According to this article, Frankel covered 195 mares this year - 82 of which were Group winners! That sounds very high to me as normally Juddmonte don't cover more than 140 with their stallions, but it's possible I guess. I'll be able to verify when I go back to work in November.
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Lot 330: 1.6 million reasons to doubt whether this really will be Frankel's weakest crop to date
Patrick McCann
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7:33PM, SEP 28 2017
The sale-topper took the breath away. But how surprising can that be, when the prowess of his sire is such that he can take away memory itself?
For the racetrack deeds of Frankel's first two crops – extended at Newmarket on Thursday by his latest star,
Elarqam – appear to be causing a contagion of amnesia among many bloodstock agents.
You would do well now, certainly, to find one prepared to confess a share in a supercilious consensus when his stock first went under the hammer.
He had failed to stamp his stock, they said. Well, maybe so – at least until you saw them gallop. By that stage, it became excitingly apparent that he had stamped a lot of them with that trademark buoyancy of his. This current crop of yearlings was conceived, however, after Frankel's first foals had met a distinctly hesitant reception.
Of the 114 mares he covered in 2015, 37 were winners at Group level – highly impressive, on the face of it, until compared with the 38 Group/Grade 1 winners he had received in his debut season. The 130 enticed to persevere in 2016, meanwhile, were down to 32 Group winners.
Congratulations, then, to the Marlhill House Stud team for keeping the faith.
The only lot of the sale to surpass the Galileo filly who caused so much excitement on Tuesday – indeed, its only other seven-figure yearling – was likewise contested by representatives of Godolphin and Coolmore. This time it was the latter who gained the day, at €1.6 million, in a partnership including Zayat Stables who enter Ballydoyle for the first time with a spectacular colt.
Frankel: thanks for the memories
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Frankel: thanks for the memories
Zayat have done productive business with Coolmore on the other side of the pond, not least over American Pharoah. And its agent Justin Casse, who signed for this one, has long been among the more infectious enthusiasts for the progeny of
Frankel.
It will be interesting to see what kind of bump in the road – if any – awaits Frankel, through his third and fourth crops. He is hardly the first stallion to suffer a (relative) slackening of mare quality, pending public examination of his initial runners; which examination, of course, he has meanwhile passed with flying colours.
But if this knockout Orby graduate is anything to go by, we will hardly notice the join before his sire's graphline surges back up via the 82 Group winners (out of no fewer than 195 partners altogether) he covered this year.