18/07/13
As I advised in an article several weeks ago, the race that’s now called the Magic Millions was originally known as the “Magic Million”. The “s” got added to the end of Million at some point along the way.
The first “Magic Million” race was advertised in national publications as being “a race for two-year-old colts, geldings and fillies at set weights to be staged at the Gold Coast Turf Club, Surfers Paradise, in January or February, 1987”.
The yearling sale that these 2YO’s would emanate from was conducted at the Gold Coast in 1985 and I recently came across a terrific historical article on the inaugural “Magic Million Yearling Sale” and I’ll reproduce that article in the coming weeks with lots of photographs to complement it.
In amongst the plentiful text on that story was a terrific reference source to statistical information on some of Australasia’s best known stallions, whose progeny were for sale at this inaugural Magic Million Yearling Sale.
I have often been highly critical on this website of thoroughbred sales companies like Magic Millions and Inglis for selectively leaving poorly performing stallions statistical information out of yearling sales catalogues. Thankfully since Vin Cox was installed as Managing Director at Magic Millions he rectified the problem with that entity, in respect of statistical information going missing on certain studs/stallions pages.
Way back in February of 1986 they had no problem advising potential buyers the statistics of a plethora of stallions that had progeny in the inaugural Magic Million Yearling Sale. Below are the advised statistics pertaining to 37 of those stallions. The 34 stallions that to the time of publication had been represented by 100 individual starters or more are all named below, whilst the other three stallions named at the end of this list, were new kids on the block. In the table below W-T-R% stands for winners-to-runners ratio, whilst S/W-T-R% stands for stakeswinners-to-runners ratio.
STALLION
CROPS
NO INDIV RUNNERS
W-T-R%
S/W-T-R%
BISCAY
14
306
76.14%
8.16%
MANIHI
14
252
72.22%
3.57%
VAIN
13
326
78.53%
10.94%
KAORU STAR
13
410
70.00%
5.36%
ZAMAZAAN
13
282
71.99%
13.12%
ROYAL ROCKET
12
264
60.66%
3.78%
WITHOUT FEAR
11
329
76.29%
10.94%
GRAND CHAUDIERE
11
314
76.75%
1.59%
TATTENHAM
11
334
69.76%
0.89%
CINDY’S SON
11
258
63.95%
1.16%
OSMUNDA
10
221
65.16%
3.62%
CENTURY
10
236
69.49%
7.20%
LUNCHTIME
9
224
72.32%
4.46%
CLAUDIUS
9
220
77.27%
1.81%
STEEL PULSE
9
199
65.33%
3.52%
NAMNAN
9
144
67.36%
4.86%
BLETCHINGLY
8
155
74.84%
9.03%
JOHN’S HOPE
8
188
77.90%
2.66%
AVON VALLEY
8
101
70.30%
8.91%
SIR TRISTRAM
7
218
59.63%
10.41%
HALICAS
7
186
62.37%
0.53%
CERRETO
7
152
53.95%
1.97%
HAULPAK
7
101
62.37%
5.94%
WHISKEY ROAD
6
135
65.19%
2.96%
CALL REPORT
6
131
61.07%
4.58%
PLUSH
6
116
62.93%
2.59%
LORD DUDLEY
6
104
47.04%
5.76%
HUNKA PAPA
6
119
36.13%
0.84%
HEAD OVER HEADS
6
199
63.32%
0.50%
COMERAN
6
131
53.43%
6.10%
TWIG MOSS
5
129
53.49%
8.53%
LUSKIN STAR
5
122
60.66%
7.37%
BLAZING SADDLES
5
118
62.71%
1.69%
COPPER KINGDOM
5
120
64.17%
0.83%
VICE REGAL*
4
66
72.72%
13.63%
STAR WAY*
2
13
53.85%
30.76%
IMPOSING*
3
28
71.42%
14.29%
* had less than 100 individual starters at this time.
So these historical statistical results give today’s readers a wonderful insight into what stallions were “successful” back then – and which ones weren’t. I regard a “successful” stallion as being able to achieve 1) a minimum of 60% winners-to-runners and 2) a minimum of 5% stakeswinners-to-runners and all the stallions that were achieving those figures are highlighted above.
Other interesting points to note are how few mares the stallions of that era served in a breeding season as opposed to the stallions of the modern era. For instance a champion stallion like Vain was represented by only 326 individual runners after 13 crops. Official Stud Book records show us that nowadays a stallion like Fastnet Rock has served as many as 273 in a single season (2009) whilst Black Caviar’s sire, Bel Esprit served 266 mares in 2007. Both should have woken up about half way through the next calendar year.
The other thing that these statistics show is something that I’ve been writing for years – and that is in 99% of cases, a stallion will be “successful” right from the start of his career, in terms of both winners-to-runners and stakeswinners-to-runners. To that end, check out the wonderful statistics achieved by both Vice Regal and Imposing above (at the bottom of the table). And Star Way had an amazing 30.76% stakeswinners-to-runners after just two crops. In the modern era, Lonhro started off way behind the eight ball, particularly in the winners-to-runners department, but given the passage of time he finished up becoming a “successful stallion”. About eight months into the 2007/2008 racing season, when Lonhro’s oldest progeny were 2YO’s, he’d had 16 individual runners and only two of those 16 (source Stallions 2008) had won a race (Segolene at Kembla Grange and Black Minx at Eagle Farm), which gave him a disgraceful 12.50% winners-to-runners ratio, but interestingly one of those two individual winners, Black Minx, had won the Listed McDougall Stakes in that Eagle Farm win, so Lonhro was running at 6.25% stakeswinners-to-runners eight months into his first crop racing – even though he only had two winners from 16 individual runners. Nowadays he runs at about 69% winners-to-runners and 7.75% stakeswinners-to-runners.
An interesting point from the aforesaid statistics is that champion stallion Sir Tristram (59.63%) was falling marginally short of 60% winners-to-runners after seven crops, but he later rectified that.
The figures above far outstrip the details that one can obtain from the official thoroughbred breeding registrar in this country – the Stud Book – as they didn’t start properly recording fertility statistics of stallions until around 1983/1984