The Bear facts

At the beginning of the year, there was optimism among the team at Rathbarry Stud that Kodi Bear would enjoy a successful season, given the number of two-year-olds he would have on the ground to represent him.

That optimism has proven justified, though the scale at which the son of Kodiac has been producing winners has surprised even his most ardent fans.

At present, as per Stallion Guide Online Leading Sires tables before racing on September 25, Kodi Bear was operating at a 50% strike rate for individual winners from runners in Europe, with a staggering 29 of his 58 runners on the track having been victorious.

Interestingly, his late stablemate, the Rathbarry legend, Acclamation, tops this category from his obviously select grouping, having died in 2024 at the age of 25. His 10 winners from 16 representatives means his offspring are winning at a clip of 62%.

Kodi Bear, a Group 2 Celebration Mile winner, who was a runner-up in the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes as a juvenile, has to be one of the best value stallions on the market at present, on offer in the 2026 season for just €12,500 to breeders.

Whatever way you drill into the figures, even beyond the phenomenal aforementioned strike rate, the bottom line is the same. Kodi Bear has to be on your radar if you are operating at a budget and want the percentages in your favour.

In terms of individual juvenile winners, the far more expensive Mehmas (€70,000), Sioux Nation (€37,500) and No Nay Never (€100,000) are the only stallions with more at 35, 31 and 30 respectively. Havana Grey (private in the last two years having been £55,000 in 2024) and Blue Point (€100,000) are behind on 27 and 26. None of those vaunted quintet is close on the percentage return.

In terms of total wins, Kodi Bear only drops one place to fifth, vaulted by Havana Grey, but 37 is still only seven off joint table toppers, Mehmas and Sioux Nation.

Where those higher priced sires are earning their crust is in the number of offspring winning black-type races, but Kodi Bear has added three more to his tally this year.

Push The Boat Out is the standard bearer, following up his triumph on debut in a Curragh maiden on August 9 by edging out the previously unbeaten Group 3 Marble Hill Stakes and Group 2 Coventry Stakes victor Great Barrier Reef to land the Group 3 Round Tower Stakes.

The Push The Boat Out Partnership cashed in at this point, with the colt being bought by the Zhang family’s Ace Stud, to remain in training with Michael O’Callaghan.

The handsome grey – bred by Rathbarry stallion man, Clive Cox out of a Dark Angel mare – was subsequently beaten just over a length when a fast-finishing fourth in Saturday’s Group 1 Middle Park Stakes at Newmarket and looks sure to join the likes of Go Bears Go (Railway Stakes), Lifeplan (Gimcrack Stakes) and Leovanni (Queen Mary) as a Group 2 winner in the future.

The grey Push The Boat Out beats Great Barrier Reef in the Group 3 Round Tower Stakes, before running a close fourth in the Group 1 Tattersalls Middle Park Stakes

Zodiac Bear had provided the first Stakes success of the season for Kodi Bear, when scoring at Listed level in the Celebration Stakes at Ireland’s HQ for owner Seamus McPeake and trainer Johnny Murtagh. Duckadilly, who was two and a half lengths back in fifth, won the Group 3 Brownstown Stakes on her next outing.

Charm Bear was a Listed winner on debut in Italy, having a short neck to spare in San Siro’s Premio Mario E Vittori Crespi Morbio in June, and Stefano Botti’s filly was recently runner-up in another Listed contest.

Perhaps the most vivid illustration of Kodi Bear’s powers, however, is how he upgrades the mares he covers. That ALL of the 14-year-old’s black-type winners have been the only black-type winners produced by the dam is staggering. It all suggest that the £500,000 yield for breeders from sales of his progeny in 2025 will be bettered by the end of this year.

Catherine Cashman has seen it all since she and her late husband Liam, acquired Kampala to be the first flat stallion at a farm that had been exclusively a National Hunt establishment. Kampala would win leading first-season sire honours in 1984.

The success has rolled on since but, even though Kodi Bear won’t challenge for championship honours, it is evident that Cashman is thrilled by his feats, far beyond the 29 flat Stakes performers and 16 Stakes winners.

“A 50% strike rate is very good, and of the other leading two year old sires – the likes of Mehmas (41%), Sioux Nation (36%) and No Nay Never (40%) – his percentage winners to runners is 10% above all of them. So he represents real value you’d have to say and it’s great for the breeders that supported him,” says Cashman.

