The Best Sires: APEX Views

Annual Progeny Earnings index sire ratings are earnings-based and a variation on the average-earnings index. Developed in the late 1980s, APEX ratings address two issues that affect the average-earnings index: the potential for the index to be skewed beyond credibility by one huge earner, and the tendency for sires' indexes to be inflated in respect to the practical commercial world to which they are applied.

As developed at Racing Update and produced by The Jockey Club Information Systems, APEX ratings begin by separating runners in a year, in any jurisdiction—for example, North America—into four earnings classes: "A Runners" (the top 2% of earners in a year), "B Runners" (the next 2%), "C Runners" (the next 4%), and "all other runners" (the remaining 92%). The three classes are also combined as the top 8% (ABC Runners).

Besides these class gradations, APEX ratings are also calculated by region (North America, Europe, Japan) and age (2, 3, 4, and 5+). In all, there are 17 APEX calculations, of which the most important class measurement is a sire's overall "A Runner Index." But there are quite a few other different and interesting angles to look at, depending on the objective of the query; if you want to spend $15,000 on a yearling and find out the best sires of 'B Runners' (in North America, earners of $75,000—$100,000 in a season) in the Mid-Atlantic, APEX ratings can tell you.

The object of APEX ratings, first of all, is to be theoretically sound but, equally, practically useful. My teams have never been interested in making ivory-tower pronouncements; we are only interested in producing real, practical information to be used by breeders and buyers in the trenches.

In order to achieve that, we imposed two limitations on the data. First, we restrict the data to the previous seven years, primarily so that once-great sires who have tailed off do not get credited with still being the stars they once were—this happens plenty. Second, we throw out all sires who do not have at least 10 named 3-year-olds of the past year covered—so, for 2019, it is 10 or more foals of 2016. We do not rate sires until they have 3-year-olds, only because freshman sire ratings are much too volatile.

About a fifth of foals are by a third of sires who have fewer than 10 foals in a crop, and eliminating them removes the misleading inflation of the average-earnings index that results in breeders and buyers assuming that sires are better than they actually are in the hard, cold world of the commercial auction marketplace. In the APEX ratings, 1.00 really does equal an average sire.

At the end of 2019, there were 748 sires in North America, Europe (for these purposes, U.K./Ireland, France, Germany), and Japan who qualified for APEX ratings. Of those, 409 North American and European sires had 200 or more "year-starters" (in this system, as with the average-earnings index, one horse is counted as one runner every year it starts) over the seven-year period (2013-19) and were eligible for inclusion in our series of "leaders' lists." 

We publish here four "top 50" leaders lists: by A Runner and ABC Runner Index, and by number of A Runners and ABC Runners over the same period; keep in mind, just as a horse qualifies as a "year-starter" every year it starts, one horse can be an A Runner every year it races, as long as its earnings exceed the A Runner threshold for that year. We don't include Japanese sires in these lists (unless they are horses who have just gone to Japan and still have the vast majority of their runners in North America and Europe) as their racing is overwhelmingly focused domestically.

We also publish the same four categorizations for the two youngest "sire crops," with no minimum number of year-starters once they qualify as an APEX sire. In North America and Europe, there are 85 qualifying sires with their first 4-year-olds of 2019 (designated F2015 sires) and 69 sires with their first 3-year-olds (designated F2016 sires). We use a "top 15" for each category for these two sire crops.

We also include tables showing the leading sires by number of A Runners and ABC Runners in 2019 alone, and, finally, for those who are operating in regional North American markets, we look at 154 sires with APEX ratings from seven regions. If you haven't heard yet of Grazen and Square Eddie , Central Banker , Souper Speedy , and Weigelia , sharpen your pencils; all will be revealed.

Tables 1-4: 409 North American/European Sires with 200+ Year-Starters 2013-19 

View tables here.

Table 1: Top 50 Sires by A Runner Index

This table ran in my previous column dated Jan. 20, but we include it for symmetry, plus it is the most important of all 17 APEX ratings in that it is a class index for the best sires. Historically, only the best sires achieve A Runner indexes of 4.00 or more. This year, there are four, the top 1% of 409 sires: Frankel (6.20); his sire, the incomparable Galileo (5.96); Dubawi (5.08); and War Front  (4.35).

The top all-American sires are Medaglia d'Oro  (3.69), Tapit  (3.45), and Uncle Mo  (3.38). Completing the top 10 are Europeans Dansili (3.22, now retired) and Sea The Stars (3.20), and Ghostzapper  (3.13), ahead of Curlin  (2.96) and Shamardal (2.87). Only four sires in the top 25 had their first foals in 2012 or later: F2014 Frankel, F2013 Uncle Mo, F2015 Camelot (2.66), and F2012 Quality Road  (2.58).

Table 2: Top 50 Sires by Number of A Runners

Sires with their first foals in 2011 or earlier have had seven full seasons of racing from 2013-19, whereas sires with first foals 2012 didn't have runners until 2014, so they only have six years of racing; first foals 2013, five seasons, etc. So these younger sire crops are disadvantaged in the "numbers" tables. Nothing could touch Galileo in these tables. The stallion has 242 A Runners since the beginning of 2013, with Dubawi (150) a distant second and the top American sire, Tapit (140), third.

