Widden Stud’s champion sire Zoustar was the world’s leading sire of winners in 2023 and passed a milestone on Friday when racking up his 200th Australian winner of the season and shortly after his 201st!
Bringing up the 200 in style was the Tony and Calvin McEvoy trained four year-old gelding Dillinger, who blitzed his rivals to win the 1500m Benchmark 64 event by six lengths as favourite.
A maiden winner in January 2023, Dillinger has taken a while to find his second win, but two recent placings put the writing on the wall.
A $250,000 Inglis Premier purchase from Edinburgh Park for McEvoy Mitchell / Belmont Bloodstock, Dillinger is one of five winners from five to race from well bred mare Sticky Fingers, who comes from the family of Group I winners Criterion and Comin’ Through.
Zoustar becomes only the second stallion in history to achieve the feat of siring 200 plus Australian winners in a season with I Am Invincible doing it twice. He sired 208 winners in the 2020/2021 season to set the all-time record and then 202 winners last season.
With three more weeks of the season to come Zoustar is a real chance of breaking his record with his seasonal winner to runner strike rate running at 55.2%.
Zoustar will cover a full book at Widden this spring at a fee of $275,000.
