Top class juveniles who improve with age - Kingman

The Racing Post's Aisling Crowe puts the focus on Kingman in the latest edition of the 'Sires of 2025' series.

Taken from the Racing Post 8th January 2025, by Aisling Crowe:

The vision of the late Prince Khalid Abdullah, so ably made reality by the talented teams he assembled around him over four decades, has brought Juddmonte Farms to the pinnacle of racing and breeding. At the operation's European headquarters of Banstead Manor Stud, outside Newmarket, just five stallions reside, and one is awaiting his first foals. However, a glance at the 2024 leading sires of Europe standings reveals the extraordinary legacy that Prince Khalid has bequeathed not only his family but the global bloodstock industry. The top prize-money earner in Europe last year was Juddmonte homebred Bluestocking, who crowned her glorious career with a triumph in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, and two of the top eight sires in Europe for 2024 are Juddmonte homebreds and Banstead Manor residents.

As if that were not enough, two of Europe's best broodmare sires are also Juddmonte homebreds, with the late, great Dansili finishing runner-up to Galileo last year and the brilliant Oasis Dream occupying fourth place in the standings. It was not the extraordinary Frankel, a former champion sire, who led the way at Juddmonte this time around. Instead, it was Kingman, who finished fifth in the table by prize-money and garnered 17 individual stakes winners headed by a trio of Group 1 stars, who reigned supreme.

His three-year-olds of this year are poised to build on his excellent three-year-old season of 2024, which saw him sire three new individual Group 1 winners. They were all fillies and two of them were Classic winners, in 1,000 Guineas heroine Elmalka, who is bred on the excellent cross with Selkirk that has produced 31 per cent stakes winners to runners and two top-level stars, and Sparkling Plenty, victorious in the Prix de Diane. Kingman's current crop of three-year-olds contains four juvenile stakes winners, which is the second highest number of two-year-old stakes winners in a single crop by Kingman, bettered only by his first crop, which had five and went on to produce 18 individual stakes winners.

That is the key to Kingman: capable of producing top-class juveniles but his stock, like their sire, progress and improve with maturity. The example of his 2020 crop is illustrative of this. It matched the current three-year-old cohort for juvenile stakes winners and has recorded 20 individual stakes winners. As they have only just turned five, they retain the possibility of adding to that number. That crop contains French Group 1 winners Feed The Flame and Sauterne, and has an impressive stakes winners to runners rate of 18 per cent.

His 2020 crop has the highest number of stakes winners, followed by his first crop, the 18 coming from 97 runners, which pips the 2020 group statistically as their stakes winners to runners rate is 18.6 per cent. Kingman's lifetime stakes winners to runners rate sits at just under 12 per cent, and he has 13 individual Group 1 winners on four different continents from 55 Group winners.

That quality is reflected in the performances of his stock. Taking Racing Post Ratings (RPR) as a barometer of excellence, Kingman is one of the top five living sires in Europe. His percentage of runners aged three or over to earn an RPR of 80 or higher last year was 58, bettered only by his Banstead neighbour Frankel, as well as Dubawi and his son Night Of Thunder, and Lope De Vega.

Kingman is also fifth when it comes to runners with an RPR of 100 or greater, with his 18 per cent better than Night Of Thunder and behind just Frankel, Dubawi, Farhh and Lope De Vega. Although his fee was reduced by 17 per cent ahead of the 2023 breeding season, there has been no drop-off in the quality of the mares sent to Kingman, which has remained high and remarkably consistent.

He covered 160 mares in 2022, the last of his three seasons at £150,000, and 56 per cent of them were blacktype performers, with 43 per cent blacktype winners. He covered 43 Group winners, which equates to 27 per cent of that book. The following year he stood at £125,000 and received 176 mares, of which 56 per cent were black-type performers and he covered 76 black-type winners, which is 43 per cent. The number and percentage of Group winners increased to 52 that year, which was 30 per cent of his total.

His fee remained at that level last year and has been held steady for 2025. The percentages are similar to the previous two seasons, with 84 of the 152 mares who visited Kingman at Banstead Manor in 2024 blacktype performers, which is 55 per cent of his book. Of those 84, 64 were black-type winners, which equates to 42 per cent of his book, and he covered 40 Group winners, a little below 2023 in percentage terms but almost equal to 2022. That 2022 book are his juveniles of this year and 45 of the 124-strong crop came under the hammer at Europe's yearling auctions during the autumn, with 40 of them selling for an average price of £302,231. The median was £242,284. Eight of the 40, or 20 per cent, sold for in excess of £500,000, with the octet all going under the hammer at Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale. The most expensive is a colt now named Division, who is a brother to last season's Group 2 Lowther Stakes winner Celandine and out of the Listed Maggie Dickson Stakes winner Pepita. Consigned by Highclere Stud, he was bought by Blandford Bloodstock for 800,000gns.

Sackville Donald were the agents who bought the highest-priced Kingman yearling filly of 2024, Mountain View Stud's 750,000gns second foal out of Lady Macbeth, a Dubawi sister to last year's Oaks runner-up Dance Sequence. She has been named Forbidden Colours and is listed as in training with Ed Walker.

The sire has done particularly well with his runners in North America, so it was notable that WinStar Farm went to 500,000gns for Longview Stud's daughter of Kingman and How, a Galileo sister to champion Minding and fellow Classic winners Tuesday and Empress Josephine. Mike Ryan has purchased three of Kingman's best Stateside performers, headed by triple Grade 1 winner Domestic Spending, and the agent purchased four Kingman yearlings at Book 1 including a trio for Klaravich Stables, for whom he bought Domestic Spending, the Grade 2 winner and Grade 1-placed Technical Analysis, and Public Sector, a dual Grade 2 winner.

The most expensive of Ryan's purchases was the filly out of Prix de l'Opera winner Villa Marina at 375,000gns from Newsells Park Stud. Ryan also bought the brother to Public Sector for 300,000gns from breeder Clearwater Stud. Domestic Spending's ill-fated dam, the Listed River Eden Stakes winner Urban Castle, is a Street Cry half-sister to Above The Storm, an unraced daughter of Frankel whose first foal, now named Altostratus, achieved the second best price for a Kingman yearling colt last year – 700,000gns – when he was knocked down to Blandford Bloodstock from Genesis Green Stud.

As well as the international cast of buyers who purchased Kingman yearlings at Park Paddocks, another point of note was how much higher Kingman's median price was than the sale median. The 20 Kingman lots sold for a median price of 410,000gns, 64 per cent higher than the sale figure of 250,000gns. His Book 1 average was 408,250gns, ten per cent better than the sale average of 370,501gns.

Given that the yearlings assembled for Book 1 represent the best in Britain and Ireland, that there should be such a disparity in figures reflects the quality of Kingman's progeny and their achievements on the track. Among the two-year-olds already named are My Love Is King, a brother to Serve The King, who won the Grade 2 Red Smith Stakes and was runner-up in the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Stakes for Peter Brant, and Tickle, a sister to Poule d'Essai des Poulains, Prix du Moulin and Prix d'Ispahan winner and young sire Persian King.

Juddmonte's homebred juveniles include Serenetta, a half-sister to Arc heroine Bluestocking, while Fillies' Mile winner Quadrilateral has a daughter named Quadrillion and a half-brother called Slight Of Foot, and her sister Quilted is the dam of a Kingman colt named Checkered.