The Darley three

Darley Stud has three highly promising sires with first runners in 2023, and the excitement is mounting with the beginning of the new European Flat season in sight

IT IS OFTEN a spring of mixed emotions and anticipation for stallion farms when standing a stallion as he goes into his fourth season and just about to have first runners.

The nominations team will confirm that it can be the most difficult season in which to market a stallion.

By then it is nearly half a decade since the sire retired to stud so his racing performances have become more distant memories for clients to recall. A stallion farm’s commercial breeding clients, who will be selling progeny by those sires, can also be a little more reticent to use stallions of that generation so close to those runners appearing – they need to weigh up the opportunity of a handsome reward if those debut crops work out, against the threat of a market leaving the sire’s progeny later-born crops on the benches if he is not perceived to be a success.

But the over-riding feeling on the stallion farms really is one of excitement and anticipation – after four years of book planning and plotting, marketing and hoping, the fruits of that labour are coming to fruition and hitting the racecourse. By the end of the year the farm may be stabling the season’s leading first-season sire or a stallion with a chance of becoming a generation-defining sire.

Then the marketing teams will be able to swing into full action through the summer and give a weight of publicity to the sire.

Godolphin and its Darley stallion brand are triple handed in the division for 2023 with three exciting young sires with first runners this year – Masar, Blue Point and Too Darn Hot.

The three have quite individual profiles, and when Sam Bullard, director of stallions, chatted about the trio he was keen to get back to basics and remind us of their unique qualities.

“We are so lucky to have three really exciting young stallions for this year,” says Bullard with a twinkle in his eye – the dark grey winter beginning to become a memory as we chatted a month out from the start of the 2023 covering season and just ten weeks away from the start of the new European Turf Flat season.

“Obviously standing Masar as our first homebred Derby winner is hugely exciting. As we as all know being a Derby winner isn’t necessarily the strongest selling point for a young stallion anymore, but I think breeders have really caught on to his two-year-old form,” clarifies Bullard.

“He won first time out beating Invincible Army, was then a good third in the Listed Chesham Stakes at Royal Ascot and then won the Solario Stakes (G3) very well.

“He also started his three-year-old career extremely well, and I think people have caught on to his speed.

“I would say his yearlings have left him in a higher point than he’s ever been in breeders’ perception. The yearling market was really good for him and he has been quite popular this year and he is good value.

“Hopefully, he will get a good book this year, and I hope those people who have supported him are rewarded with some decent winners on the track.”

Too Darn Hot stands under the brand in partnership with breeder Watership Down Stud. Through his racing career the son of Dubawi carried his fine pedigree forward to the track where he was an unbeaten champion two-year-old with the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes on his resume.

As a three-year-old he won the Prix Jean Prat (G1) and the Sussex Stakes (G1) and was Classic runner-up in the Irish 2,000 Guineas (G1).

He also boasts a mighty pedigree being out of the three-time Group 1 winner and the Group 1-placed Dar Re Mi (Singspiel) and a grand-son of the Group 1 winner Darara (Top Ville).

She was dam of UAE champion Rewilding and the Hong Kong champion Diaghilev, and the family boasts the presence of the influential stallion and champion Darshaan.

“Too Darn Hot is obviously huge,” exclaims Bullard. “He’s got a tremendous chance – sons of Dubawi are carrying everything before them, it is just such a strong sire-line and one that is building.

“He’s got an unbelievable pedigree, while the Singspiel side of him makes him all the more attractive to us at Darley because we had him, too. He is just very exciting, and of course he had the ability on the racecourse as well.

“His foal sales were very positive, and he was leading first-season sire at last autumn’s yearling sales.

“He has also been supported by many top owner-breeders so there is an awful lot with stock by him who were in their paddocks at home last autumn. Owner-breeders love him and many are using him again on leading mares, which is really good.”

The first vibes for stallions can be the subject of rumour and second-hand stories, so Bullard and the Darley team aim to get those early reports in from source.

“We are already starting to talk to people such as pre-trainer Malcolm Bastard as to what impression he is getting of Too Darn Hot’s stock, and it is favourable,” says Bullard.

“I know of two or three mares, who had been going elsewhere to be covered this spring, redirected back into Too Darn Hot because their two-year-old is going so well in its early work.

“The owners have been told that they would be mad not to go back to the stallion because they think the yearling could be a machine, so that’s really exciting.”

On the track, Blue Point, by Shamardal, was the fastest of the three and famously collected those two Group 1 Royal Ascot Group 1 sprints in 2019.

He also showed good form as a two-yearold when winning the Gimcrack Stakes (G2) and then Group 1-placed form in the 6f Middle Park and the 7f Dewhurst Stakes.

“At the moment, he’s probably got the best chance of all of them as a first-season sire based on market performance,” says Bullard. “We know the market often gets it wrong, but the buyers were really steaming into his yearlings by the end of Book 2.

“He is a son of sire-producing Shamardal, he was unbelievable that year at Royal Ascot, and he ticks all the boxes. He does all that we want him to do – who is say that he’s not going to be the one?”

Bullard obviously has a job to market these stallions, and while he would surely love a three-way tie at the top of the firstseason sires’ table come next December, the stallion man is a bit more realistic than that.

