Outstanding Success for Widden Sires
The Australian General Sires List for 2018/2019 highlighted the success of Widden Stud with four of our stallions in the Top 20 by earnings – Sebring, Zoustar, Nicconi and Star Witness.
One Australian sire title not won by either Snitzel or I Am Invincible was the Champion Sire of 3YO’s and that one went to Widden Stud’s Zoustar, who has just finished serving his first Northern Hemisphere stud season in the UK at Tweenhills Stud.
The Champion First Season Sire last year, Zoustar has gone right on with the job this year and will also be Champion Second Season Sire, but his effort to be Champion 3YO Sire against the big guns is remarkable.
Buoyed by the efforts of his star filly Sunlight, a triple Group I winner this season, Zoustar produced 59 winners of $6.7 million and his five stakes-winners of nine stakes races puts him on a par in that department with the late Widden Stud stalwart Sebring.
Zoustar has found himself in a very competitive group of second season sires that include the likes of Spirit of Boom, Dundeel and Epaulette, but with two crops racing his cumulative earnings in excess of $10 million put him clearly ahead of his peers.
Zoustar stands this spring at a fee of $154,000 and is fully booked following on from his biggest book so far last year of 243 mares.