Value Sires Part I: Deep Pockets Required

[Wandering Eyes]

It's time to revisit our annual series to assess the sires of 2025 with the aim of working out where the value lies. We'll reissue the usual caveat that value means different things to different people. For the benefit of this series, we are using the euro as our currency for bracketing, and will deal with stallions in the following four tiers:

€50,000 and up
€20,000 to €49,999
€10,000 to €19,999
Under €10,000.

Only one of the new additions to the European stallion ranks for 2025 makes it into the upper tier, which we are dealing with in Part I, and that is the 2024 Derby winner City Of Troy, who retires to Coolmore at a fee of €75,000.

There has been a lot of social media silliness about the height of this horse. Breeders who go to see him in the flesh will find a well-proportioned individual whose stature should be complementary to most mares. Only time will tell if he throws horses more in the mould of his imposing sire Justify, or whether his offspring will cleave to his own greater similarity to his damsire Galileo (Ire). The mares obviously play a part in this physical jigsaw, too.

What breeders will get for that fee is a well-bred stallion, whose Group 1-winning dam Together Forever (Ire), the sister of an Oaks winner, has 4×4 inbreeding to the influential mare Special. City Of Troy's race record speaks for itself. He was unbeaten at two, including in the G1 Dewhurst Stakes. At three, his Derby, Eclipse and Juddmonte International wins earned him Cartier Horse of the Year honours and more than made up for a disappointing run in the 2,000 Guineas and an apparent dislike of the dirt in the Breeders' Cup Classic. He faces rivalry from within his own stable from his competitively priced fellow Derby winner Auguste Rodin (Ire), whom we will deal with in Part II. 

City Of Troy provided racing fans with an unusual non-racing day out to Southwell in September when he had an away-day from Ballydoyle, with both Ryan Moore and Aidan O'Brien entering into the sprit of the occasion by spending time signing autographs and posing for photographs after his racecourse gallop. This scribbler didn't get a selfie or a signature but was left with a lasting visual impression of an athletic colt with a quite extraordinary elevated action at top speed. If City Of Troy can pass that movement on to some of his offspring he'll do just fine. 

He's in this bracket for his performance and pedigree, but what of the others who either retired into this top tier and have stayed there, or those who have worked their way up from more humble beginnings?

Of the former category, only Frankel (GB), Sea The Stars (Ire) and the latter's son Baaeed (GB) have started at this level and remained in place, and it is of course early days for Baaeed, who will have his first yearlings for sale next year and has dropped from his opening fee of £80,000 to stand at £65,000 for his third season. 

Sea The Stars, who turns 19 in 2025, was such a magnificent racehorse and he continues to throw classy individuals. It is fervently hoped that some of his sons enjoy proper success as Flat sires. Sea The Moon (Ger) has shown the way, and the top miler Baaeed, from a family endowed with some decent stallions, could be another to make that breakthrough.

As the joint-most expensive stallions in the world at £350,000, Frankel and Dubawi (Ire) have earned their place at the top of the table. Frankel was the champion sire of 2021 and 2023, with Dubawi taking the championship from him in 2022. Neither will lack for quality or support. Managing the quantity is the hardest part for those connected with the veteran Dubawi, who is knocking on the door of 23 and has done wonders to keep the memory and bloodline of Dubai Millennium (GB) thriving. Dubawi's stud career has been a happy and lengthy epilogue to the tragic tale of his sire's demise from grass sickness at the age of only five.

To use Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale as a barometer for these two elite sparring partners, Frankel topped the pile with 18 sold (from 19 offered) for an average of 902,778gns, and these were youngsters conceived when his fee was still £200,000. Dubawi had 12 sold (19 offered) for an average of 778,333gns, from his 2022 fee of £250,000.

Humble Beginnings

Few stallions have forced their way into the reckoning like Wootton Bassett (GB) has done and plenty of us would love to be able to go back in time to 2014 or 2015 when he stood for only €4,000, having started out at €6,000 at Haras d'Etreham in 2012. The mighty has risen, and the son of Iffraaj (GB), now knocking on the door of 17, opened his Irish innings at Coolmore on €100,000. He now commands a fee three times that amount.

