Let's be honest here, at the start of this season nobody was tipping Widden Stud's Your Song to trouble Pierro and All Too Hard in the race to be Australia's Champion First Season Sire.
Yet here we are with four months of the season to run and Your Song has seven winners on his tally including the stakes-winner Split Lip (pictured below) as well as Group placed Memento and stakes-placed Peristrophe and Soundcheck.
No other sire comes close to his record which stands at seven winners from 19 runners and among those winners are recent winners Devolving and Miss Exfactor, who are both likely to line up in stakes races before the season is out.
Why are we surprised about this success?We shouldn't be.
Your Song is a son of Fastnet Rock, who has sired the Champion Australian First Season Sire for the past two seasons running with Smart Missile taking the title last year after Hinchinbrook was successful the previous year.
He was a brilliant Group I winning sprinter from a powerful international Black Type family and was bred and raced by Gooree Stud, who gave us Northern Meteor, the Champion First Season sire of 2012/2013.
Your Song has a lot of positives and his statistics to date compare favourably with many of our current leading sires.
At the same point in his first season, his sire Fastnet Rock had had six winners from 24 runners and one stakes-winner.
Snitzel had sired seven winners from 16 runners with one stakes-winner, Not a Single Doubt had sired six winners from 22 runners with no stakes-winner and Hinchinbrook had sired four winners from 15 runners with no stakes-winner.
Your Song has done more than enough to be taken very seriously and in a year when we have a plethora of new stallions heading off to stud, the wise investor would look hard at a stallion that has already shown his hand and it's a good one.
"It's the hopes and dreams of any stud when standing a new stallion that they prove a success and although it's early days we're pinching ourselves at the level of ability the Your Song progeny are displaying," said Antony Thompson.
"His runners are all attacking the line as evidenced by his growing number of stakes performers highlighted by brilliant filly Split Lip who burst through the pack on Saturday to take the Dequetteville Stakes.
"I genuinely believe we are seeing the launch of a future champion stallion here and I urge breeders to think seriously about Your Song this season given he's great value and is such a magnificent type."
The fee for Your Song is set at an affordable $22,000.
Footnote : Anthony Cummings trained Your Song throughout his career and will saddle his first Group I runner on Saturday when promising filly Memento lines up in the Group I ATC Champagne Stakes.
A fast closing second on debut back in November, Memento showed her class when second to Limbo Soul when resuming from a spell at Canterbury and then ran a blinder for third to Tulip in the Group III ATC Magic Night Stakes.
A homebred for Torryburn Stud, Memento will be well tuned for this assignment and her trainer is no stranger to delivering a knockout blow in a big race.
