Highlighting his crops of 101 2024 juveniles and 154 yearlings conceived after Perfect Power’s landmark juvenile campaign, Aisling Crowe of the Racing Post has hailed Ardad as a stallion with a ‘big, bold and bright’ future. The article is the second in the paper’s ‘Sires of 2024’ series, featuring after Mehmas and before Earthlight and Justify.
The story has news of trainers of the priciest of Ardad’s 2023 yearlings, including George Boughey taking charge of Crispy Cat’s €70,000 full-brother. Crispy Cat, from Ardad’s second crop, is the colt who was badly hampered when placed in the G2 Norfolk, and earned a rating superior to his sire’s when the first colt home in an especially hot running of the G2 Flying Childers.
For all that Ardad can expect strong representation from his 2024 juveniles, they were conceived before the exploits of Perfect Power, Vintage Clarets and 500,000gns mare Eve Lodge. ‘The better quality runners,’ concludes Crowe, ‘lie in the future’ and she analyses the strength of his latest books: ‘The race records held by the dams of this year’s yearlings are better than in previous seasons, with 62% of his book in 2022 having won. They include 38 Black Type performers, at a rate of 19%, with 9% black Type winners and 4% successful at Group level.’
‘A benchmark for a stallion is said to be the ability to sire a horse better than himself, and Ardad did that with the first opportunity he got.’ It’s palpable that Ardad has since received many opportunities to repeat the trick. Read the full article in our Longer reads section or, if you have a Racing Post subscription, click here to read it on the Racing Post website.
