From skepticism to stardom: Justify delivering on a global scale

Cover image courtesy of Coolmore

Most stallions don’t come up to scratch. That is the harsh but well-established truth of the thoroughbred breeding industry. And of the few who do make the grade, only a miniscule fraction produce the goods in both hemispheres. In the case of Justify (USA), Coolmore have created that rarest of commodities: a young sire who is not only delivering, but is delivering on a truly global scale.

From his shuttle seasons between the operation’s American and Australian farms, the US Triple Crown winner has rapidly emerged as a stallion of international consequence. He is already the sire of 44 stakes performers, six of whom have won in Group 1 company.

Four of those top-flight winners have struck at the elite level during their juvenile season, meaning Justify’s nascent stud record features an unbeaten European champion 2-year-old colt in City Of Troy (USA) and a European champion 2-year-old filly in Opera Singer (USA). Moreover, Just F Y I (USA) was not only one half of a Breeders’ Cup juvenile double with Hard To Justify (USA), but she was crowned the Eclipse champion of her generation in the US to boot.

In Australia he is, of course, represented by the hugely exciting Storm Boy, an unbeaten winner of the G2 Skyline S. and the short-priced favourite for the Golden Slipper on Saturday. Storm Boy has followed hot on the heels of Learning To Fly, who won last year's G2 Reisling S. and was well fancied for the Slipper herself, only to part ways with her rider before the race could develop.

But if Australian breeders now have as much reason to be excited by Justify as any, it hasn’t always been this way.

Dirt is a dirty word

When the son of Scat Daddy (USA) first travelled from Kentucky to Jerrys Plains, his profile meant he was met with respect as well as scepticism. While his pedigree and race record were a perfect fit for the American market, not all Australians would have read his attributes and achievements as transferable to the southern hemisphere scene - particular the inclination toward a dirt surface.

When it comes to stallion selection, breeders are, understandably, prone to operate on the basis of once bitten, twice shy.

“It’s not every day a Triple Crown winner arrives on Australian shores, so there was a lot of interest in the horse from the start,” says James Bester, a long-serving consultant to Coolmore.

“And obviously as an unbeaten Triple Crown winner his race record was 100% flawless, so he was respected for that. Australians are quite parochial, though, and there’s been a long history of super Northern Hemisphere racehorses who have come down and yet not managed to break through the sire ranks, so these horses are always viewed with a measure of caution.”

While No Nay Never (USA) was among those helping the Scat Daddy line take hold in the Northern Hemisphere, breeders in the Southern Hemisphere were still to feel its potency firsthand. And it wasn’t just Justify’s pedigree and race record that posed a question, either, but his considerable physical presence too.

“Both Johannesburg and Hennessy, who are further back in Justify’s pedigree, had been to Australia and done respectably well,” continues Bester. “But it’s not as if the Scat Daddy line was something that Australians couldn’t wait to get their hands on. So when Justify arrived, there were those who looked at him with scepticism.

“His Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont wins are, again, not credentials that the Australian market fawns over. And the fact he’s such a big horse didn’t really count in his favour either. He’s a very big unit, so a lot of Australians were cautious about whether or not he’d suit the Australian way of racing and 2-year-old style, where generally a smaller, shorter-coupled kind of horse has been more successful. So he had to convince the sceptics.”

But if some Australian breeders were content to hedge their bets, it soon became clear that the Coolmore partners were prepared to put their money where their mouth was.

Tom Magnier puts his hand up

At the 2019 Inglis Chairman’s Sale, shortly after it had been announced that Justify would shuttle to Australia, Tom Magnier stepped up to sign for the two most expensive lots, the $2,250,000 Maastricht (NZ) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}) and the $2 million Srikandi (Dubawi {Ire}).

Both were bound for Justify’s first Australian book.

Those acquisitions set the tone for what followed as Magnier and various partners invested heavily to secure a harem of blue-chip mates for Justify. At Magic Millions the following month, Magnier went to $1.55 million for Global Glamour (Star Witness), $1.45 million for Invincible Star (I Am Invincible) and $1 million for Savvy Coup (NZ) (Savabeel).

Magnier returned to the Gold Coast 12 months later and bid a record $4.2 million for three-time Group 1 heroine Sunlight (Zoustar), $2 million for Champagne Cuddles (Not A Single Doubt) and $1.3 million for Invincibella (I Am Invincible). All were bought to bolster Justify’s book.

