Just as the popular British bakery which rejoices under the name of Mr Kipling was wont to boast that “Mr Kipling makes exceedingly good cakes”, we feel that we are now in a position to claim that our leading first-season sire Exceed And Excel makes exceedingly good horses. This magnificent son of Danehill was such a good racehorse that we always felt certain that he had the makings of a tremendous stallion, but of course it was always going to be the results of his progeny which would count.
Exceed And Excel was a brilliantly fast colt at both two and three. His two successes as a juvenile included the Group Two Todman Stakes over 1200m at Rosehill, while his five wins at three all came in Group company, including in a pair of Group One races: the 1200m Newmarket Handicap at Flemington and the 1400m Dubai Racing Club Cup at Caulfield, in which he broke the track record. At the end of that triumphal season he was voted the Champion Sprinter of Australia, and he duly retired to stud on a high, commencing duties at Darley Australia in September 2004 and at Kildangan Stud five months later.
Roll on three years and Exceed And Excel’s first crop was getting ready for action. It didn’t take long before Australian racegoers could see for themselves that the young stallion was indeed making exceedingly good horses: this became plain very early in the spring – on 6 October, in fact – when Exceed And Excel sired his first winner, none other than Exceedingly Good, the appropriately named winner of the first two-year-old feature race of the spring, the Maribyrnong Trial at Flemington.
Thereafter the winners just kept coming. Eleven days later his daughter Sugar Babe won the second two-year-old Stake of the season, the Debutant Stakes at Caulfield on Thousand Guineas Day, while Stakes win number three duly came up a couple of weeks later when Exceedingly Good took his record to two from two by beating Sheikh Hamdam Al Maktoum’s subsequent Group One winner Reaan in the Group Three Maribyrnong Plate at Flemington on Victoria Derby Day.
If Exceed And Excel’s results in the spring in Melbourne were spectacular, subsequent events showed that these were no flash in the pan. Results from the early two-year-old races in the Autumn Carnival gave the stallion just as resounding an endorsement, particularly on the feature raceday at Caulfield on the second Saturday in February, where his stock dominated. There were two juvenile Group races on the card, the Blue Diamond Preludes for fillies and for colts and geldings, and the offspring of Exceed And Excel ran first and second in them both. In the fillies division, Believe’N’Succeed belied her inexperience to come home ahead of Sugar Babe, while in the colts’ and geldings’ race the hugely promising Wilander scored an emphatic 2.5-length success over Exceedingly Good.
Later in the autumn Outdo became Exceed And Excel’s fifth individual Stakes winner by landing the Anzac Day Stakes at Flemington. These Stakes winners, added to Stakes place-getters Kalash, Giotto, Mazuka and Offsider, as well as other winners Bentley Man, Her Excellency, Seeking Attention, Sheedy, Solar Strike and Special Mention, have ensured that Exceed And Excel is due to end the current season as the runaway winner of the Australian first-season sires’ table, whichever way one judges it: money won, races won or individual winners.
As the Australian season is drawing to a close, it’s mid-term in the northern hemisphere with the best of the sport in full spring. After such a sensational start Down Under, the question was whether Exceed And Excel could match his Australian achievements in Europe. History is full of stallions whose record is significantly better in one hemisphere than in the other. Exceed And Excel’s sire Danehill was the obvious exception and, while it’s early days yet, the results so far from this English summer suggest that Exceed And Excel might, like his dad, be exceedingly good on both sides of the equator. Certainly Joseph Burke of Irish bookmakers Cashmans believes so, saying as he commented on Exceed And Excel’s place at the head of his firm’s market on the British and Irish first-season sires’ table, “It would appear that, for the first time since his father Danehill, we now have a stallion that looks capable of siring serious horses in both hemispheres”.
Burke was speaking after Royal Ascot, where Exceed And Excel had kick-started his European stakes record in style. On the first day of Britain’s best racemeeting, Exceed And Excel’s son Flashmans Papers (pictured) provided the stallion with his first Stakes success in the United Kingdom by landing an impressive win in the Windsor Castle Stakes – and then showed that this was definitely no fluke by backing up two days later in the Group Two Norfolk Stakes, running an excellent fourth in the meeting’s premier juvenile sprint. He wasn’t the first Exceed And Excel home in the Norfolk Stakes, because the hat-trick-seeking Spin Cycle, previously a winner in very fast times at Hamilton and Musselburgh, failed by only a head to overhaul the long-time leader South Central.
By running so well at Royal Ascot, Flashmans Papers and Spin Cycle continued what has been a bumper June for Exceed And Excel, five of his stock having won in Britain during the month. In addition to the successes of Flashmans Papers at Royal Ascot and Spin Cycle at Musselburgh, Excellerator ran out a three-length victor on his debut, and Golden Rosie and Infamous Angel both emerged as clear-cut winners at Doncaster and Bath respectively. With Excellent Show having won by two lengths at Musselburgh in late May and Masamah having landed a terrific win at the York May Meeting earlier in the month, Exceed And Excel really is on a roll. If Cashmans are correct, he’s currently well on course to make history by becoming the first stallion to become champion first-season sire both in Britain and Ireland and in Australia. And that, we’re sure you would agree, would be exceedingly good.