The rest of the top 10 are all also Kentucky sires: Medaglia d'Oro (111), Kitten's Joy  (109), War Front (103), Scat Daddy (96), Giant's Causeway (92), Candy Ride  (90), and Speightstown (88). Shamardal (85) and Dansili (82) come next, ahead of Ghostzapper (80) and Curlin (79). F2013 Uncle Mo (64) ranks No. 20, with five crops racing rather than seven, and F2014 Frankel has 60 A Runners, with four. Remember that one horse can count as one A Runner every year (up to seven) it reaches the A Runner earnings threshold.

Table 3: Top 50 Sires by ABC Runner Index

Here the scale is lower because an A Runner index is based on a comparison to 2%, whereas the ABC Runner scale is based on 8%; thus, a sire with an ABC Index of 2.50 means (x 8) that 20% of his runners are ABC Runners. The top four sires by A Runner Index are also the top four by ABC Index, and all four exceed 20% ABC Runners/year-starters: Frankel (2.89 = 23.12%), Galileo (2.82 = 22.56%), Dubawi (2.77 = 22.08%), and War Front (2.54 = 20.32%). Curlin (2.24), Ghostzapper (2.21), Tapit (2.19), and Into Mischief  (2.19) come next, all between 17-18% ABC Runners. Regional sires with smaller numbers of runners take two of the next three spots: Weigelia (2.18), a grandson of Danzig (by Safely Mark, who was by Danzig out of Safely Kept), who stands in Pennsylvania; and Grazen (2.07), by Alydar's son Benchmark, in California. Medaglia d'Oro (2.13) splits them to rank No. 10. California sires Square Eddie (2.00) and Unusual Heat (1.94) also rank among the top 20.

Table 4: Top 50 Sires by Number of ABC Runners

Galileo (458) led Tapit (356), who ranked third in that category, by 102 A Runners, and he leads him by exactly the same number of ABC Runners. But Tapit runs second in this category, dropping Dubawi (326) back a place to third. Interestingly, both Galileo and Tapit had exactly the same number (2030) of year-starters, averaging a whopping 290 runners a year. Again, American sires fill out most of the top 10: Kitten's Joy (275), Candy Ride (260), Speightstown (259), Medaglia d'Oro (256), Giant's Causeway (256), War Front (240), Scat Daddy (240), plus veteran European sire (and sire of sires) Invincible Spirit (240). Nineteen sires had more than 200 ABC Runners; More Than Ready 's 203 is an average of 29 ABC Runners per year.

Tables 5-8: Top 15 of 85 F2015 NA-EU Sires

For these tables, we remove the thresholds for year-starters. These sires had their first 4-year-olds racing in 2019, and two European sires head the respective lists: Darley's Farhh, a son of Pivotal whose form tied in with Frankel (he was beaten 6L and 7L by him and came back the following season to win group 1 races in his only two starts), is the leading NA-EU F2015 sire by both A Runner Index (4.35) and ABC Index (2.31 = 18.48% of runners).

Coolmore's Camelot, a triple classic winner (QIPCO English Two Thousand Guineas (G1) and Investec Epsom Derby (G1) and Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby (G1)) by Montjeu, is the leader in both "numbers" categories with 23 A Runners and 55 ABC Runners. Camelot (2.66) is also No. 2 by A Runner Index. Intello (2.37), a son of Galileo raced by the Wertheimers who has alternated between England's Cheveley Park Stud and France's Haras du Quesnay (at Quesnay this year), is third by A Runner Index, followed by Declaration of War (2.19) and France's surprising Pedro The Great (2.12), who unfortunately died in 2019. Declaration of War, sold by Coolmore to Japan for the 2019 breeding season, is also No. 2 by A Runners (16) and No. 3 by ABC Runners (43)—as well as having sired the winners of the Melbourne Cup (G1) and Australian Derby (G1) from his Australian crops.

Several other F2015 sires are showing encouraging signs but are "on the bubble" and standing for under $20,000 in 2020: WinStar's Paynter  (1.71 A Index and equal third with Intello, with 12 A Runners) and Take Charge Indy  (1.61 A Index) both also tied for fourth with Shanghai Bobby with 35 ABC Runners; also Spendthrift's Jimmy Creed  and Adena Springs' Point of Entry , both with 1.40 A Runner indexes and similar ABC indexes—Jimmy Creed 34 ABC Runners (1.70), Point of Entry 32 (1.60). Another horse who could have a big 2020 is Hill 'n' Dale Farms' Violence , who is No. 2 by number of ABC Runners with 46.

