In another loss for the stud and the breeding industry, earlier this month Coolmore announced that champion stallion So You Think tragically passed following a short illness. He leaves behind a legacy as one of the great dual-hemisphere thoroughbreds – a globe-trotting 10-time Group 1 winner and the sire of 66 stakes winners to date. The stallion was 19 years old.
So You Think burst onto the Australian scene under the late legend Bart Cummings, winning his first major race in the 2009 W.S. Cox Plate as a three-year-old. He returned in 2010 to retain the Cox Plate emphatically.
Trainer Bart Cummings described him as “perfection on four legs, you don’t get any better than him, he is the finest, most genuine horse I have ever trained.”
Following the win, he was acquired by Coolmore and transferred to Ireland under trainer Aidan O’Brien, where he added further Group 1s such as the Eclipse Stakes, Irish Champion Stakes and the Prince of Wales’s Stakes.
His race record reads 23 starts for 14 wins and five placings, with career earnings exceeding A$8 million.
Retired to stud in 2012, So You Think stood at Coolmore Australia and shuttled to Europe early in his stallion career. He became one of Australia’s elite sires, including the feat of siring three Group 1 winners in a single day at Randwick in 2022.
A press release from Coolmore read: “So You Think is a sire that will be remembered for his remarkable consistency, finishing in the top 10 on the sires table for each of the last 5 seasons and coming second to I Am Invincible on two occasions. He is already responsible for 12 individual Group 1 winners, but with the likes of Revelare, Getta Good Feeling, Oh Diamond Lil, and Saturday’s Group 3 winner Diamond Scene to continue to run for him, this figure looks set to continue to climb well into the future.”
Coolmore’s late champion, who currently sits in 11th spot on the general sires’ table by mere dollars, has so much more left to give. There will be one more crop of So You Think foals born to lucky broodmares in 2026, and, given the robustness of his current offspring, we can expect to see his name as sire on form guides for years to come.
*Partial story taken from TTR article. Image from Coolmore.
