Best Days Still Ahead for Evergreen Starspangledbanner

[Wandering Eyes]

The cliche is that it only takes 40 years to become an overnight success.  Obviously it can never take that long for a horse but Starspangledbanner could be forgiven for thinking something along those lines as he ends 2025 with his status at an all-time high.

There were several notable aspects to this year's Cartier Awards, most notably the happy situation that all bar one of the winners will still be in training in 2026. Another stand-out feature was that both the Champion Two-Year-Old Colt (Gstaad) and the Champion Two-Year-Old Filly (Precise) are by the same stallion. A consequence is that their sire Starspangledbanner will start 2026 standing at his highest ever fee (€60,000) at an age (20) at which most stallions have already started to fall out of fashion.

This was not the first time that one stallion has been responsible for both Cartier champion juveniles. In 2010 the accolades were taken by Frankel and Misty For Me, son and daughter of Galileo. In 2005 Danehill's offspring George Washington and Rumplestiltskin took the prizes. Starspangledbanner's achievement thus isn't unprecedented, but it does put him into very exalted company.

As the time it has taken suggests, it has been a long and winding road for Starspangledbanner to reach his new peak of popularity. The road began promisingly because, born in Australia in September 2006, he was bred by one of the country's most notable breeders: Tony Santic's Emily Kristina Pty Ltd, then riding on the crest of a wave as the owner/breeder of the great mare who had won the past three Melbourne Cups and the most recent Cox Plate, Makybe Diva. She had been retained as a yearling but the young Starspangledbanner was sent to the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale in 2008, where he was bought by up-and-coming syndicator Brad Spicer for $120,000 to join the Victorian stable of Bart Cummings' former foreman Leon Corstens. Spicer had only set up his syndication business in 2005 and Starspangledbanner would go on to become the top-class horse which such an operation needs to establish itself in the elite tier of syndicators, where it remains to this day.

There was plenty of class and speed in Starspangledbanner's pedigree and it didn't take him long to start showing it. As a son of the top-class dual-hemisphere pioneer Choisir, he came from the Danehill sire-line, while his dam Gold Anthem had been a fast filly in South Australia. Furthermore, he has Australia's historically greatest influence for class, speed and precocity, Star Kingdom, on both sides of his pedigree (which may or may not be of merely academic interest). The great horse is there in an unusual way on the distaff side. Gold Anthem was a daughter of the US-bred Star Kingdom-line stallion Made Of Gold, who had been a high-class two-year-old in England before retiring to stud in South Australia.

Looking farther back, Starspangledbanner descends from the great mare Eulogy, who was exported to New Zealand after a racing career in which she ran against The Tetrarch (in the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster in 1913). An inductee in the New Zealand Hall of Fame as a 'breed-shaper', she can now boast well over 100 Group 1-winning direct descendants. These include two close relations of Starspangledbanner: the top-class half-brothers Elvstroem and Haradasun (whose granddam Olympic Aim was his third dam) who were at the peak of their powers shortly before Starspangledbanner started racing. 

Starspangledbanner made his debut in one of the principal two-year-old races of the Spring Carnival in Melbourne in 2008, on the same Moonee Valley card on which Maldivian won the Cox Plate. He won that day before later confirming his position among the leading two-year-olds in Victoria with a midfield finish in the G1 Blue Diamond after finishing third in the G3 Colts' and Geldings' Prelude.

It was easy to predict that Starspangledbanner, a big imposing horse in the mould of his magnificent sire Choisir, might improve from two to three. That is exactly what he did, enjoying a magnificent campaign in the spring of 2009, highlighted by his victory in the G1 Caulfield Guineas. In the autumn he doubled his tally of Group 1 victories by taking the Oakleigh Plate before re-confirming his status as a top-class sprinter by finishing third in the G1 Newmarket Handicap, giving weight to both of the horses (Wanted and Eagle Falls) who beat him.

With a controlling interest in Starspangledbanner having been sold to the Coolmore triumvirate, his next move was to follow in the footsteps of Choisir by heading to Royal Ascot. Whereas Choisir had come to Europe still under the care of his original trainer Paul Perry, Starspangledbanner was transferred to Aidan O'Brien. He did his new connections proud in Europe with three magnificent Group 1 sprinting performances: wins in the Golden Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot and the July Cup at Newmarket and then second place behind Sole Power in the Nunthorpe Stakes at York. By the end of the year he had achieved the notable double of being recognised as Champion Sprinter in both Australia and Europe.

