Thoroughbred Origins: The Darley Arabian male line part 2

The previous chapter discussed some of the male bloodlines of the Darley Arabian (1700) which continue to dominate modern Thoroughbred breeding and racing. Today, two major catalysts for the continuation of this sire line are the globally-represented stallions Northern Dancer (1961) and Mr Prospector (1970), both of which trace back to the Darley Arabian’s great-grandson, Eclipse, through Sir Hercules (1826).

The nearest common male line ancestor shared by Northern Dancer and Mr Prospector is Phalaris (1913), in his day a very good racehorse and one now responsible for the majority of the Thoroughbred world’s paternal bloodlines. 

Three generations on from Phalaris, the good racer Nearctic (1954) won numerous Canadian races and was later inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame. At stud he set about further shaping the breed, fathering one of the most influential sires of all time, the diminutive Northern Dancer, a Canadian Horse of the Year who also won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. Northern Dancer quickly got off the mark at stud by siring the 1970 English Triple Crown and Irish Derby hero Nijinsky and became a champion sire in both North America and Europe. Further English and/or Irish Derby winners followed for Northern Dancer in the form of The Minstrel, Secreto, El Gran Senor and Shareef Dancer along with many other fine performers.

Although responsible for innumerable lines of descent from his countless excellent sons, it is perhaps through Sadler’s Wells (1981) and Danzig (1977) that Northern Dancer has had most impact. The former, an Irish 2000 Guineas winner who stayed a mile and a half, excelled as a commercial stallion, annexing Thoroughbred breeding in Britain/Ireland for two decades and earning the status of 'sire of sires' through his top or high-class progenitors, Galileo, Montjeu, High Chaparral and Barathea in Europe and smart son El Prado in the US.

Of these modern standouts, Galileo (1998) is undeniably the best. A dual Derby winner and multiple British/Irish Leading Sire between 2008-2015, he is routinely responsible for a seasonal turnover of top European turf winners, including the unbeaten phenomenon Frankel, Timeform's highest-ever rated Flat performer, 2014 British/Irish Derby winner Australia, this year’s 1000 Guineas winner Minding (also siring the race’s second and third-placed finishers) and The Gurkha, who won the Poule d’Essai des Poulains soon after. Frankel himself made history again when his first runner of 2016, Cunco, scored on his debut in a two-year-old six-furlong maiden at Newbury in May. 

Prematurely retired due to his bad knees, another prime Northern Dancer influence, the lightly-raced and unbeaten US racehorse, Danzig, also went on to become an outstanding stallion. He founded a solid legacy of excellent racing and breeding stock, including the great ‘sire of sires’ Danehill (1986), whose wide-ranging impact is particularly felt today in Europe and Australia; Green Desert, grandsire of the top-class performer at up to a mile and a half (and close relative of Galileo) Sea The Stars (2006) and War Front, a high-class US six- and seven-furlong dirt performer who replicated his class and distance through his son, the Coolmore-trained Air Force Blue, winner of the Phoenix Stakes/National Stakes in Ireland and Dewhurst Stakes in Britain in 2015. 

Away from Northern Dancer and six generations on from Phalaris emerged Mr Prospector, a solid US six/seven-furlong performer at up to Grade 2 level and a contemporary of the legendary US Triple Crown winner Secretariat. 'Mr P', as he was known, won half his 14 races and notably set a six-furlong track record at Gulfstream Park in 1973 that remained unequalled until his own great-grandson Artax won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint twenty years later.

Transferred to the US breeding shed, Mr Prospector became Leading North American Sire in 1987/88 and furthermore a household name far beyond his own shores thanks to his numerously classy and versatile runners. Chief amongst these were his sons; Fappiano, Forty Niner, Fusaichi Pegasus, Gone West, Kingmambo, Machiavellian, Seeking The Gold, Smart Strike and Woodman, who all excelled on the racecourse and later in Northern and/or Southern Hemisphere breeding sheds, either directly and/or through their close descendants. And whilst the male lines of Sadler's Wells have thus far failed to leave a mark on North American dirt breeding in the same profound way they have on European turf, those of Mr Prospector continue to blaze a trail through North American dirt events at every level alongside healthy and ongoing worldwide turf representation.

Whilst merely skimming the surface of the variety and geographical extent of his influence in this article, of particular note should be Mr Prospector's continued dominance of the prestigious US Triple Crown races at distances of nine and a half furlongs, a mile and a quarter and a mile and a half, made all the more remarkable by the fact that the horse did not contest these events or trips himself. Between 1982-2015 he was responsible for over thirty various Triple Crown race winners by sire line, including the mighty American Pharoah, a great-great-grandson of Fappiano who became the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 to sweep the series in 2015 and who recently retired to stud in the US, to unbridled enthusiasm from breeders.  Additionally, Mr Prospector's Preakness-winning grandson Curlin (2004), by two-time leading North American sire Smart Strike, became the sire of this year's Preakness winner, Exaggerator, to add to his son Palace Malice's victory in the Belmont Stakes of 2013.

From a horse with a fairly unremarkable race record to the head of a dynasty now so prolific in American classics and so globally influential as to be the only serious contender to Northern Dancer's crown, it is ironic and perhaps even deliberate that after his death in 1999 Mr Prospector was buried at the great Claiborne Farm equine cemetery in Kentucky between none other than the two legendary Triple Crown conquerors, his own peer Secretariat and Northern Dancer's son Nijinsky.

And fittingly, as Claiborne’s assistant farm manager at that time, Gus Koch, recalled a quote given to him about the much-loved stallion: "...he always did keep good company".