El Kabeir) and both were Royal Ascot winners at two.
Churchill’s average of 67.4 puts him third behind his Coolmore studmates among all sires of two-year-olds this season. Churchill didn’t get off the mark in Britain or Ireland as a sire until early-June when his son The Acropolis won a maiden at Listowel, but as a son of Galileo the success of his first crop of two-year-olds was always going to be more heavily loaded towards the second half of the campaign. Dual Guineas winner Churchill is one of several first-season sire sons of Galileo this year – Ulysses, Mondialiste, Highland Reel and Decorated Knight have all had winners now too – but Churchill was always the best bet to make the biggest impact of that group with his two-year-olds given that he was a Royal Ascot-winning juvenile himself (in the Chesham Stakes) and was ranked second only to Caravaggio among Timeform’s top two-year-old colts of 2016.
Averages give an indication of the overall quality of a sire’s crop but it is also interesting to know whether a sire has one stand-out performer in an otherwise ordinary bunch or has plenty of strength in depth. Here are the same nine sires listed again, this time with the current Timeform ratings of their five best two-year-olds.
Caravaggio and Churchill each have a useful Irish-trained filly leading their respective two-year-old crops. Caravaggio’s daughter Agartha has won the Silver Flash Stakes and Debutante Stakes on her last two starts and looks the one to beat in the Moyglare Stud Stakes, while Churchill’s highest-rated two-year-old is Ladies Church, a Cheveley Park Stakes entry who has won a five-furlong Listed race at Naas.
However, there are three other first-season sires who have provided some of the leading two-year-olds of the season so far. Galileo Gold’s star performer is Phoenix Stakes winner Ebro River, while Ardad soon joined him as a Group 1 sire when Perfect Power added to his Norfolk Stakes victory in the Prix Morny. Cotai Glory has come up with a smart performer too, though gelding Atomic Force gained his two pattern wins in France, notably the Prix Robert Papin, and has now been sold to race in Hong Kong, so hasn’t made the contribution to his sire’s domestic earnings that his ability certainly merited.
As mentioned earlier, Ardad was one of the cheapest sires in the above list but so too was Cotai Glory whose first-season fee was just €6,000 and who is also responsible for the Coventry Stakes runner-up Eldrickjones, rated 100. That pair of sires deserve credit for producing top two-year-olds in their first crops conceived at bargain rates, but it’s Galileo Gold who has the most strength in depth of the first-season sires according to the above list. Besides Ebro River, he’s also represented by the useful Nick Bradley Racing-owned fillies Oscula and Hellomydarlin who have both earned black type on either side of the Channel, the former winning the Group 3 Prix Six Perfections at Deauville.
Profitable, Ribchester and El Kabeir are others who can boast a runner to have achieved a three-figure rating. Profitable was another first-season sire to strike at Royal Ascot when his daughter Quick Suzy won the Queen Mary Stakes, while El Kabeir’s main hopes going into the autumn will be resting on his progressive colt Masekela who won the Listed Denford Stakes at Newbury last time.
The other first-season sire to note is Dubawi’s high-class mile/mile and a quarter performer Time Test. Standing at the National Stud, he had a smaller first crop than most and has registered only four individual winners in Britain to date. But they include Dick Poole Fillies’ Stakes winner Romantic Time and Newbury Listed winner Tardis, while in Ireland maiden Sunset Shiraz (rated 99) was runner-up in the Debutante Stakes and German colt Rocchigiani (97p) recently gave him another Group 3 winner at Baden-Baden.
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