It's been a good few years since we decided that once a sire had 200 or more year-starters (a horse is counted as a 'year-starter' each year it starts), we were willing to compare him to the general population of sires; until they have that many, their figures are too subject to fluctuation and don't [...]

It's now official: Coolmore's Galileo was the leading North American/European sire of 2016 by worldwide progeny earnings from Northern Hemisphere-sired crops (click here), with 2016 worldwide progeny earnings of $30,086,073. For at least the third consecutive year (TDN has archived these figures beginning in 2014) he was the leading NA/EU sire in all six black-type [...]

THE SALES YEAR Throughout the last six months of the North American and European auction sales season, the theme has been pretty much the same: the market struggled to match 2015 levels, and in fact finished up below 2015, though marginally. The graph and table of 'US And European Annual Sales' clearly show this biggest [...]

In 2014, the first year TDN archived combined lists for North American and European sires, Coolmore's Galileo was the leading sire by progeny earnings, with $18,693,237, and led all NA/EU sires in all six black-type categories, with 38 Black-Type Winners (BTW), 66 Black-Type Horses (BTH), 25 Group/Graded SW (GSW), 50 Group/Graded Stakes Horses (GSH), eight [...]

US: FOUR-FIGURE BARGAINS Distorted Humor has been a great sire–TDN credits him with 130 Black-Type Winners, 52 Graded/Group Stakes Winners, and 15 Grade I/Group 1 winners in 15 crops. He hasn't yet been a great sire of sires, but he's got a very promising young son at Hill 'n' Dale in Maclean's Music, who famously [...]

The two highest-rated horses by Racing Post Ratings (RPR) by Shadwell's Nayef, a half-brother to Nashwan and Unfuwain by Gulch, appeared in his first crop, foaled in 2005: the 2008 G1 Prix de l'Opera winner Lady Marian (RPR 123) and the 2008 G1 Prix Jean Prat and G1 Prix Jacques le Marois winner, Tamayuz (RPR [...]

We've always taken the view that 'value sires' are to some degree a matter of opinion, and we value the opinions of our readers, who are a knowledgeable community (else why would you be reading TDN?). So please let us know of any sires in NA or Europe, standing for 40,000 or under, which you [...]

STALLIONS STANDING BETWEEN 10K AND 20K One difference between the European and American stallion populations is that the European population, combined, is a lot smaller, which tends to put more of a premium on proven stallions, especially the few true up-and-coming, affordable European stallions not named Frankel. This year there are four stallions debuting in [...]

KENTUCKY VALUE SIRES: The group of sires which went to stud in the U.S. in 2011 and had their first foals in 2012 (so we abbreviate as F2012) has been a very interesting group to follow, with as many as a dozen sires–maybe more–which have been jockeying for position at every signpost. While there are [...]

Here we begin the series where it becomes clear why, after meeting me for 10 minutes, the late John Finney asked: “what was your name again? Opinionheim?” Yes, here we talk about horses which for some reason or another strike me as 'good value', although–caution to commercial breeders–my definition of 'good value' is probably more [...]

Over $300-million worth of horses have been sold in Kentucky, Ireland, and England in the last 2 1/2 weeks, and we're not done yet. But before talking about the sales I'd like to take a paragraph or two to highlight what I consider to be a quite remarkable achievement by Spendthrift's sire Into Mischief, which [...]

Through Tuesday there had been nine sessions of selling at the Kentucky November sales, one 'night of the stars' (though they don't call it that any more) at Fasig-Tipton, and eight sessions through the first four (of seven) books at Keeneland. A total of 1,783 horses had sold (actually just 88, or 5% of the [...]