Blood brothers still leaving a legacy

They were famous brothers, but not until they had established their reputations as sires.

As racehorses, one was a leading member of his generation and the other a complete failure, in so much that the accomplishments amounted to only one unplaced start, when he suffered a career-ending leg injury. And as it transpired the legacies bestowed by Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer) and his year-younger brother Fairy King (Northern Dancer) are quite different.

Sadler’s Wells, a top-class mile-and-a-quarter horse who stayed well enough to finish second in a French Derby and King George VI And Queen Elizabeth II Stakes – both over 12 furlongs, has become the sire that is synonymous with top-class stayers and middle-distance horses in Europe in the past 20 years. Without him and his great sire son Galileo, one wonders if the Derby and Oaks might enjoy quite the same status as they do today.

On the other hand, we have Sadler’s Wells’s baby brother Fairy King, who is responsible for one of the speediest and hottest sire lines in Australia today.

Same but different

But there was early evidence that these two sons of Northern Dancer were set on divergent paths. For a start, Fairy King started out with no reputation as a racehorse. He relied entirely on his brother’s high standing. Consequently, a comparatively low fee made it more difficult for him to achieve success. But he got there in the end and became a stud companion of his elder brother in 1994 at Coolmore after starting out at Ballysheehan Stud.

Though not as successful as Sadler’s Wells, who sired 294 Stakes winners at an outstanding rate of 17.1%, Fairy King amassed 66 Stakes winners from his northern hemisphere crops and, given his lowly beginning, his percentage of Stakes winners to runners (12.7%) is excellent, right up there with the very best.

What both brothers have in common is their ability to improve their mares: with Fairy King adding 3.6 percentage points to what his mares achieved with other sires and Sadler’s Wells 1.5 percentage points.

But one aspect where their legacies differed was the aptitude of their runners. The average winning distance of Sadler’s Wells’s stock was 10.8 furlongs, compared to Fairy King’s 7.5 furlongs. True, Fairy King’s stamina index was to some extent a function of the type of mares he covered early in his career. For instance, the first four crops had a stamina index of 7.1 furlongs, compared to the 8.2 furlongs thereafter. Moreover, his three highest-rated runners, Helissio (136), Falbrav (133) and Oath (125) all excelled over 12 furlongs.

There is no doubt that Fairy King resembled his three-parts brother Nureyev (Northern Dancer) (stamina index 8.2 furlongs) – a sire who supplied plenty of speed to go along with the class in his stock – more than he did his brother. Nine European-bred G1 winners by Fairy King were at their best at a mile or less and it was this ability to sire fast and classy runners that contributed to Fairy King’s succeed in Australia.

First crop strikes

As it transpired, Fairy King sired only three crops in Australia. But he struck gold with the first one, siring the speedy Encosta de Lago, who was a G1 winner over seven furlongs and was rated 126 by Timeform.

History also recounts that Encosta de Lago won the G2 Ascot Vale Stakes, which is the modern day G1 Coolmore Stud Stakes that has also fallen to his outstanding but ill-fated son Northern Meteor, the sire of another Coolmore hero in Zoustar, who himself got the 1-2-3 in the most recent renewal of the G1 1200m contest for three-year-olds.

Zoustar’s Coolmore trio Sunlight (TF116), Zousain (TF119) and Lean Mean Machine (TF117) are rated among the very best three-year-olds in the nation. He has already matched and surpassed some of the benchmarks set by his runners’ siblings and we are scarcely through the spring carnival. For instance, he has already surpassed the 4.7% Group winners to runners recorded by his stock’s siblings.

So, it seems Zoustar’s future is very bright indeed – just like it was for his own sire before his untimely death. But back in the mid-1980s, nobody could have foreseen the stunning success in Australia over 30 years later of a male-line descendant of a once-raced son of the great Northern Dancer.

Southern Hemisphere bred Group 1 winners descending from Fairy King