Danzig has 200th stakes winner

The late sire Danzig hit a landmark on July 26 when his son Olympic became his 200th stakes winner. Olympic, a 6-year-old out of 1991 champion older female Queena, won the Mataji Stakes at Calder on Saturday, his first stakes victory.

Danzig stood at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky., for his entire stud career, until his death in 2006. He currently is the world's third-ranked sire of stakes winners. Ahead of him are his son Danehill with 349 and Sadler's Wells with 297, according to the Jockey Club's statistics. Danehill died in 2003, and Sadler's Wells, a son of Northern Dancer like Danzig, was pensioned in 2008. Both stood for Irish-based Coolmore Stud.

Danehill and Sadler's Wells have benefited from larger books of mares - and therefore larger foal crops - than Danzig. Danzig rarely bred more than 70 mares and bred as many as 75 in a season only once in his career. Danehill, one of the first stallion to shuttle between the northern and southern hemispheres, had an average crop size of 178, and Sadler's Wells, though he did not shuttle, still had an average crop sire of 98, as compared with Danzig's average of 46.

Bred in Pennsylvania by Derry Meeting Farm and Will Farish, Danzig won all three of his starts for owner Henryk de Kwiatkowski before retiring to Claiborne. He went on to lead the sires' list in 1991, 1992, and 1993.