Sunday, January 28, 2007

2006 PF Special Stallion - Not so special?


For the 2006 breeding season, the stallion Sadler's Wells was introduced as the special stallion available for stud.

Sadler's Wells was a racehorse born in 1981, and sired by Northern Dancer. Although foaled in the United States, he achieved his racing and breeding fame in Europe.

In real life, his greatest success came as a champion sire. Sadler's Wells has been Champion Sire (the sire in Great Britain whose progeny has won the most prize money during a season) no fewer than 14 times with over 200 stakes winners and 69 Group 1 individual winners.

His fabulous success as a real-life sire has not been duplicated here at Photo-Finish. His 2006 foal crop of 16 horses all hit the track as 2yo's last season and had a combined record 0f 88-5-7-16 with earnings of just $998,200. The majority of those earnings ($602,600) came from three horses, Raging Wells from KRF, Wishing Wells also from KRF, and Maximize from Lakeside Acres.

Would I call Sadler's Well a bust as a sire? Not necessarily. Some of those offspring do show promise. It will be interesting to track them in 2009 when they perform as 3yo's.

But you certainly can't be overly excited about just 5 wins in 88 career starts so far.....

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