Jockey Club Limits Stallion Books to 140 Mares

Coolmore tends to move a stallion to the National Hunt roster rather than selling them to overseas interests.

Winstar and Coolmore are two very different beasts.:yes:

Coolmore operates like a business, just as WinStar does. Some of their stallions relocate to Ireland, others go to Japan, others end up elsewhere. Vancouver and Declaration of War are two recent examples of horses who are no longer on their U.S. roster.

I do realize that they are both businesses. Coolmore has their base in Ireland.

Does WinStar own farms all over the world as do Coolmore and Godolphin? I might be mistaken in thinking that Winstar only stands stallions in the U.S…

I know that both Coolmore and Godolphin have large stud farms in the U.K. the U.S. and Australia. Godolphin is in Japan as well, not sure about Coolmore. I don’t think that WinStar is operating at that same scale.

Do Coolmore and Godolphin sell, or do they just move their stallions to the farms that they own on other continents?

I cant speak for anyone else, only myself. My interest in a horse has little to do with what someone might do with a stallion years down the road. If I like a horse and want to use him, Ill use him, no matter who has him. The only thing I personally try to avoid is being part of a book of 150 mares or more, since its extremely difficult to get in when you need him. I wonder if stallion farms will now try and cash in on their stallions now and keep their books as high as they can since future stallions will be limited.

That well could be an unintended consequence of the coming limit. I hadn’t thought of that.

It just seems like the 140 mare limit won’t accomplish what they say they want it to. I hope it won’t be a rough go for small breeders.

@halo thanks for what you would consider or not when selecting a stallion.

Easy for me to sit on the sidelines and look at the eye candy, track performance, pedigree, cost and know they are important but interesting to hear what a smaller breeder might or might not take into consideration.

@LaurieB I know Coolmore and WinStar are both businesses that must make a profit but I don’t always see the bigger picture (such as Coolmore moving a US-based stallion to another country while maybe not actually selling him).

Perhaps an advantage for an organization like Coolmore is by moving a stallion from one country to another. They keep access to the stallion while perhaps moving him to a market where pedigree and performance are more suitable.

Vancouver, looks like he raced also in Australia and looks like that is where he stands now.

Declaration of War I assume is still in Japan but also still owned by Coolmore rather than an outright sale to Japan.

Thanks for the insights and comments from people who are actively in the business so I can learn :slight_smile: (while yes, baking the Phoenix sun :lol: ).

I hope it helps. There are other good studs out there who deserve a solid chance despite the 5 shiny object ones that everyone seems to only care about. It’ll also make those with the special studs, perhaps, more selective on what they breed their stallions to. Much like Coolmore did with AP his first year. Perhaps years down the road, this system will identify good stallions that may surprise some people as they probably would’ve had a hard time filling a book without these rules in place. and the need to mention better quality of life for these stallions. the select few breeding 300+ a year; hard to convince me that for some of them; it doesn’t have long-term health effects.

But ultimately I think the kicker needs to be the sales. The industry needs to stop being driven by boutique sales where billionaires show up and drink lots of cocktails in fancy dress and spend millions on yearlings to have their name in the headlines. While the rest of the horses cataloged barely cover their cost to raise and receive little interest. If people are forced to book mares to less “fancy-sale” stallions; the industry will lose breeders and horse numbers because they figure no one will buy them. When the industry puts the focus back on track performance instead of a sales figure; then will we see value in more stallions. At least; what I am trying to say, is the sales figures should reflect a stallion who’s get is proving themselves on the track. Not just because he has had a handful of offspring sell big and everyone suddenly wants in ; despite little to no proven performance to back up the dollars. Those who have built tremendous businesses along the lines of these sales would likely highly disagree with me.

When I see the sales stats touted for some horses “Oh but he sold for $700,000 as a yearling” … “This stud had 9 yearlings sell for over $500,000 each”. Yea; but did they ever make it out of claiming competition. did they have earn their cost back? did they even make it to the track and do so consistently". The $700k was just a hope and a dream and someone with too much money to spend. The proof is in the pudding; was the earnings and performance worthy of that price-tag. I’d say 8 times out of 10; not even close.

Aside from first crop stallions which are unaccountably popular due to the fact that “they haven’t done anything wrong yet” the high prices at the sales are indeed driven by the performance of a stallion’s offspring at the track. It’s silly to think otherwise. Sure, not every high priced yearling becomes what the buyers hoped he would be–but the only reason stallions become popular among buyers is because they deliver high quality runners consistently.

If you look at the stallions whose offspring bring high prices at the sales, and the stallions that top the sire lists, they are the same horses. Tapit, Medaglia d"Oro, Into Mischief, Curlin, Uncle Mo, Candy Ride, Quality Road, etc.

