The Sun shines at 2026 Stallion Parade
More than 900 people attended the 2026 Arrowfield Stallion Parade, headed for the first time by The Autumn Sun, sire of the season's Australian Horse of the Year Autumn Glow & Champion 3YO Colt Autumn Boy. (PHOTO: Laura Lebedeff)
Warm Spring sunshine arrived right on cue for Arrowfield’s 2026 Stallion Parade, with The Autumn Sun, sire of Horse of the Year Autumn Glow & Champion 3YO Colt Autumn Boy, closing the parade for the first time.
More than 900 clients, guests and visitors from across Australia attended the Stud’s Saturday & Sunday parades, including the first public appearance at Arrowfield of Juddmonte’s Lead Artist, the glorious-looking Group 1 winner by world no. 1 sire Dubawi from the sensational Hasili family.
Arrowfield’s stellar line-up of stallion power was completed by Group 1 sires Castelvecchio, Dundeel & Maurice – all with large, well-bred crops coming on stream – and triple Group 1 Classic winner Hitotsu, whose first 2YOs race this season.
Key points from the parade commentary are:
The Autumn Sun’s 5 individual Australian Group 1 winners from his first 196 runners is surpassed by only Redoute’s Choice & Danehill among this century’s 12 Champion Sires of Australia. And they include 2025/26 Australian Champion Racehorse of the Year Autumn Glow and Champion 3YO Colt Autumn Boy.
At the end of Autumn Glow’s Autumn 2026 campaign she was rated the best mare in the world, with an Australian Timeform rating of 128 – matched only by world champion Ka Ying Rising.
Right now, Lead Artist’s sire Dubawi leads the world with 17% SW/Runners, while his damsire & Juddmonte barn-mate Frankel is the world no. 1 with 3.9% G1 Winners/Runners.
Lead Artist’s third dam is the celebrated mare Hasili, dam of 5 Group 1 winners – 4 of them, plus Juddmonte’s Champion Sire Dansili, by another Juddmonte star who, like Lead Artist, made his way to Arrowfield – Danehill.
And Lead Artist won the 2nd-fastest Newbury Lockinge S. G1 in history, the fastest for 20 years, and faster than previous winners Night Of Thunder & Frankel.
9 of Dundeel’s last 11 stakeswinners are female. His 2021 crop has so far produced 5 Group-winning fillies including Group 1 winners Idle Flyer (2025/26 NSW Queen of the Autumn) & Femminile, plus a Group 1 Oaks placegetter. By way of comparison, I Am Invincible has had no stakes-winning fillies in that 2021 crop and Zoustar has had just two.
Dundeel has been a top 10 active sire in Australia with $11 million or more in prizemoney for the past 4 seasons, and he’s already sired the winners of 3 Derbys, 3 Guineas, 2 Champagne Stakes, a Golden Rose, an Inglis Sires’, a Queen of the Turf and a Cox Plate runner-up.
Castelvecchio left 6 stakeswinners including 2025/26 NSW Champion Stayer Aeliana from his first 62 runners, and served his biggest and best book yet in 2025 – 155 lovely mares.
Buyers paid an average of almost 7 times his fee for Castelvecchio’s 2026 yearlings at major Australian sales, among them his top-priced yearling so far, the $600,000 colt out of Edgy Style purchased by Gai Waterhouse, Adrian Bott & Bruce Slade’s Kestrel Thoroughbreds.
Other trainers with Castelvecchio’s 2YOs in their stables in 2026/27 are the Hayes brothers, Anthony & Sam Freedman, Joe Pride, Danny O’Brien, Andrew Forsman, Ciaron Maher, Henry Dwyer and Phillip & Tommy Stokes.
Maurice has 224 2YOs & 3YOs from his two crops bred on a fee of $82,500, and they’re with trainers like Ciaron Maher, Chris Waller, Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott, Richard & Will Freedman, Phillip & Tommy Stokes, Kris Lees, Team Hawkes, the Corstens & Larkin stable, Mick Price & Michael Kent, John O’Shea & Tom Charlton, and Arrowfield’s own home stable.
Maurice is also one of only 6 stallions standing in NSW this season who have sired 7 or more Group 1 winners.
And Maurice’s $44,000 fee is the lowest of the lot of them – by some margin.
Hitotsu’s 119-strong first crop is the largest crop of any sire with first-crop 2YOs this season and almost 40% of the mares he served in his first two books have an Elite rating – as performers, siblings and/or producers.
Hitotsu’s CV as a three-time Group 1 Classic winner from 1600m to 2500m is right on-trend in an Australian industry where 2YO racing is clearly becoming a less prominent part of the overall racing mix. Just take a look at last season’s top 10 Australian sires: 7 of them are G1 winners but only one of them – The Autumn Sun – won a Group 1 race as a 2YO.
