The Green Desert Effect

Last season was remarkable for many reasons. Just as the racing scene had its glory days, so too did the breeding industry.

We had the case of the second-highest earnings ever by the Champion sire plus a new record number of stakes winners by another sire. The battle between Snitzel and I Am Invincible has also underlined, if it ever needed to be, the importance of Danzig (USA) to the world of breeding.

Yes, Danehill (USA) is a staple in Australia, but his other sire of sires son Green Desert (GB) was always more appreciated in New Zealand than Australia.

The Green Desert-Danehill sire line battle has been raging up north for decades. And it now seems that Green Desert may have finally established a reliable foothold in Australia through his star grandson I Am Invincible.

Green Desert had all the attributes as a racehorse to suit Australia. He was an early representative of the great Danzig in Europe and although he ran second in the G1 2,000 Guineas and G1 St James’s Palace S. both over 1,600m.

It soon emerged that speed was his forte, as he demonstrated when winning the G1 July Cup and G2 Vernon Sprint Cup, both over 1200m later in his 3-year-old campaign on the way to being awarded an annual Timeform rating of 127 - one point ahead of Danehill incidentally.

Green Desert went on to sire 94 stakes winners in a full and very successful stud career. That said, he probably could not be marked down as a truly great sire because he was unable to demonstrate a consistent ability to get the most from his mares.

His 94 stakes winners made up 9% of his runners but the corresponding figure for his runners’ siblings was 10.9%. But in the end, his longevity meant that he put together an outstanding top ten group of sprinter-milers whose average Timeform rating works out at 125.6, which puts him among the very best in this regard.

Table: Green Desert's Top Ten G1 Winners by Timeform Rating

European sire of sires

Today Green Desert is rightly considered a preeminent sire of sires in Europe. With Oasis Dream (GB), Cape Cross (GB) and Invincible Spirit (Ire) heading up new sire lines, the future of his male line looks assured north of the equator.

Moreover, it’s to his credit that his line is represented at all distance spectrums of European racing through the likes of Sea The Stars (Ire), the sire of dual Ascot Gold Cup (4,000m) hero Stradivarius (Ire), plus Kingman (Ire), sire of Classic-winning miler Persian King (Ire), and Showcasing (GB), whose son Advertise (GB) has won two of the top 1,200m sprints in Europe this year.

It’s fair to say that Green Desert blood will never reach the same saturation levels in Australia as Danehill’s did. Of the 396 individual stakes winners in Australia last season, 128 (32%) were from the Danehill male line.

The Green Desert line, meanwhile had only 29 stakes winners – 28 by I Am Invincible and one by his first-season sire son Brazen Beau.

I Am Invincible’s 28 were produced at a rate of 8.4%, which was the best score among sires with 100 or more runners. The next best active Australian sires by this measure were Not A Single Doubt (6.6%), Epaulette (5.9%), Zoustar (4.7%) and Exceed And Excel (4.4%). Snitzel had 13 stakes winners, but his group did post a better Timeform average (112.4) compared to the 111.2 for I Am Invincible.

It’s clear that both Snitzel and I Am Invincible will have some of the nation’s best-bred stock emerging over the coming seasons, so we can expect both to be vying for top honours for the foreseeable future, whichever way we choose to measure their success.