Fwiw, nobody advertises sales stats for a failed stallion (a still unproven one, yes–because there’s nothing else to talk about yet). So I’m not sure where you’re reading the ads you cited. :confused:

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Coolmore also stands a lot of great turf horses. Not much market for that here. So they move them around to where breeders will support them. No surprise to see some go to the National Hunt.

Out of curiosity, which of the stallions you listed shuttle, or did shuttle?

All of them shuttled.

Very interesting…

Again, stallion owners are very selective about what mares their stallions cover. What makes you think Coolmore is the only stud that chooses mares carefully and that AP is the only horse that has mares carefully chosen for him? Surely you can understand that breeding to inferior mares is a bad business decision that is unlikely to produce good racehorses? Think about it. That’s why it’s not done.

By the way, the horse is a “stallion”. A “stud” is a farm that stands stallions and breeds them.

Your resentment of wealthy people is strange and looks a lot like envy. Exactly how much money does a person have to have before you consider them a “person with too much money to spend” and why are you complaining about their choice to buy well bred horses. Are their “hopes and dreams” any less important than yours? :cool:

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This absolutely. I can guarantee that if I show up with my TB mare who never set eyes on the track, a less than stellar pedigree and $150,000 in cash she’d not be able to set foot on Coolmore property much less get covered by Justify. :lol:

Breeding as we all know is a cr*p shoot. But, there is wisdom behind ‘breed the best to the best and hope for the best’. As a stallion owner, you don’t want to ‘waste’ a breeding on something less than what that stallion deserves. Coolmore and WinStar and any other stud farm will want to stack the deck in the favor of every single cover a stallion has.

I’d bet that is also true of the stallions that stand in California, Om or Smiling Tiger both for $7,500 at Harris Farms in central California. If the stallion owner and/or stud wants to keep the value of their stallion up, you do want to be picky about who they cover; maybe not the level of scrutiny that a Justify or AP might get but still I’d suspect not every single mare owner with a mare to cover will be allowed.

By the way, that wasn’t intended to be a complete list of TB stallions who are still breeding in their 20s. I just listed some of the more famous ones that people would have heard of.

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I don’t pretend to speak for the stallion managers out there but I suspect just about anything with a uterus can go to any stallion in California if the owner is willing to pay full price or close to it. This has been a weird and wild breeding season and the end is looming so email boxes of mare owners are full of last minute deals to stallions.

Market forces determine a lot of this and you really can’t apply Kentucky truisms to California IME. There are a lot fewer starry eyed dreamers out here willing to pay three times the value of the mare to go to a hot stallion. They discovered that is the road to financial ruin when they tried to sell the foals in the ring. Based on what I have heard, there isn’t a stallion in California which is likely to be affected by this rule and maybe three that have books topping 100–Smiling Tiger, Sir Prancealot and Clubhouse Ride. Danzing Candy might be close.

As for Kentucky, this is such a strange rule. If I understand it correctly, it is unlikely to come into effect for 5 years and it is aimed at small breeders. Let’s face it–the big connected breeders will find their way into the books of the big stallions or hot prospects. The smaller breeders won’t.

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@Pronzini I don’t doubt you but I would be thinking (and maybe incorrectly) that if you had a nice, for CA, stallion you’d still want to pre-approve a mare for breeding. I know that the CA-breds don’t have a KY market. You want to make $$ at Kee Sep, breed in KY.

But, some of the CA stallions have been producing nice horses that are competitive at some of the bigger races at tracks like SA and Del Mar.

I also agree nothing in CA will be close to hitting the 140 limit (that I’m aware of)…

CA is a different market than KY. Similar probably to FL… nice stallions, decent offspring, not the big $$ sales at Kee Sep and also probably not close to the 140 limit.

It will be interesting in, say, 5-7 years to revisit this and see what the impact has been to the breeding market.

Flatter? Interesting; I thought Claiborne didn’t shuttle its stallions. Or did they lease him out for a season or two?

This is a well written and well thought out OP/Ed piece about the breeding cap from TDN: https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/op-ed-what-is-the-goal-behind-the-cap/

When the question was initially asked, I wasn’t sure of the answer. Actually, the way the question was phrased, I wasn’t sure of the question. :lol:

But I went to the Blood Horse stallion register to look up the answer. On each stallion’s page, they provide a statistical summary of results for northern hemisphere foals, and southern hemisphere foals (if applicable). Flatter has both summaries, so I glanced at it and saw that he’d had 1 southern hemisphere foal crop. But you’re right, I should have taken a closer look. Because that one foal crop only lists one foal. So he most likely did not shuttle anywhere. So my answer should have been “All but one.”