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Big-name Coolmore stallion to be crowned Australian Champion First-Season Sire.
Coolmore brought Justify to Australia amid much fanfare and the son of Scat Daddy wasted no time showing why, winning the 2022/23 Australian Champion First-Season Sire award.
The season might not end until Monday night, but Justify has had his final runners for 2022/23 and will finish the season with $1,999,312 in winnings by his progeny.
That secured him top spot on the prizemoney table, well clear of Encryption ($1,230,575), who leap-frogged Harry Angel($1,224,860) to grab second spot.
Justify had 21 starters for the season, eight of whom combined a total of 11 wins.
That had him second to Brave Smash (30 runners, 11 winners, 17 wins) in the total winners tally and third, behind equal second placegetters Harry Angel and Trapeze Artist, in the individual winners section.
Justify's standout performer in Australia has been Learning To Fly, who won the Group 3 Widden Stakes on debut and went on to win the $2 million Inglis Millennium and Group 2 Reisling Stakes before losing the rider when one of the favourites in the Golden Slipper.
The Annabel Neasham-trained filly returned a Timeform rating on 109 in the Reisling, having gone 106 in those other two races to produce Justify's three top Australian ratings of the season.
Justify's other Southern Hemisphere Stakes winners were the Peter Moody-trained Legacies, who went 105 when winning the Listed Anzac Day Stakes, and Leon Macdonald and Andrew Gluyas's Air Assault, who won the Group 3 SA Sires' Produce Stakes in a rating of 99.
Australian results are only part of the equation with Justify, who is also the sire of brilliant Group 2 Superlative Stakes winner City Of Troy (119) and French star Ramatuelle (114).
This season's results were achieved from 96 foals conceived in the spring of 2019, having produced 82 and 58 foals the following two seasons and while Justify did not stand in Australia last year, he is already Coolmore's Jerrys Plains property ready for the 2023 season.
JUSTIFY'S AUSTRALIAN TIMEFORM TOP-RATERS 2022/23
109 – LEARNING TO FLY
105 – LEGACIES
103 – CALIFORNIAN
99 – AIR ASSAULT
94 – PROVEN CORRECT