Treble To Galileo

In an earlier post, It Must Be Something IN The Water … I looked at the relative positions of shuttle sires in the northern and southern hemispheres, voicing the opinion that it would be short-sighted in the case of Galileo to dismiss a stamina-inclined sire down here when his oldest runners have just turned four (and even moreso when many of them have been cooling their heels over EI).

Galileo came up with a treble today, the four-year-old Nairobi in Perth and the three-year-old fillies Skye Gold (Moonee Valley) and Thebe (Kembla Grange). They won like progressive types.

There has been a 42% decline in Galileo's average yearling price from his first crop (sold 2005) to his third crop (sold 2007 when his oldest were three). In 2007, 43 of the 59 Galileo yearlings sold through the ring couldn't make $100,000 (conceived on advertised fee of $35,750 including GST). A further 11 were passed in at bids below that level.

He seemed to suffer badly when his unexpected 11 first-crop two-year-old winners didn’t go on with it at three, reinforcing the entrenched snitch against the Sadler’s Wells male line. But the emphasis in the Australian racing system doesn’t help a sire like Galileo in the early stages of a siring career. Australasia’s greatest sire Zabeel was bagged in Australia when his progeny began racing; some shareholders took notice and bailed out, much to their eternal cost. There is such a quick rush to judgment.

Trainers are only experimenting when a new line of horses comes before them, it's a trial and error process. Based on their lack of success with some sires during the initial stages some breeds can be prematurely condemned. Not that those trainers would ever admit it (I vividly recall several declaring Sackford was the next Sir Tristram when he had left a handful of early two-year-old winners). It's been my observation that as a breed trainers don't have a profound appreciation of pedigree and performance much beyond these shores. And you can't blame them, they're too busy training and forming conclusions based on their slim samples. Every corner I turn at the moment, someone is breathing Lonhro on me. Truth is, I don't have a clue whether he's going to make it or not, but they have only contested five races so far (as at 29 December) so I figure there's a wide margin of error still.

With the market running hot and cold on Galileo, and with him simultaneously starring up north, it wasn’t surprising he didn’t make a reappearance down under in 2007. If he does gather momentum here, there are about 200 yearlings and foals by him still to go through the system.

I, for one, hope he does kick on because on performance and pedigree he represents the pinnacle of the classic breed and as an individual they don’t come much nicer. In an ideal world that's the sort of horse one hopes will perpetuate the breed.

Disclosure: Galileo: I’ve never booked a mare to him, don’t own shares in him, and have only bought one. Lonhro ditto.