In an exciting coup for Australian breeders, Darley has announced that elite stallion Too Darn Hot will return to Kelvinside for the 2025 Southern Hemisphere breeding season, where he will stand for a fee of AU$275,000 (approx. US$170,000).
The fee is representative of a monumental jump from the son of Dubawi's previous seasons standing at Kelvinside, but one that is reflective of the young stallion's incredible achievements in the breeding barn.
Too Darn Hot arrived in 2020 for his maiden covering season in Australia at a fee of AU$44,000 and remained at that figure for another three seasons before being announced his fee would rise to AU$110,000 in 2024, but shortly after the plans to shuttle him last season were shelved altogether.
As high a leap as that may seem, this is no normal stallion. A multiple group 1 winner on the track and a son of elite-level winner and Darley's supreme stallion Dubawi and out of the group 1-winning mare Dar Re Mi, much was expected from Too Darn Hot in the breeding barn, however not many could have predicted what he has delivered in a relatively short space of time.
Since having his first runners hit the ground in 2023, Too Darn Hot has sired 150 individual winners from just 273 starters worldwide, with 23 of those winners at stakes level and 14 at group level, including a trio of elite-level winners.
Of those 150 winners, 43 have come in Australia from a total of 82 starters at a strike rate of 54.9%. He has had a total of 10 stakes winners in Australia to date—seven of those at the group level—headed by four-time top-flight scorer Broadsiding.
His results for the 2023-24 season saw Too Darn Hot crowned the champion first-season sire, a category he led both in earnings and by the amount of winners in a display of dominance rarely seen.
He also finished runner-up on the leading Australian 2-year-old sires list that year, as his first-crop results saw him set an earnings record for any first-season sire in Australian history at a season-ending AU$4,164,810.
Too Darn Hot's spectacular run of results has continued into his second season of progeny in Australia, with the stallion currently a clear leader in the second-season sire's table and, quite remarkably, just more than AU$300,000 in prize money away from being inside the top 10 in the general sires' list, where he currently resides in 14th position.
"It's extremely exciting to have him back," Darley Australia's head of sales Alistair Pulford told ANZ Bloodstock News.
"When it was announced last year that he wasn't coming back it was very much because they wanted to give him a year off and it wasn't a permanent decision.
"We're very grateful to the team at Darley UK and to Watership Down Stud that they've agreed to shuttle him again because he's just such a good stallion and to have him here to cover not just Godolphin's mares, but some of the best mares in the country, is going to be fantastic."
Given he stands for £90,000 at Dalham Hall Stud in Newmarket, coupled with the fact he has sired 13 individual stakes winners in the Northern Hemisphere already—including group 1 winners Fallen Angel and Hotazhell—Darley's founder and owner Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum could have been forgiven for deciding to keep Too Darn Hot in the United Kingdom, however Pulford rightly pointed out that is not a route His Highness has taken in the past.
"He's never shied away from sending his very best stallions and most valuable horses here in the 22 years we've been in existence," Pulford said.
"He never shied from sending Bernardini down when he was the hottest horse in America, Medaglia d'Oro who he invested a lot of money in after his first unbelievable crop in America, and when New Approach won the Derby he was on the shuttle books, so his commitment to Australia has never wavered and that's how you create legacies.
"You have to be committed and Too Darn Hot has a chance to create a legacy for himself and for everyone that is involved with him."