This looked to be a perfect prelude to a successful career as a stallion. However, he had already had one blip in his progress and he was shortly to have another.

Starspangledbanner had made a winning reappearance as a spring three-year-old when scoring over 1000m at Caulfield on the first day (ie August 1) of the 2009/'10 season but subsequently was disqualified from that race for returning a race-day swab positive to altrenogest, a synthetic hormone given (under the name Regumate) to broodmares to regulate their reproductive cycles. It transpired that he had been given this in error and, fortunately, the drug was no longer detectable in swabs taken on the days of his subsequent races so he wasn't disqualified from those triumphs (which must have provided some consolation for Corstens while he served the six-month ban which he received for his error).

That was the first setback in Starspangledbanner's career. The second came after he had retired to stud when it transpired that only a minority of the mares whom he was covering were getting in foal. It is impossible to know whether this was a consequence of the broodmares' hormone which he had received during his racing career. Whatever the cause, however, one thing was sure: there was a major question mark over his future as a stallion, hence the decision to put him back into training at Ballydoyle in 2012 once it was established that he was again proving sub-fertile in his second season. Resuming racing in the second half of the summer, he achieved relatively little in six runs, notwithstanding that he did finish second in a Group 3 sprint at the Curragh.

Step forward Anthony Mithen. The proprietor of Rosemont Stud in Victoria was a minority share-holder in Starspangledbanner, thanks to having been able to buy the holding of the one original part-owner who had remained in him when he was sold to Coolmore. The outlook for Starspangledbanner as a stallion looked bleak but Mithen kept the faith. It was a long and experimental process at Rosemont to try to improve the horse's fertililty but eventually Mithen's efforts began to pay dividends. This was particularly good news because when the few members of his small first crop had started racing as two-year-olds in 2014, two of them won at Royal Ascot: The Wow Signal won the G2 Coventry Stakes (before taking the the G1 Prix Morny two months later) and Anthem Alexander landed the G3 Queen Mary Stakes.

Coolmore had given up bringing Starspangledbanner up from Australia for the northern hemisphere seasons so he stayed put at Rosemont in 2013 and '14. However, once Mithen's efforts had started to produce a marked improvement in his fertility, he resumed his journeys north from 2015 onwards. Since then, he has gradually worked his way back to popularity. The 2017 seasons were particularly fruitful as three outstanding horses were conceived in that year, two in Ireland and one in Australia.

State Of Rest emulated his father by winning at Group 1 level in both hemispheres. In fact, he scored at the highest level in four countries: in the USA, France and Australia (in the Cox Plate) as a three-year-old in 2021 and in England (at Royal Ascot in the Prince Of Wales's Stakes) at four. Also born in Ireland in 2018 was California Spangle, who headed to Hong Kong after changing hands for €150,000 at the Goffs Orby Sale in 2019. There he won 13 races, most notably defeating Golden Sixty in the G1 Longines HK Mile in December 2022. Earlier in the year he had justified odds-on favouritism in the HK Classic Cup in which his victims included Romantic Warrior. On either side of that victory were close second places behind that horse in the HK Classic Mile and the HK Derby.

 Also conceived in 2017 was the Australian-bred gelding Beauty Eternal, winner to date (he is still racing) of nine races in Hong Kong including the G1 FWD Champions Mile in 2024 when the beaten horses included both Voyage Bubble and Golden Sixty as well as three challengers from Japan and one (Brave Emperor) from England.

Good deeds don't always receive their due reward but Starspangledbanner's continually expanding record of achievement is, pleasingly, now producing the support and recognition which he deserves. His 2025 season of success has not only seen him hailed as sire of two Cartier Award winners. The autumn's round of yearling sales saw some big prices paid for his stock, headed by Godolphin paying the highest price yet achieved by a Starspangledbanner yearling (900,000gns). This sum was given for Islanmore Stud's daughter of the Galileo mare Love Potion in Book 2 of Tattersalls' October Sale, a month after the filly's full-brother Avicenna had maintained his unbeaten record by taking the Flying Scotsman Stakes at Doncaster.

Furthermore, what could be viewed as the icing on the cake came during the December Sale when MV Magnier paid 4,500,000gns for the four-time Group 1-winning Cartier 2024 Champion Three-Year-Old Filly Porta Fortuna and announced afterwards that she is likely to be covered by Starspangledbanner during the forthcoming season. About to turn 20 he may be, but some of Starspangledbanner's best days might still be in front of him.

 

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