“I suppose we were lucky that he had a good second crop of runners in 2022. They hit the headlines.

“We syndicate all our flat horses and we had a nice syndicate put together, but we got a lot of breeders that bought into him again that year. So it’s great for a horse to have good breeders behind them, because stallions will always have a dip. No two years are really the same. But the breeders, they keep supporting him, and that means that, going forward, you always have solid crops of runners, and that’s really half the battle. You have to have the numbers to make an impression.”

With outside support supplementing that firm foundation, the “soldiers on the ground” are there. And with the sales now in full force, that support should yield its dividend.

“He’s a fabulous looking individual himself. He really does stamp his stock. At the sales, the stallion has to be reasonably fashionable as the number one, but for number two, you have to have the individual. The conformation and everything else has to be correct. And then the pedigree comes after that.”

Kodi Bear certainly fulfils the top two categories and he appears able to overcome the third.

“The one thing that Kodi Bear has done, I suppose, is that he really seems to upgrade his mares. I don’t have the exact figure, but I know that at least 90% of all the black-type performers that he has gotten so far, are out of a mare that has previously never produced a black-type performer. It’s so important that her first one or two progeny win as two-year-olds, as they all love the two-year-old winners.”

Being a son of Kodiac, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise he would be so prolific. But as the Rathbarry matriarch puts it, “it’s the luck of the draw a lot of the time”. Though in the case of the Towermore, Co Cork premises, you have to say, the results over a long period of time tell you there is a lot more than fortune at play.

“You would be hoping that Push The Boat Out will continue to improve. Kodi Bear seems to cross very well with the Dark Angel and Acclamation mares. There’s plenty of speed in those mares but they mightn’t be great themselves. Brief Angel, the dam of Push The Boat Out, is a case in point. But as we always say, you never know where a good one comes from.”

Digital, by Kodi Bear, is an eight-year-old out of an Acclamation mare trained in England by Ruth Carr that won for the ninth time at Newcastle in February – all over five furlongs. There’s that speed Cashman is talking about.

“It’s marvellous, to keep the connection going. Acclamation was one of our favourite stallions of all time. He just kept coming up with the good ones.”

The early signs at this year’s auctions have been positive for Kodi Bear.

“We hope that breeders will reap the rewards of his good season this year, and ourselves, we have sold a few. We got £82,000 for a filly by him at Doncaster, and 80,000gns for another filly in the Somerville.”

At the Tattersalls Ireland September Sale in Fairyhouse last week, the Doyles signed for €50,000 for a Rathbarry colt out of a Dark Angel mare, and Ballyphilip Stud got €95,000 from Durcan Bloodstock, on behalf of trainer Richard Hughes, for a filly out of a Ribchester mare.

The Kodi Bear ex Ski Club filly sold for €95,000 by Ballyphilip Stud to Durcan Bloodstock/Richard Hughes Racing at last week’s Tattersalls Ireland September Yearling Sale

Meanwhile, Rathbarry are bringing four Kodi Bears to Co Kildare for the Goffs Orby Sale.

“We do back our stallions, and (son) Paul buys one or two every year at the sales as foals to pinhook too. And I think people appreciate that.”

So what next?

“Kodi Bear finished up with 28 individual two-year-old winners last year, so the mares as a cross-section would have been a level higher. A lot depends on the sales. They will tell a tale. So here’s hoping!”

Cashman does believe that breeders will have to be more critical than ever about their mares in the current climate, however.

“We all have to be, the way the world is and with how it is at the middle and the bottom now at sales, where it’s very tough. And then prize money in England is another thing. It’s just so bad. I don’t, to be honest with you, understand how the trainers in England can stay in business at all.

“If you had a horse in training in England, we’ll say a two-year-old winner, and you’re running for maybe something between three and five thousand sterling. By the time all the day’s expenses are deducted, for the transport and the jockey and the trainer, that gives very little left for the owner and that has to have a knock-on effect then for the industry in terms of that owner going back to the sales.

“The next couple of weeks are going to be very interesting, but we’re in the game and you have to be positive.”

With Rathbarry and Kodi Bear, there is plenty to be positive about.