Freshmen Sires of 2008: A Case Study

How well does the market predict racetrack success?

With the excitement of the two-year-old in training sales stirring up plenty of buzz about first-crop stallions, I thought it would be interesting to take a trip back in time to evaluate freshmen stallion “classes” of the past and see how well the commercial market predicted future success on the racetrack.

While doing a full-scale study across multiple years would be the most accurate way to scientifically answer the question of how early commercial success equates to racetrack performance for stallions, this will be more of a case study of specific groups of stallions, though I may evaluate other years in the future. To start, we’re going to be looking at stallions who entered stud in 2005, and looking at their sale prices and racetrack success through 2010. In order to keep the number of stallions evaluated at a manageable level, I limited it to the top five leading first, second, and third crop sires by earnings and the top five freshman sires by yearling average, which gave me nine stallions in this class.

Overall, my findings were unsurprising and, frankly, not all that useful - some of these stallions were expected to succeed and did so, while some were highly regarded in the sales ring but failed to deliver when their first foals hit the track. Some were underdogs whose offspring proved their mettle on the racetrack and saw subsequent success in the sales ring, and others saw flashes of success but couldn’t sustain the momentum and were quickly forgotten. The elite freshman class of 2008 had a little bit of everything you could expect from a stallion career. While it’s impossible to make any conclusive statements based on the exploits of a single group of just nine stallions, I thought it would be interesting to share what I found. I hope you enjoy digging into the early careers of these stallions as much as I did!

Smarty Jones

This proved to be a remarkably strong group of stallions, with such current standouts as Tapit, Candy Ride, Medaglia d’Oro, and Speightstown all retiring to stud in 2005, but the buzz at the time was all about Smarty Jones. The 2004 Kentucky Derby and Preakness hero retired to Three Chimneys Farm for a $100,000 stud fee. It was the second consecutive season that a stallion retired for a six-digit fee, as both Empire Maker and Mineshaft had the year before. Ghostzapper would stand for an introductory fee of $200,000 the following year.

Smarty Jones covered 113 mares in his first season at stud, and mare owners looking for a quick return on his $100,000 stud fee were rewarded. Mares in foal to Smarty Jones sold for an average of $335,000 and median of $365,000 in 2005, and his first-crop weanlings sold for an average of $275,675 and median of $270,000 the following year. He bred a similar number of mares in 2006 and 2007, and the popularity of his offspring at auction continued, with his first crop selling for an average of over $200,000 in 2007.

Enthusiasm seemed to temper slightly with his two-year-olds, which still brought a six-figure average and median. However, Smarty Jones’ first crop on the track were a profound disappointment, and the market quickly adapted to that. He was the 32nd leading freshman sire of 2008, with only eight winners in 28 starters and a single stakes winner, Backtalk. His weanling average that year was just over a quarter of his 2007 stud fee, and his average as a covering sire saw a similar trend, as mares who’d be bred to him for a $100k stud fee in 2008 sold for well under half that on average. He stood for a private fee the following year and covered only 56 mares before being dropped to a $10k fee in 2010. By the fall of 2010, mares in foal to Smarty Jones were selling for a median of $3,500. He was relocated to Pennsylvania for the 2011 season.

Overall, Smarty Jones has proven to be a relatively useful sire, producing over 72% winners and 4.6% stakes winners, but certainly failed to live up to the promise of his own success and the early commercial hype.