And these names were merely the tip of the iceberg, as Coolmore and their partners invested many millions in sourcing the best-credentialled mares on the market. As a result of the support of Coolmore and others, Justify served 373 mares during his first three Australian seasons.

The buying mission continued when, after a one-year hiatus, Justify returned to Australia in 2023 as Magnier went to $1.275 million through Inglis Digital for Miss Roseiano (Exceed And Excel).

This strategy produced some unintended upside too, as another of the mares bought for Justify was the $1.8 million Samaready (More Than Ready {USA}), who was sourced from the Inglis Chairman’s Sale in 2020. She was purchased carrying a Snitzel colt who turned out to be none other than Coolmore’s star homebred Shinzo, winner of the Golden Slipper in which Learning To Fly unseated her rider.

While Coolmore are well-versed in making stallions, Bester says the belief in Justify was something completely out of the ordinary.

“John Magnier and Coolmore supported Justify to a degree that I’ve never seen a stallion supported in probably 40 years of my association with them,” he says.

“Certainly not in the Southern Hemisphere anyway, not counting Sadler’s Wells and Galileo. Those of us associated with Coolmore were, at the time, given the mission of going out to find the very best mares that could be sourced for him. As a result he got some very, very good mares.”

Justify repaid that faith by delivering Learning To Fly, who was bred under the banner of the Coolmore-affiliated Katom. The $900,000 Inglis Australian Easter purchase, who is raced in partnership by a group including Coolmore, Kia Ora and Westerberg, was not only arguably the best filly of her generation, but her pedigree was an important signifier about Justify’s prowess as an outcross option.

She is out of Ennis Hill, a daughter of the influential, two-time champion sire Fastnet Rock. From just 13 runners, the Justify-Fastnet Rock cross has yielded nine winners and four black-type scorers. As well as Learning To Fly, there is the G3 John Grigg S. winner Star Of Justice, the US stakes winner Just Steel (USA) and, perhaps most significantly, Storm Boy, who was also bred under the Katom banner.

“Justify’s record with Fastnet Rock mares, for winners and stakes winners, is quite phenomenal,” says Bester.

“As an outcross, any stallion that shows himself to be such a fabulous mix with the broodmare population, or a large section of it, is going to start to find favour. Fastnet Rock, as was his sire Danehill, seems to be the kind of broodmare sire that mixes with a wide range of stallions. Fortuitously he’s showing that he nicks particularly well with Justify.”

The best is yet to come

While any prepotent stallion will ultimately prove capable of upgrading his mares, Bester says the platform that Coolmore have given Justify allowed him to showcase his prowess from the outset. And this early success could well be just the beginning of something far more significant.

“Coolmore’s support has been critical to his success because the horses that have made Justify have come from well-credential Fastnet Rock mares that Coolmore have supplied him with,” he says.

“That’s what produced Learning To Fly, that’s what produced Storm Boy and the others that are already out there – and to come.

“As we’ve seen with Sadler’s Wells, Galileo, Danehill and to some extent Fastnet Rock himself, that kind of success becomes self perpetuating. Once you’ve hit on a formula and you know the types of mares that suit a stallion and you start to get results, then more of those mares go to the horse and then his profile lifts and better and better mares go to him.”

Bester adds that being by Fastnet Rock is not the only similarity that Ennis Hill and Storm Boy’s dam, Pelican (NZ), share.

“Australian breeders and Coolmore soon realised that the ideal mare for Justify would be a medium-sized type, given he has real stature,” he says.

“So a medium-sized mare with a beautiful head and a very good action would be ideal. Interestingly enough, that is exactly what the dams of Learning To Fly and Storm Boy have. Both are mares with gorgeous heads, great action but not overly big. They have produced absolutely what one would want in a racehorse.”

Identifying where a horse’s ability comes from, and harnessing that in future matings, is one of the great challenges in the breeding business. Bester says that Justify’s ability on the track and at stud is underpinned by a set of physical attributes that are uncommon in their excellence.

“Like Usain Bolt wasn’t your archetypal short, squat 100-metre sprinter, Justify has a length of leg coupled with that immense physique,” he says. “He has the biggest, squarest hindquarter I might’ve ever seen; the longest, strongest forearm and gaskin that I’d seen in a horse of that calibre, atop the shortest cannons that I’d seen.