In 2024 we saw the results of his first Irish-conceived crop of two-year-olds, which included the Group 1 winners Camille Pissarro (Ire), Henri Matisse (Ire), Twain (Ire), and Tennessee Stud (Ire). The G3 Prix Thomas Bryon winner Maranoa Charlie (Ire) is another to keep an eye on as next spring's Classics come around. 

Wootton Bassett, whose 19 Book 1 yearlings sold for an average of €600,000 (from a €150,000 fee) has a growing throng of sons at stud, with King Of Steel and Bucanero Fuerte (GB) joining the list in 2025.

Similar comments apply to Siyouni (Fr) at the Aga Khan Studs, who won the G1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere the year before Wootton Bassett took the same race, and started at Haras de Bonneval at €7,000, having narrowly avoided a gelding appointment with his vet.

That he was spared the cruellest cut has been very much to the benefit of the European bloodstock industry and to France in particular, where he has towered over the domestic stallion ranks in recent years. He remains at €200,000 for 2025, having enjoyed a similar upward trajectory to his own sire Pivotal (GB) throughout the course of his career. His 19 Arqana August yearlings, conceived when he was still at €140,000, sold for an average of €242,474.

Global Success

Ballylinch Stud's Lope De Vega (Ire) has had a tremendous year. A truly global success story, despite the fact that he has not shuttled south since 2015, his 33 black-type winners worldwide in 2024 matches the tally of Dubawi and puts the pair ahead of all other stallions standing in Europe, as does his list of six Group 1 winners, which is equal to the late Galileo. This is properly elite territory, which is reflected in his price hike for 2025 to €175,000 from €125,000.

Remove Frankel from the equation and Kingman (GB) would be the undisputed star of the Juddmonte stallion ranks. In a year in which he supplied the winners of the 1,000 Guineas (Elmalka (GB)) and Prix de Diane (Sparkling Plenty (Fr)), his haul of 17 stakes winners included the G1 Prix de l'Opera winner Friendly Soul (GB), who should be back for more in 2025, while the G2 Lowther Stakes winner Celandine (GB) has Classic pretensions. 

The Dubawi Brigade 

In those tricky third and fourth seasons, Night Of Thunder (Ire) stood for €15,000. Now his fee is ten times that amount. By the end of 2019, he had become the champion first-season sire, prompting a jump to €25,000 before really taking off into this top price bracket, where he has remained for four seasons. Two new Group 1 winners this year – Economics (GB) and Desert Flower (Ire) – have pushed his tally to five and one of his hallmarks, a bit like his sire Dubawi, is the breadth of his offspring's success across a range of distances. He's teetering on the brink of 100 stakes winners from six crops of racing age and will need to continue that upward progression at this new chunky fee, though that shouldn't be a problem given the associated rise in the quality of his mates. Two notable names among his 2024 coverings were six-time Group 1 winner Snow Fairy (Ire) and the Arc winner Solemia (Ire).

Another son of Dubawi climbing the ranks from a relatively modest beginning is Zarak (Fr). Having remained at €12,000 for his first four years at Bonneval, his fee has risen steadily to his 2025 high of €80,000 on the back of a year in which he sired his first Classic winner, Metropolitan (Fr), while Haya Zark (Fr) took the G1 Prix Ganay. With 18 stakes winners this year, he was equal to Frankel and Night Of Thunder, with only Dubawi, Lope De Vega, Sea The Stars and Wootton Bassett ahead of him.

The Darley duo of Too Darn Hot (GB) and Blue Point (Ire) has built on a solid start with first-crop two-year-olds. They each have three Group 1 winners, though one of Too Darn Hot's, Broadsiding (Aus), is from his first southern hemisphere crop. 

Blue Point is the leading second-crop sire in Europe by a decent margin, and his fee has leapt accordingly from €35,000 in his fourth season to €100,000 just two years later. First-crop Classic winner Rosallion (Ire) and rising sprinting star Kind Of Blue (GB) have aided that progression, and he already has a son at stud in the Breeders' Cup winner Big Evs (Ire), who will make his debut on the Tally-Ho Stud roster in 2025. Shamardal's legacy looks secure through Lope De Vega and Blue Point, to name just two of his stallion sons.

