Leroi, ‘The Giant’ Top AW Sires

We first planned to run the statistics on the sires of all-weather runners before the Keeneland meet began, so TJCIS (The Jockey Club Information Systems) ran them for us on Apr. 2, after Dubai World Cup night. Since then, Britain had its first racing ever on Good Friday, highlighted by a £1-million card on Lingfield’s AW surface (which attracted a capacity crowd of nearly 9,000), and Keeneland has announced that it is going back to dirt. So this month’s AW racing is not included in these statistics. However, in the 8 1/2 years since Turfway Park kicked off all-weather racing in North America in September, 2005, at the tracks covered for this report (North America and UAE; Britain, France, Ireland, and Italy under ‘foreign’; data provided by The Jockey Club Information Systems, Inc.), 5,311 different stallions have sired 135,117 individual runners on the AW, which have earned a shade under $1.9 billion–$1,890,094,115, to be precise. Many thanks to Brianne Stanley and Gary Hadden, who burned the midnight oil to calculate the AW average-earnings indexes and perform other miracles from the TJCIS data. 
    We’ll resist the temptation just now to re-hash all the arguments pro- and against AW tracks in North America–the die is cast, with Del Mar and Keeneland returning to dirt. There will be plenty of people monitoring the catastrophic breakdown rate; the many trainers and handicappers who prefer dirt have won the argument for now, but there will be immense pressure from do-gooders like me who believe ‘safety first,’ not ‘safety second,’ is still a perfectly valid point of view, so if the catastrophic breakdown rates on Del Mar’s and Keeneland’s new dirt tracks are materially higher than on the all-weather, there’s no danger it will be swept under the rug as ‘the price of doing business.’ 
    So all-weather racing continues–for the moment–at Arlington, Golden Gate, Turfway, Presque Isle and Woodbine. For North American racing operations these statistics may therefore be more relevant to the export market than to domestic racing. Nobody with any scientific credibility has yet satisfactorily explained why all-weather racing is successful virtually every place else on the planet, but a failure in the U.S.–probably because its failure has more to do with the strength of rival political factions within the U.S. industry than it has to do with science. 
    Of the 5,311 sires which have had AW runners at the tracks designated since September, 2005, there are 533 (almost exactly 10%) which have had 70 or more individual AW starters (click here to see the alphabetical list of these 533 sires, or click here to see the alphabetical list of all 5,311 sires). We’ve used these 533 to devise Leaders’ lists, and we publish the top 50 herewith in two key categories: (1) sires’ cumulative AW AEI since September, 2005; and (2) by the actual number of AW stakes winners during the same time period. 
    Both top 50 lists come with some qualification. Let’s first look at the top 50 by cumulative AW AEI. The issue with any average-earnings index is the impact of one big payday, such as the G1 Dubai World Cup, on the overall averages. This impact is clearly demonstrated by the number one ranking of Lanwades Stud’s new 2014 British stallion, Leroidesanimaux. He has one AW stakes winner–Animal Kingdom in the 2013 Dubai World Cup–who is largely responsible for his sire’s top ranking in this category, with a 5.03 AW cumulative AEI (again, that’s cumulative since September, 2005). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way being critical of ‘Leroi,’ in fact I’m a big fan of his; I just wanted to point out the effect of that one big payday on the statistics. Generally, also, there is a huge difference in class between AW racing in North America, where Grade I races in California and Kentucky have routinely been run on the all-weather, and the European all-weather tracks. Just look at the difference between the percentage of AW stakes races to all AW races in North America (1.88%) and the ‘foreign’ tracks (0.44%). Incidentally, Meydan results are counted as part of North America (probably dating back to when the Dubai World Cup was on dirt and it was important to include those earnings for North American sires), which maybe is anomalous but doesn’t materially affect any outcomes. 
