First Year Sire The Autumn Sun Represented by First Graded Stakes Winner

Australia’s brilliant The Autumn Sun earned his first stakes win in his new career as a sire when Mano2’s Moor Autumn edged away to a 3/4-length victory in the Salisbury Medallion (G3) last Saturday in South Africa. Moor Autumn earned an 85 speed figure in the win for the six furlong race and retained his perfect record from three starts.

The Autumn Sun won eight of nine career starts with five of the wins coming in grade one stakes. The Autumn Sun was retired sound early in his career and will attempt to replace his sire, Redoute’s Choice, at Arrowfield Stud. He was available for ($AUS) 77,000 in his first season and is now listed at ($AUS) 66,000. The Autumn Sun hails from a quality female family from Aga Khan Studs, which includes Azamour and Astarabad. His three sire profile for the Sim is Redoute’s Choice x Galileo x Lear Fan. The Autumn Sun won grade one races from 1400 to 2000 meters. He should garner attention from quality mares which should give him a good chance at success in real life and hopefully will keep him from getting one of those dreaded sire downgrades in this game.

In the Sim, The Autumn Sun is ranked third of his crop in Australia behind Bondi and Belle Reve, but is the lone graded stakes winner to date. While Belle Reve has a stakes winner (Firsthome’s Sydney to Hobart), that came in one of those residency- first-season-sire-restricted races. All told, The Autumn Sun has five winners thus far from 43 to race.

The Autumn Sun sports the very fashionable Danehill over Sadler’s Wells cross, so it will be interesting to see how Sim breeders deal with the abundance of Northern Dancer blood. Often the answer seems to be more, please. Moor Autumn is from a Giant’s Causeway (Northern Dancer via Storm Cat) mare, as is Adrian7’s Autumn Sigure. The latter one’s stablemate, Nevaeh Sun gets a contribution of Northern Dancer son Nureyev through broodmare sire Kingmambo and has Storm Cat as the dam’s broodmare sire. Like Nevaeh Storm, Tbrag’s winner Reflexion utilizes a Mr. Prospector-line sire (Smart Strike) with a strain of Northern Dancer (Deputy Minister, in this case). The other winner, Rooster04’s Snow Cloud, hails from a Turn-To line broodmare sire (Dynaformer) but picks up that Nureyev strain from the dam’s-dam sire, Kingmambo. The Autumn Sun also has a maiden restricted-stakes placed colt by Montjeu, who is inbred 4×3 to Sadler’s Wells and 4×4 to Danzig, giving him four Northern Dancer strains in his five-generation pedigree.

So the Storm Cat line, specifically through Giant’s Causeway is working with the need to realize the sample size is very small. Dazzler9 and Dargo both have unraced The Autumn Sun juveniles from Giant’s Causeway mares so it will be interesting to see how they fare.

The Autumn Sun reminds me somewhat of another first-crop sire, Demarchlier. Both were only once defeated in abbreviated racing careers and both have immaculate pedigrees. The Autumn Sun stands at quite a higher price than Demarchlier in a region that values turf racing, was much more accomplished in his racing career, and so his sustained success seems more likely.