Several years ago, some time before Mother Russia produced Nother Russia, and certainly before Arctic Breeze foaled Rio Querari, my mother mused whether Windrush would be a good broodmare sire.
Oscar Foulkes writes that in recent months, Katak, We’re Jamming and River Queraress have flown the flag for their Windrush dams, prompting exploration of the question.
I’m not sure exactly how one would interrogate data to draw any conclusions about broodmare sires in general. The champion sire of today is often the champion broodmare sire of the future, which to a large extent is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Champion sires cover the best mares, so by definition their daughters will be well-bred. They, in turn, will be given the best opportunities.
Windrush (Seeking The Gold – Tempest Dancer)
Windrush went to stud with all the right credentials – a graded stakes-winner by Seeking the Gold, and out of a good Storm Cat mare – but his stats put him slap-bang in the middle of the averages. He can’t be regarded as a success.
However, he could give substantial, well- topped horses, and many of his daughters do the same. This is always a good starting point.
The Storm Cat part may be relevant in the pedigree of Nother Russia (inbred to him 2×4), and it’s hard not to get excited about Seeking the Gold being out of a Buckpasser mare. He was the grandaddy of broodmare sires of the 20 th century, or he just sired a disproportionate number of daughters that produced hugely influential stallions.
Whatever his sons never did for him as stallions, his daughters have more than made up for!
While on the subject of data, I should mention that my sole means of researching this was thanks to privately-held databases of Raceform and ARO. Access to good data, which can be queried to reveal important learnings, is key to any successful enterprise, and in this respect our industry bodies do not serve us well.
Harry Hotspur (Mexico II – Saturna)
Before I get back to Windrush, I should mention a couple of observations, or musings, if I may be allowed this tangent. The first relates to Harry Hotspur, the brilliant sprinter, individual of exquisite quality, top-class stallion, and the carrier of a superb speed pedigree.
If you page through sales catalogues, you’ll seldom find a female line that traces to a Harry Hotspur mare. He sired over 250 fillies, most of which would have gone to stud, presumably visited top stallions, and yet hardly a trace remains.
His progeny were enormously successful on the racetrack, but the influence appears to have not extended to multiple generations.
Normandy’s pride and joy
Another observation relates to Abadan, the tail-female line sire of eight Grade I winners bred at Normandy, not to mention many more at other studs. He would have produced approximately 100 fillies, and yet he left an enduring legacy.
For more about Abadan, follow this link: https://www.tba.co.za/2021/12/17/abadan-ii-gb-1947/.
Stallions like this don’t come along often.
Back to Windrush, who has just over 80 daughters at stud (roughly one-third of all the fillies he sired). Thus far, nine of them have produced stakes-winners. I don’t know the breed average, so I couldn’t tell you how good this is, but my gut feel is that a better than 10% strike is decent. From what I’ve seen in the paddocks, I would expect this number to grow.
The format of the data provided to me by Karel Miedema is that the foals are all arranged under their dams. What leapt out at me was the extraordinary strike rate of some of the mares.
Every one of Rio Querari’s siblings is a multiple winner. Lil’Bacio, A Daughters Legacy
and Sunsational are similarly prolific mares.
Tragically, Mother Russia produced just Nother Russia, so we’ll never know if she could have been as consistent.
.
On the flipside, the lesser mares bred hardly any winners.
This brings me to the next observation, which may be somewhat crude, but it ties into the strategy of fishing where the fish are.
In essence, it’s worth following the mares that consistently produce multiple winners, especially by lesser stallions. The challenge is that it takes a few foals – good or bad – before one finds this out.
We have seven Windrush mares at Normandy, representing a little under one-fifth of our mares. That we have them is more a consequence of the families they represent, than them being by Windrush. In this sense, we are following the ore of gold they carry; the blood of families that have been tried and tested in the stud over the course of 51 years.
We’ll mine that vein of ore as long as it keeps giving us winners – we’ll be ‘seeking the gold’, in a manner of speaking.