Tables 9-12: Top 15 of 69 F2016 NA-EU Sires

Four European sires with 100 or more year-starters dominate this group, which had their first 3-year-olds racing in 2019 and have their first 4-year-olds in 2020. Juddmonte's Kingman and Coolmore's No Nay Never have shot up to 150,000 stud fees in their respective currencies. No Nay Never has 11 A Runners (2.94 A Index) and 29 ABC Runners (1.94); Kingman has 9 A Runners (2.08) and 31 ABC Runners (1.79). Coolmore's Australia (€27,500) is tied with Kingman with 9 A Runners (2.38) and is tied with England's Lanwades Stud's Sea The Moon and America's top sire of ABC Runners, Airdrie's Cairo Prince , with 21 each. Sea The Moon (3.01) actually has the highest A Runner Index and ABC Index (1.97) of the four top Europeans, which must make him a good buy this year at £15,000.

The top American sire with 100 or more A Runners by A Runner Index is New York's McMahon of Saratoga Farm's Central Banker (2.40), a son of Speightstown who is also the leading U.S. sire of A Runners (6) thus far. Adena Springs' Mucho Macho Man  (2.36), who became the runaway leading third-crop sire of 2020 when Mucho Gusto romped in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes Presented by Runhappy (G1) Jan. 25, was No. 2 by A Runner Index and tied for second with Cairo Prince (5) by number of A Runners. But the top F2016 sires by A Runner Index were two sires with small numbers of runners: Ruler of The World (3.85), now transferred to France's Haras de Bouquetot from Coolmore and the sire of Iridessa, a group 1 winner in three countries; and Ontario's Souper Speedy (3.45), a son of Indian Charlie (Uncle Mo's sire) who's been knocking it out of the park at Woodbine. He's also the leading F2016 sire by ABC Index (3.02).

Tables 13-14: Leading Sires of 2019 A Runners & ABC Runners

Here we look at just the results for 2019, and four sires rate as absolute standouts: Galileo (32), Dubawi (25), and Tapit (24) all had 20 or more A Runners last year, and Into Mischief (70) was by far the leading sire of ABC Runners. This goes a long way toward explaining why he was champion sire: to have 70 runners who are all paying their way or better (the financial definition of an ABC Runner), that is a huge number. Galileo (56), Dubawi (54), and Tapit (49) were 2-3-4 by number of 2019 ABC Runners, and Into Mischief (18) was tied with Frankel (18) for fourth place by number of 2019 A Runners.

A total of 26 sires had 10 or more A Runners in 2019, and 24 sires had 30 or more ABC Runners. Frankel (18/39) and seven American sires each had 12 or more A Runners/37 ABC Runners: Curlin (16/43), Ghostzapper (12/40), Candy Ride (17/39), Street Sense  (13/39), Speightstown (16/38), Scat Daddy (13/38), and Uncle Mo (13/37). Shamardal had 16 A Runners/34, and Medaglia d'Oro 14/30. One horse who really bubbled up in 2019 was Lane's End F2014 sire (first 5-year-olds 2019) The Factor , who spent 2018 in Japan but came back for 2019 and had eight A/37 ABC Runners last year and thus looks a really good value at $17,500 for 2020. Another F2014 sire who had a big year was Juddmonte's Bated Breath, who had 10 A Runners/20, including three winners at Royal Ascot; he's got to be chock full at £12,500 this year.

Tables 15-16: Leading Regional Sires

Of the 748 Northern Hemisphere sires assigned APEX ratings at the end of 2019, 154—a tick over 20%—stand or stood in six North American states and the Canadian province of Ontario. Table 15 has each of the seven "regions" listed in order of A Runner Index. 

California, with 49 sires, has nearly a third of the 154, including five sires with A Runner indexes over 1.50. Grazen (2.68) has the top A Runner Index, and another son of Benchmark, Idiot Proof (2.06), also makes the list but with limited representation. Square Eddie (2.28), a son of Smart Strike who has been a stalwart of the Paul Reddam stable, is second, with perennial champion California sire Unusual Heat (2.10), who died in 2017, third. Sir Prancealot  (1.74), a rare "reverse shuttler" from Australia to California (Good Journey was the last), is a massive addition to the California stallion roster, considering his 10.34 North American A Runner Index, garnered mostly in California.

There are 23 sires rated in Florida, of which Ocala Stud's Adios Charlie , a son of Indian Charlie, is the clear leader with a 2.16 A Runner Index and 1.81 ABC Index. Of the 25 in Louisiana, juvenile champion Storm the Court's sire, Court Vision  (1.46), tops the charts, though he stood in Ontario before coming to Louisiana's Acadiana Farm. Central Banker (2.40) is the top sire in New York and also the top North American F2016 sire with 100 or more year-starters. Souper Speedy (3.45) and Signature Red  (3.37) top a small group of Ontario sires that also includes Canada's leading 2019 sire by progeny earnings, Silent Name  (1.98). Tops in the Mid-Atlantic region are Pennsylvania's Weigelia (1.67), who is also among the national leaders with a 2.18 ABC Index, and Maryland's Great Notion  (1.40).

For a free copy of our group's 43-page APEX 2020 PDF magazine, with 23 APEX tables, please email emily@billoppenheim.com. APEX data for 748 sires is also available on www.billoppenheim.com. Follow me on Twitter at @billoppenheim.