Quality and quantity needed in the first-season sire race

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First blood to Sioux Nation in this year’s freshman sire skirmishes, then, thanks to his daughter Ocean Quest’s late thrust to win the opening two-year-old race of the Irish Flat season at the Curragh on Saturday.

The Jessica Harrington-trained filly has got those punters who took skinny odds about her sire becoming leading first-season stallion by number of winners in Britain and Ireland off to a dream start.

It has always looked likely that Sioux Nation (pictured below) will come out best by this particular metric, simply because his debut crop of 167 juveniles is 35 per cent larger than that of the second biggest, belonging to Cracksman, and 45 per cent greater than those sired by Havana Grey and Saxon Warrior.

Whether Sioux Nation will be able to satisfy breeders and buyers of bloodstock as well as bettors in the long run is quite another thing, though, as a huge number of runners is no shortcut to success in the stallion market.

When a young sire has such an abundance of quantity in his favour, the industry rightly expects to see a proportionate amount of quality, and nowadays there are enough tables available on the internet that record ratios of winners or black-type horses to runners for their performance to be adequately scrutinised.

Hence two of last year’s first-crop sires who have found themselves in most demand from breeders this season, Time Test and Zarak, were able to make names for themselves despite fielding 44 and 35 runners each – the 12th and 17th largest numbers among their cohort.

And hence in the past decade we have also seen a few freshman sires such as Bushranger and Gutaifan succumb to the rule of ‘the bigger they come, the harder they fall’, by not producing a sufficient amount of exciting horses in their large first crops to maintain breeders’ support.

So, for all that a sizeable crop of two-year-olds might yield a regular flow of winners that keeps the sire’s name in the results section of the Racing Post throughout the Flat season, it will likely all be in vain unless there is also a relative amount of class on show.

Breeders who follow the herd in their mating plans thinking there is safety in numbers would do well to remember that, I think.

All of which is not to suggest that Sioux Nation won’t be able to deliver both quality and quantity this season, of course. In fact, his profile allows plenty of hope that he will.

Sioux Nation: off to a flyer as a stallionCredit: Patrick McCann

Notably, the Coolmore flagbearer is by the late Scat Daddy, a renowned influence for precocity and the source of a former leading first-season sire in No Nay Never. Caravaggio and El Kabeir, other sons of Scat Daddy who have stood in Ireland, showed significant promise with their introductory runners last year, too.

He is also out of Dream The Blues, a winning daughter of champion two-year-old and leading juvenile sire Oasis Dream and Group 1-placed sprinter Catch The Blues, from the family of smart two-year-olds My Catch, Royal Ashirah and Vladimir.

Most importantly of all, Sioux Nation was also high-class at two himself, taking the Norfolk Stakes and Phoenix Stakes for Aidan O'Brien that season.

There are also a number of particularly well-bred individuals in his first crop, most strikingly a half-sister to last year’s 1,000 Guineas and Prix Rothschild heroine Mother Earth, who made a pleasing seasonal reappearance by winning the Park Express Stakes at the Curragh on Saturday. The filly in question was sold to Al Shira’aa Farm for €230,000 at the Goffs Orby Yearling Sale last autumn.

Ocean Quest’s performance on Saturday, showing a thrilling burst of speed to beat better fancied sons of New Bay and Acclamation in Forceful Speed and Midnight Toker, also gave a small, early clue to the ability that Sioux Nation might be able to transmit on a regular basis.

The filly, bred by Tan Kai Chah, is a half-sister to last year’s three-time five-furlong juvenile winner Rhythm Of Zain out of Gold Zain, a winning Aqlaam half-sister to German 2,000 Guineas victor Poetic Dream and last season’s Prix Francois Boutin scorer Who Knows.

Ocean Quest’s pedigree therefore features an intriguing 3x3 duplication of Oasis Dream, the damsire of Sioux Nation and the sire of Aqlaam.

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