    A glance at the top 50 AW sires by cumulative average-earnings index also illustrates the effect of AW racing at Woodbine. They have a long season with good purses (very debatable if they could even have that long a season back on dirt). Of the eight sires with cumulative AW AEI’s of 2.50+, five are (actually, in most cases, were; I think Old Forester is the only one still standing there) Ontario sires. Rather than decry the prominence of Canadian sires on this list, what it actually shows is how successful their AW program has been–there’s no way these sires would be so high up on average-earnings lists if they didn’t have such a long season with consistently good purses. They benefit hugely from AW racing–so much so that, if I were at Woodbine and looking at the dismantling of AW racing down south, I’d start reminding people that I was from a different country. Whatever problems Woodbine has been having or is going to have, AW racing is definitely not the culprit in their case. 
    Since the opening of Meydan in 2010, there have been five runnings of the G1 Dubai World Cup, worth $6 million to the winner, on the Tapeta synthetic surface. The first two, won by Brazilian-bred Gloria de Campeao (by Impression, an Argentinian-bred son of Rubiano) and the Japanese horse Victoire Pisa (by Neo Universe) had no impact on the AW sire ratings we are working with. The three winners since have been: Monterosso, by Dubawi; Animal Kingdom; and African Story, by Pivotal. You’ll note that Dubawi (3.00) ranks third on the AW AEI list, though please note also that Dubawi has nine AW stakes winners. He is the only European sire among the 10 sires we list from both top 50 lists (cumulative AW AEI and cumulative AW SW), so there can be no doubt Dubawi is a really good AW sire, even aside from Monterosso’s Dubai World Cup win. Pivotal now has 511 AW starters since September, 2005–the most of any sire in the top 50 by AEI–so African Story’s World Cup win certainly improves his AW AEI (1.94), but it obviously has less impact than it does for Leroidesanimaux, with just 72 AW runners. 
    When we work through all the qualifiers affecting our reading of the top 50 list by cumulative AW AEI for the past 8 1/2 years, the two horses in the top 10 (note Kingsalsa in 10th, with a 2.40 AEI, illustrating the positive effect of installing AW surfaces in France, particularly Deauville and Chantilly) which stand out, aside from the Dubai World Cup and aside from Woodbine, are Dubawi (both in spite of and including his World Cup win) and War Front, who also has nine AW stakes winners, but from only 89 AW starters, and an AEI of 2.50. I would call that a very strong showing. 
The other sort we did was by total of AW stakes winners since September, 2005. Here there is a big bias in favor of North American sires, since there have been roughly five times as many AW stakes in North America than ‘foreign.’ The highest-ranking European sires in this category are: Invincible Spirit (11), followed by Dubawi, Dansili, and Cape Cross, with nine each. There’s a lot of Danzig in that little group (three of the four), and if you then add in War Front, there’s plenty of evidence the Danzig line likes synthetic tracks just fine. 
    The clear leading sire by number of AW stakes winners since September, 2005, is Giant’s Causeway, with 23. All right, he has had 524 AW starters, but nonetheless it’s crystal clear that Giant’s Causeways act on it just like they act on everything else. He’s a hugely prolific and high-quality sire, including, clearly, on the all-weather. Three horses are tied for second with 16 AW SW each: Tiznow, Harlan’s Holiday, and, perhaps surprisingly, the California sire Tribal Rule. I wouldn’t have expected him to be ahead of Street Cry, Smart Strike (15 each), and A.P. Indy (14) on many lists. 
    Finally, we’d like to highlight 10 sires–nine North American plus Dubawi–among the 14 which figure among the top 50 both by AEI and by Number of AW stakes winners. Besides the venerable A.P. Indy (1.71 AEI, 14 SW), the veterans Smart Strike (1.70, 15) and Street Cry (2.33, 15), and the now Japanese-based Empire Maker (2.01, 14), the relatively younger active AW standouts are: F2006 Candy Ride (2.28, 11) and Speightstown (2.00, 12); F2007 sires Dubawi (3.00, 9) and Ghostzapper (1.86, 7); F2008 sire War Front (2.50, 9); and F2009 sire Scat Daddy (1.82, 7), whose Frac Daddy reinforced the point with an impressive win last weekend in Keeneland’s GIII Ben Ali S.