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Sadler's Wells

The fallacy of Sadler's Wells?

Those who admire Sadler's Wells as a stallion may be surprised how poor his general performance has been, in the light of the quality of the mares he has been able to attract.

The statistics set out below speak for themselves:-

442 (42%) of the mares producing foals of racing age by Sadler's Wells were themselves Black Type Winners.

These foals had average earnings of $86,000 each.

374 (36%) of the mares producing foals of racing age by Sadler's Wells were themselves Winners.

These foals had average earnings of $53,000 each.

155 (15%) of the mares producing foals of racing age by Sadler's Wells were themselves Non-Winners.

These foals had average earnings of $44,000 each.

82 (8%) of the mares producing foals of racing age by Sadler's Wells were themselves Unraced.

These foals had average earnings of $49,000 each.

The above figures equate to an overall earnings average for Sadler's Wells' 1053 foals of racing age of $65,000.

The same mares produced a total of 4,879 foals of racing age by other stallions (a considerably more statistically significant figure). These equate to an overall average for 4,879 foals of racing age of $67,000.

From a sample nearly five times greater than that for Sadler's Wells, the scope for producing poor performers is that much greater. So to maintain an average marginally higher than that of Sadler's Wells, these mares must have produced a fair number of outstanding performers.

To verify this without spending too much time, I took, at random, Sadler's Wells' foal crop of 1996, foals from 82 mares in total, and from these I extracted all those mares to have produced Stakes Winners by other stallions, 36 in total. In fact, excluding the other 46 mares excluded only a handful of relatively moderate Stakes Winners produced by Sadler's Wells that year. But, to compensate I also included for reference any matings that these mares had had by Sadler's Wells prior to 1996. So a horse like Carnegie is included, on the basis that he is by a mare which was the dam of one of the 1996 foals by Sadler's Wells. The only impact this has is to boost the overall picture vis à vis Sadler's Wells.

Attached are the results of the above study, emphasising the extreme quality of the mares visiting him, and the complete dependence a stallion has on the quality and suitability of mares visiting him, for his overall performance.

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