The 2024 Nutrien Winter Woolies Sale features a couple of young mares by Australia’s Leading Sire of 3yos this season in Sweet Lou.
Sweet Lou, whose oldest Australian progeny are current 8yos, has sired 57 individual 3yo winners of 99 races and $1,053,416 to head the list comfortably from Art Major and American Ideal.
Over a long period of time it has shown that the leading sires of one generation have proven to be the leading broodmare sires of the next generation and Sweet Lou is heading along these lines.
His oldest daughters at stud are current 8yos and in the Southern Hemisphere he is already a successful broodmare sire with My Ultimate Barney taking out a heat of the 2024 Bathurst Gold Crown in 1:54.2 and then finishing second to the unbeaten Fox Dan in the $150,000 Group One final.
My Ultimate Barney is a colt by Downbytheseaside and he is the first foal from the Sweet Lou mare Treasure Me NZ and he is one of just two live foals of racing age in Australia out of Sweet Lou mares.
It is a similar story in the Northern Hemisphere where the oldest progeny of Sweet Lou mares are currently 4yos (foaled in 2020) and there are 22 winners of $1,195,956 with five individual earners of $100,000.
Interestingly three of those five $100,000 earners are sired by sons of Somebeachsomewhere which is also the case with My Ultimate Barney.
The young Sweet Lou mares in the Winter Woolies Sale are headed by Lot 191 Soho Lumine which is a current 4yo and she is in foal to Soho Tribeca which has already produced two 2yo winners with his first crop in 2024.
Soho Lumine has a strong maternal pedigree and took a record of 1:57.0 as a 3yo and won three races and her first foal is due in October this year.
Lot 169 is an unraced 5yo Sweet Lou mare in Sweet Houdini which is not in foal which opens up the opportunity to breed her early in the new season.
Sweet Houdini is a half-sister to Prince Joy which won 15 races and $116,504 in stakes.