Too Darn Hot also had a breakthrough Classic winner, Fallen Angel (GB), while G1 Futurity Trophy winner Hotazhell (GB) led the charge from his second crop. Hugely sought after on both sides of the globe, he could soon be challenging Night Of Thunder and Zarak as the leading son of Dubawi. Don't, however, overlook New Bay (GB) in this regard. He somehow seems to be more of a quiet achiever, but an achiever he undoubtedly is. He has been represented by 29 juvenile winners this year, which makes him seventh in Europe in this category, and that group includes the impressive G2 Champagne Stakes winner Bay City Roller (Ire). New Bay's fee was doubled in 2023, to €75,000, and there he remains.

No Nay Never's fee has done a bit of yoyo-ing in recent years. Available for two years at €17,500 back in 2016 and 2017, he shot up to €100,000 in 2019 and has remained at six figures ever since. With two seasons at €175,000, he has dropped gradually back to €125,000. The G1 Prix Morny winner Whistlejacket (Ire), a brother to Little Big Bear (Ire), was his star of 2024, while the G2 Rockfel winner Bubbling (Ire) is a filly with Guineas potential.

Commercial and Classic 

No stallion can get close to Mehmas (Ire) when it comes to two-year-old winners. His record-breaking haul this year is now a whopping 71, and that includes the Group/Grade 1 winners Vertical Blue (Ire) (who sold for 3.2 million gns at the December Mares Sale), Scorthy Champ (Ire) and Magnum Force (Ire). 

Admittedly, the returns at Book 1 this year almost defied any sort of reality, but it is worth considering that Mehmas, who only four years ago had no representation in this section of the October catalogue, had all 16 of his yearlings offered sold for an average 343,125gns. Top price was 1 million gns for the half-brother to Perfect Power (Ire), but every other one of them made a six-figure sum, which shows decent returns from his 2022 fee of €50,000. Though that has been raised for 2025 to €70,000, that is still a reasonable mark for a very much in-demand stallion. 

One could say that we've saved the best for last. Camelot (GB) returns to his previous 2022 peak fee of €75,000 following a year in which his daughter Bluestocking (GB) won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. The Juddmonte filly's annus mirabilis also included victories in the G1 Prix Vermeille, G1 Pretty Polly Stakes and G2 Middleton Stakes bringing her total earnings to more than £3.6m and helping her sire to finish 2024 as the leading sire in Europe. She was not alone as a Group 1 winner for Camelot this year. Luxembourg (Ire) gained his fourth top-level win – one in each season in training – in the Coronation Cup, while Los Angeles (Ire) won the Irish Derby after finishing third in the Derby and, later, third to Bluestocking in the Arc. With just shy of €9m in progeny earnings in Europe, Camelot topped the table ahead of his fellow Irish-based stallions Lope De Vega and Sea The Stars. It is encouraging to see two Derby winners who are not Galileo in the top three. 

In fourth on European earnings but the champion sire of Britain and Ireland was Dark Angel (Ire), whose first title we discussed with his owner and breeder Gay O'Callaghan in TDN last week. This was the first time the champion sire had been based in Ireland but not at Coolmore since the posthumous title won by Petingo (GB) in 1979 (Pitcairn was champion the following year, by which time he had already been exported to Japan).

Available between 2018 and 2020 at his highest fee of €85,000, Dark Angel had stood for as low as €7,000 in his third and fourth seasons but will remain at €60,000 for a fifth consecutive year. Over the last five seasons he has covered 163, 180, 193, 166 and 134 mares in 2024 and it is easy to suppose that the tally may decrease steadily as he hits his twenties. For his body of work, €60,000 looks to be the best bit of value out there at this elite level.

Value Podium

Gold: Dark Angel, Yeomanstown Stud
A champion sire for €60,000. Say no more. 

Silver: Camelot, Coolmore
The only son of the great Montjeu (Ire) remaining on a Flat roster. A proper, proven sire at €75,000 remains an excellent option for anyone serious about breeding a Classic winner.

Bronze: Mehmas, Tally-Ho Stud
Bred on the same cross as Dark Angel, he is the perfect package for a commercial breeder.  At €70,000, he may be becoming too pricey for some but he's still a youngster and, given the evidence of his early years at stud, that fee could justifiably rise again in the near future.

 

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