Kodiac on course to beat his own record of juvenile winners

Kodiac first, the rest nowhere. Once again, the record-breaking sire of juvenile winners is streets ahead of his rivals. On what seems a near-daily basis, the latest bay speedball keeps the scoreboard ticking over for Kodiac.

Yesterday he totted up his 31st individual juvenile winner of the season, Affina at Thirsk. Zebedee is doing best of his rivals, on 16, while Society Rock sits on 13. All three of these stallions share the same Tally-Ho Stud trademark.

Though known for early bloomers, Kodiac himself did not make his racecourse debut until mid-July, breaking his maiden on his second start in September. He is no one-trick pony, having sired seven three-year-old Group winners. Nonetheless he has carved out his premier niche as the 'go-to' stallion for a fast and early type.

The big question

Is this the year that Kodiac surpasses his 2014 record of 43 juvenile winners in a season? With 30 already on the board, the hunt is clearly on.

The twisting lines on the accompanying graph show his 2017 line currently just ahead of that for his record-breaking season. Significantly, he also has far more ammunition at his disposal this time round - with 188 foals to feed his current crop of juveniles, compared to 112 recorded for 2014.

Those numbers remind us that there is sometimes a self-fulfilling quality to the numerical advantages enjoyed by commercially popular sires. But it would do Kodiac scant justice to say that he is merely playing a numbers game.

His first runners appeared in 2010, mustering 17 winners. The next season he supplied 21 juvenile winners, followed by 14 in 2012. Though commendable enough, these figures do not appear especially remarkable until you consider they were produced from much smaller crops, conceived at €5,000 and €4,000.

In 2012 Kodiac recorded a juvenile winners-to-foals ratio of 44 per cent. For comparison the prolific Dark Angel registered 24 per cent juvenile winners-to-foals last season, when his 42 juvenile winners represented 11 more than his previous best - and, indeed, left him just one short of Kodiac's record.

In all his seasons at stud, Kodiac has never dipped below 35 per cent juvenile winners-to-runners.

From the leading two-year-old sires for this season (based on prize money), only two stallions have been able to live with these kind of ratios. Both of these, Choisir and Clodovil, have much reduced book sizes.

Quality as well as quantity

As one of those stallions not to appear on catalogue pages in bold, block capitals, Kodiac's best efforts in Group company came when a neck second in the Group 3 Hackwood Stakes and fourth in the Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest.

Few stallions manage to produce offspring that surpass their own racecourse achievements. Of Galileo's 66 Group 1 winners, only Frankel managed to exceed the peak RPR set by the Coolmore champion. Dubawi is yet to be overtaken by any of his offspring, Makfi faring best by matching his sire's RPR of 128. Kodiac, in contrast, has sired nine horses who have eclipsed his RPR of 111.

So Kodiac has excelled by every measure. The question now is whether he can reach even higher now that he is commanding an upmarket fee of €50,000?

From a sales point of view he certainly remains on an upward trajectory: 131 of his 157 yearlings offered last year sold for an average of just over 70,000gns. These included a 380,000gns colt acquired by John Ferguson out of Tattersalls Book 2, and a 360,000gns record-breaker at the Goffs UK Doncaster Breeze-Up this spring - all from a crop conceived at €10,000.

To sustain burgeoning demand in the sales ring, however, Kodiac arguably needs to unearth a racecourse standout or two in the near future.

Kodiac currently operates at 5.5 per cent clip of stakes-winners-to-runners. Tiggy Wiggy is his solitary Group 1 winner and he has just three horses with peak RPRs above 115: Kodi Bear (121), Tiggy Wiggy (117) and Adaay (116).

Compare this to Dark Angel, who stood this season at the slightly higher fee of €65,000. He has three Group 1 winners - Mecca’s Angel, Lethal Force and Harry Angel - and ten horses with RPRs above 115. (This from a broadly similar aggregate of starters, only around 60 fewer than Kodiac.)

There should be more to come, however, the exponential rise in Kodiac's stud fee being set to assure a corresponding elevation in the quality of his mates.

In his third year at stud, 2009, Kodiac covered just four black-type producing mares and no black-type winners. By 2014, the covering season that produced his current crop of juveniles, he was up to 33 black-type producers and 16 black-type winners. And the quality has improved again since, his current crop of yearlings - bred at €25,000 - including 42 out of black-type producers, and 21 out of black-type winners.

With this increase in quality comes an increase in expectation: perhaps Kodiac is reaching a tipping point. This year's juveniles are showing positive signs: Madeline won a Listed event on her latest start, while Nebo came to within a head of Gustav Klimt in the Group 2 Superlative Stakes. If this momentum can continue, the 16-year-old could yet complete the full transformation from pauper to prince.