“All three are not going to be leading first-season stallion, that is not possible!” he smiles. “And, while we are expecting some good things from all three, we’ve all been around long enough to know that, even if the sales ring thinks one thing, that is very often not necessarily the case.

“But it’s exciting to have three horses with such great potential, and if one of them really ‘makes it’ then that will be fantastic.”

Bullard continues, his ambitions growing as he chats and he considers the three prospects in more depth: “It would not be a surprise if one of these three could become a ‘breed-shaper’– okay, that is probably a bit strong at this stage, but they all have the potential to become a ‘proper’ stallion for the long term and whose fee goes to a serious level in five years’ time leaving current prices well behind. It is not a completely unrealistic hope.”

Stallions fees are often dramatically reduced for sires as they head into their fourth covering year in order to attract mares, tilting the price and demand balance into kilter.

And, indeed Darley has tweaked the fees for the three slightly downward for this season, but the price change has not been huge – Too Darn Hot’s 2023 fee is £40,000 from an initial price in 2020 of £50,000, Blue Point stands at €35,000 having started his career at €45,000.

Masar is the cheapest of the three at £14,000, but it is only £1,000 down from his 2020 starter price.

The stud has not had the need to drop fees dramatically in order to attract clients.

“Stallion fees are a massive outlay for breeders, but if the stallions are oversubscribed it’s very hard to argue they’re too expensive, market forces tells you that,” says Bullard, who had no need to market the three cheap and pile in the mares high.

Blue Point

“I don’t think any of them would have deserved that,” he responds to that suggestion, continuing: “We’ve never had a horse fill up at Dalham like Too Darn Hot did in his first years, while the yearling prices for Blue Point have made him incredibly attractive – to be paying £35,000 for him this year is not unreasonable when compared to what people were getting for their yearlings.

The quality of book that a stallion sees plays its own part in the development of a stallion’s career – after all there are two parties involved in the mating process.

As can be seen from the covering stats for this generation on these pages, Too Darn Hot has consistently been visited by the best quality mares of this generation of sires.

In his three years covering to date he has been visited by large numbers of mares who were black-type quality –even in 2022 the momentum continued when he saw 22 Group race winners, an amazing achievement.

“Too Darn Hot is a quality horse, and, every now and again, a quality horse retires,” says Bullard. “The real quality horses don’t come around all the time, but when they do it is a different level.

“The quality mares will come to a horse such as him anyway, but with the in-house systems that over the years we’ve developed here at Darley, mare quality is something that we pay great attention to.

“I think that it is starting to pay dividends and certainly the level of mare he has got has been very high class.”

It is all in the tea leaves now!

SIMON MARSH, general manager for Watership Down Stud, is very much looking forward to seeing what the year can bring for Too Darn Hot, the farm’s homebred stallion son of Dubawi.

Marsh spoke to us from Magic Millions, Australia, having travelled to see the stallion’s first crop southern-hemisphere sale yearlings.

He left Johnny McKeever, buying on behalf of the Lloyd Webbers of Watership Down, in charge of paying A$1 million for the Too Darn Hot filly out of the Group 2-winning two-year-old Enbihaar (Magnus). She is the most expensive yearling by a new sire sold at the sale since 2015, and his 12 yearlings sold for an average price of A$276,786.

Too Darn Hot

Marsh has understandably been delighted with the stallion’s performance in both hemispheres.

“Too Darn Hot is stamping his stock, they’re all really ‘butty’ and a number do look early types,” he says. “They are all bay – there has not been a chestnut, and a lot of them have no white on them. He also seems really well with his yearlings making up to 600,000gns; we were delighted. Importantly, they’ve gone to some very good trainers.

“The second crop of foals sold on the back of his yearlings were also well received.

“Encouragingly, the pre-trainers and trainers are giving us positive feedback on the two-year-olds and how they’re going at this stage. We couldn’t be happier

“All the main breeders have bred to him – Coolmore, Juddmonte, the Niarchos family, The Aga Khan. A lot of owner breeders have supported him too, so a lot of his progeny did not go through a sale ring. Many breeders have come back again and repeat custom is always good, it gives a lot of confidence that they are happy with the youngstock by him.

“Watership Down sold most of its homebred stock by him as yearlings and foals, but has got two to go into training.

“We have about a dozen Watership mares to go to Too Darn Hot this spring, and some lovely mares in-foal to him now, including The Fugue.

“He has had 160 mares in each of his three years so far in the northern hemisphere, he has had 130 mares in each year so far in the southern hemisphere which is where we are limiting him.

“Standing a stallion has been exciting and we will now see if he makes or not, we have done everything we can.

“It is now all in the tea leaves! He will either make it or he won’t, but we have a huge belief in him and he ticks every single box – he is out of a brilliant racemare, he was a brilliant racehorse, he was a miler and he is a beautiful-looking horse. There is no reason why he shouldn’t make it and all the chat about him is strong.

“People need to be get into him this year. Dubawi’s sons Night Of Thunder, Zarak and New Bay – in their fourth year they were inexpensive stallions, now they are all expensive stallions!

“Too Darn Hot has actually got greater and far better credentials than them!”

Masar