There were six Group I races run in Australia last Saturday and four of them were won by new G1 winners so let’s take a look at the pedigrees which highlight some super successful nicks.
We’ll start with Via Sistina (IRE), who was already a G1 winner in Ireland and showed her class with a dominant win in the $1million ATC Ranvet Stakes (2000m), read about her here.
Champion sire Fastnet Rock is in the twilight of an amazing stud career with 193 SW’s worldwide and 43 of them are Group I winners. When he started shuttling back to Ireland for Coolmore, Fastnet Rock had the benefit of covering plenty of mares by Galileo, a nick that has proven wildly successful.
The nick has produced 107 winners from 152 runners (70% winner to runner) and 29 stakes-winners which is 19% SW to runner and 10 of those SW’s are G1 winners.
The $5million Group I ATC Golden Slipper (1200m) was won by brilliant filly Lady of Camelot and she highlighted the success of Fastnet Rock as a broodmare sire, read about her here.
Lady of Camelot put the icing on the cake for her dam Miss Debutante, a stakes-winning daughter of Fastnet Rock. Her first two foals are Group winning fillies Queen of the Ball (I Am Invincible) and Platinum Jubilee (Zoustar) with Lady of Camelot upping the ante to become her first G1 winner and by a third different sire.
The first four dams in this pedigree are all Listed or Group winners which is unusual and given what she has done to date, Miss Debutante is well in blue hen territory and there will be huge interest in her foals going forward. She has a yearling colt by Flying Artie and a weanling filly by I Am Invincible and then missed to Zoustar last spring.
Second and third dams are by More Than Ready (USA) and Dehere (USA), two very successful shuttles sires that both left Golden Slipper winners, so everything about the pedigree of Lady of Camelot gets a tick in terms of juvenile potential.
Lady of Camelot is the 15th Group I winner for Written Tycoon and is his second from this current crop of two year-olds that were conceived at Arrowfield joining the Kiwi based filly Velocious. She is also the 12th G1 winner for Fastnet Rock as a broodmare sire.
The nick between these two champion sires has produced 28 winners from 34 runners so 82% winners to runners and five stakes-winners at 14.7% SW to runner.
The $1million Group I ATC The Galaxy (1100m) was won by the brilliant Godolphin homebred mare Zapateo, read about her here.
Zapateo is the second Group I winner for I Am Invincible’s Group I winning son Brazen Beau and is the third for champion sire Lonhro as a broodmare sire. She is the best of six winners from six to race SW Jerezana, who should probably be the dam of two G1 winners as her other SW Osborne Bulls was a G2 winner with a frustrating four G1 placings.
The Brazen Beau x Lonhro nick has had terrific success with 10 winners from 12 starters 83% winner to runner and three stakes-winners so 25% SW to runner. Those stats are considerably higher than Brazen Beau’s overall sire stats of 60% winner to runner and 5.3% SW to runner.
The $750,000 Group I ATC George Ryder Stakes (1500m) provided a deserved G1 victory for quality colt Grunt, who was second in both the Caulfield and Australian Guineas, click here to read about him.
Veight is the first G1 winner for his young sire Grunt, a dual Group I winning son of champion sire O’Reilly and he is from Neena Rock, a good tough dual G3 winning daughter of all conquering broodmare sire Fastnet Rock.
With his oldest progeny three year-olds, Grunt has sired 16 winners from 59 starters with one other stakes-winner in Miraval Rose.
Having sired the dams of two Group I winners on Saturday, both of them by Last Tycoon line sires, Fastnet Rock has surged well clear on the Australian Broodmare Sires List and looks set to take this title for the first time in 2024.