Harbinger injured ...

davidjohnson said:
Rail Link stood for £12,500 after a disappointing 4-y-o campaign, Strategic Prince for €9,000. I'd guess (and it's no more than that, I don't know the bloodstock world) that they won't get £20,000 for him.
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Those examples make me more certain that the horse will be nearer the £20,000 mark than £10,000.
 
Can't say I agree, Gal - his dam side simply isn't strong enough. PENANG PEARL was Listed class only and none of her other progeny have achieved black type. I see Sir Michael is now saying he would have been a world beater but no matter how much hype there is about the horse, the fact is that he wasn't sound enough to finsh his 4yo season and that surely has to be a bit of a worry.

I suppose it's still pretty early days as to whether DANSILI will/is a good sire of sires ?
 
Strategic Prince was very precocious,(May foal) he had speed, and has a stonking pedigree. He retired sound (I think ?) He raced one time less than Harbinger.
 
Sheikh said:
Strategic Prince was very precocious,(May foal) he had speed, and has a stonking pedigree. He retired sound (I think ?) He raced one time less than Harbinger.
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Or you could say he hardly trained on and retired early therefore not going any way to prove he was durable.

The biggest difference is Harbinger has shown himself to be capable of one of the best performances of all time, whereas Strategic Prince probably not even in the top 1000..
 
Hamm said:
Or you could say he hardly trained on and retired early therefore not going any way to prove he was durable.

The biggest difference is Harbinger has shown himself to be capable of one of the best performances of all time, whereas Strategic Prince probably not even in the top 1000..
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I can cut SP some slack for not training on due to his late foaling date and his early and busy start to his racing career. I believe Mr Cole can be tough on them too.

Certainly Harbingers biggest attribute is the rating he achieved in that brilliant run but for me he has plenty of negatives. Just not my cup of tea as a stallion.
 
No 2yos yet Aragorn - first crop are yearlings of 2009.

Only yearling sold thus far this year was a filly and went for 2,950 (think that's in sterling) whilst his foals in 2009 averaged 15,607 (again think that's in sterling).
 
Didn't he win the Arc in 06? Taken a while hasn't it or is this a result of DJ's earlier point that he was originally brought back to training as a 4yo so missed that covering season?
 
He was brought back into training, but was injured and never raced again after the Arc.
 
Hmmm... doesn't sound too good, does it - HARBINGER races 9 times and retires injured. RAIL LINK raced seven times, ditto...

DANSILI obviously does get some sound and durable runners but a quick glance down his progeny list shows a fair few who only race a very few times. Sure it's probably the same for a number of other top class stallions as well and it's not going to make a jot of difference to his book but you'd probably not want to send him or his sons a fragile mare ?
 
But Dansili (in modern terms) was a pretty durable animal. He ran 13 times in 18 months as a 3yo / 4yo; all bar one of these was a group race. He was placed in 11 of these 13 races. And fourth in the G1 Prix Jean Prat in one of the other two.

Of his stakes performers, he has Bewitched (12 starts, still aged 3), Strawberrydaquiri (14, aged 4), Dandino (7 starts, aged 3), Famous Name (18 starts, aged 5) and Illustrious Blue (55 starts, aged 7) and Zoffany (5 starts, aged 2) all going strong.

I would say that Dansili has no problems regarding durability of his stock.
 
He's an excellent sire out of a truly brilliant broodmare. His basic stats are an rough average of ten runs per offspring, which I would say is pretty acceptable. It's just misfortune, it would appear, that two of his best runners haven't been truly durable but I agree you can't crab DANSILI for that!

But it will influence whether or not his sons, in this case, HARBINGER, are going to be judged as fashionable, so his initial stud fee will be extremely important. Too expensive and only a handful of wealthy owner-breeders will support him, too cheap and he'll be oversubscribed with a probably mish-mash of mares, making it hard work for him to succeed..
 
Do you think Dansili offspring get injured due to their preference for good to firm? Some of them do seem to run so well on that ground, which, as we know, can be hard on their legs even if they act on it. The Dansili mare we had was big and heavy and two trainers thought she would need softish ground but she actually excelled once she was put on good to firm.
 
Songsheet, "ten runs per offspring, which I would say is pretty acceptable". Allowing for perhaps a wonky debut and even follow-up race, legs to be a bit sore when the ground's hard, etc., that's not a lot of bang for what I imagine you're thinking will be a pretty hefty buck. I'm sure that in the stratosphere of top owners (that usually means the richest), even five runs is acceptable provided the animal's won the Guineas and the Derby, but don't you feel that getting just 10 races in a lifetime's a bit sparse? Or were you just referring to DANSILI?

Even then, STRAWBERRYDAIQUIRI (DANSILI - STRAWBERRY MOON) at age 4 (wins include Group 2 Windsor Forest at Royal Ascot), has had 7 runs so far, and that would leave her with just three before being let go - in her case, absolutely no doubt to the paddocks. But for a boy, like ROSSETTI (out of SNOWDROPS/Gulch) who's still a colt and therefore possibly going to be gelded in spite of 31 from his first two runs, it would be a brief career. If they're vulnerable to their preferred ground (an odd dichotomy), I guess I can see that getting 10 runs could be quite difficult, though, so perhaps that's what you mean - otherwise, horses like THE TATLING look brutally over-raced!
 
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If you take into account, though, that a biggish proportion of horses never make it to the track at all, and that others will be withdrawn from racing after a run or two because they're no good, ten runs doesn't seem too bad an average to me.
 
I can hear the tapping of Excel spreadsheets as someone has worked out - or got access to - the average amount of runs a horse in training has before it's either conked out or retired! It would be interesting, though, to know what DANSILI's have managed to date before having to shuffle off to the repair shop.
 
The Horse Racing Ireland Fact Book 2008 states there were about 12,100 horses returned as being in training in Ireland that year and that the total number of runners was about 35,000. In other words, the average number of runs per horse in training was about three.

These figures, however, would include those horses which were in training but didn't make it to the track.
 
I think the slight worry that I would have is that, as Isinglass says, quite a fewof DANSILI's offspring do appear have a preference for firmer ground, which can indeed have a big influence on their soundness for obvious reasons which, when you are looking at them for stallion prospects, would give you pause for thought.

If I had the money to spare though, I would still be first in the queue to send Songy to DANSILI, mind! Just maybe not his sons til their stock was proven on the track.
 
Thank you, Grey. That's interesting - never heard of the Fact Book before. Do we have one for the UK? I've not seen that among Weatherbys ads for publications.
 
Grey said:
The Horse Racing Ireland Fact Book 2008 states there were about 12,100 horses returned as being in training in Ireland that year and that the total number of runners was about 35,000. In other words, the average number of runs per horse in training was about three.

These figures, however, would include those horses which were in training but didn't make it to the track.
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But that gives runs per year, not runs per career.
 
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