“He has a truly remarkable ratio of forearm and gaskin to cannon. But at the same time he had a real power about him; he wasn't a leggy, skinny distance runner type. He’s a freak and he showed that on the racecourse. I see that now coming through in many of his progeny. They’ve got something freakish about them.”

That physical prowess manifested itself in one of the most remarkable racing careers in recent memory. In winning the 2018 Kentucky Derby, Justify broke the ‘Curse of Apollo’, becoming the first horse since Apollo in 1882 to win the Run for the Roses without having raced at two. His gutsy Preakness win showed he possessed courage as well as outright class before he faced the acid test of the Belmont Stakes. He had such latent speed that some harboured stamina concerns for the mile and a half contest, but he again overcame all to become the 13th Triple Crown winner by an imperious length and three-quarters.

Although Justify proved he stayed a trip, Bester recounts a conversation with his trainer Bob Baffert in which he shared the view that the horse had so much raw speed that he could have won America’s premier quarter horse contest, the All American Futurity.

“I actually sat down with Bob Baffert when I was out in California and he said to me with 100 per cent authentic belief in what he was saying that Justify had so much speed that he could’ve won the Futurity with him, that’s how much speed he had,” says Bester.

“Sure, allow for a little bit of poetic license, but it did convince me that he thought this could be the fastest horse he’d ever trained. And he made the point that he was possibly the fastest horse yet he was an unbeaten Triple Crown winner, so remarkable was his cardiovascular capacity. I think that combination of speed and heart and lung superiority is what sets him apart.”

This athletic ability is allied to a deep pedigree that was skillfully crafted by John Gunther of Glennwood Farm in Kentucky, who sent his Ghostzapper (USA) mare Stage Magic (USA) to Scat Daddy during the 2014 breeding season, when the stallion was standing at just $30,000.

“When you delve into Justify’s pedigree there is such a backup of influential ancestors,” says Bester.

“In the first six generations he has four lines of Nijinsky, a double of Secretariat, six lines of Northern Dancer, four of Mr Prospector. These are the greatest genetic superpowers in the history of breeding, and they are just piled up in his pedigree. Then there’s the great Rasmussen Factor of the full sisters Preach and Yarn; that doubling up of influential females is not to be underestimated. Physically and in pedigree he offers a combination of qualities that I don’t think we’ve seen before.”

Looking toward Justify's sons

Moreover, Justify not only has the ability to leave his mark on the Australian scene but should find the opportunity too, with changing times ahead for the stallion ranks as the current heavyweights enter the autumn of their careers.

“I think the most important factor is that the current proven star stallions, they’re of an age where a serious replacement is urgently required,” says Bester. “Breeders are going to need a serious stallion to succeed those names. That’s the role I think Justify is going to play, Justify and his sons. I think he’s going to step into the breach and offer Australia a real superpower.”

Coolmore have already made the well-documented move to secure a controlling interest in Storm Boy, which could, in time, see him standing beside his sire on the Coolmore stallion roster. Victory in Saturday’s stallion-making Golden Slipper would more than vindicate their considerable investment in the colt.

“Coolmore have almost cornered the market for Group 1 sons of Scat Daddy at stud, and if Justify is the pinnacle of those, which he is, then of course one wants his best son,” says Bester.

“The Golden Slipper is absolutely the holy grail in Australian racing. For Justify to have a Golden Slipper winner in only his second crop, having arguably been unlucky not to have one in his first, it would put him right atop the mountain because you can’t achieve any more than that.”

Coolmore may have been the biggest believers in Justify from the start, but it is clear that others are now well and truly on board.

His 2024 yearling average is currently running at $308,269, a 46 per cent increase on 2023’s figure, and that is before the results from the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, where he has nine blue-chip lots, have been factored in. He also served a 188-strong book of mares in 2023 when his fee was a very fair-looking $77,000. Among those were ten of Bester’s own mares.

“I have never, in more than four decades of observing these things closely, seen a stallion who has had at the same time the champion 2-year-old colt in Europe, the champion 2-year-old filly of Europe, the best 2-year-old in France in Ramatuelle, the champion 2-year-old in America with two Breeders’ Cup winners and the best 2-year-old filly in Australia last season and the best 2-year-old colt thus far this season,” says Bester.

“For a horse to completely dominate the world – and literally the world – of 2-year-old racing, I’ve never seen anything like it. I think Justify is showing every sign of becoming a breed-shaper worldwide.”