Aidan O’Brien had just watched his latest star, Little Big Bear, a prodigiously talented son of No Nay Never, romp to a seven-length win in Saturday’s G1 Phoenix Stakes at The Curragh.

It was O’Brien 17^th winner of one of Ireland’s best two-year-old races, but it is doubtful any of those previous 16, even eight-length 2005 winner George Washington, had been so impressive as the big striding Little Big Bear. Post-race conversation centred on where he may rank among the best juveniles produced in O’Brien’s time at Ballydoyle.

“He has plenty of options and he can do anything I suppose,” O’Brien told reporters.  “He’s a big, powerful, strong horse. He cruises and quickens, is strong and mature.”

This might be as hyperbolic as O’Brien gets in assessing an emerging star. The champion trainer is well known for keeping his cards close to his chest.

"That was mightily impressive!"

An absolutely spectacular display from Little Big Bear 🐻 in the @keeneland Phoenix Stakes @curraghrace – with Bradsell only fourth@coolmorestud | @Ballydoyle pic.twitter.com/43xQdmXjqJ

— Racing TV (@RacingTV) August 6, 2022

However, it was the sort of win which leads to social media gasping all over the world, including in Australia, where there are a couple of tendrils of the Little Big Bear backstory.

The first is that his half-brother, Andrea Mantegna, was a stakes-performer in Australia. Placed in a Hobart Cup, he won nine races, including country Cups at Horsham and Ararat and he was also successful over hurdles.

The second, far more substantial connection is that Little Big Bear’s sire, No Nay Never, stood at Coolmore Australia for four seasons from 2016 to 2019. A Group 1 winner in France as a two-year-old himself, he was the first son of Scat Daddy to stand in Australia.

Coolmore saw Scat Daddy as a pillar of their global stallion plans and the team was devastated when he died prematurely in 2015. It was no surprise that they were very keen to support his sons as stallions, whether it be ones they bred and/or raced themselves, like No Nay Never, or ones they purchased into, such as Justify, who cost a reported US$60 million.

At one stage in 2008, Scat Daddy was destined for Australia, but a late change of plan ended up with him in South America instead, where he became a champion sire in Chile and set up his short but very successful career at stud.

In the spring of 2019, you couldn’t walk through the paddocks at Coolmore Australia’s Jerrys Plains property without tripping over a son of Scat Daddy.

Interest in the sireline had skyrocketed off the back of Justify’s US Triple Crown success the previous year. As well as standing that unbeaten superstar, Coolmore Australia debuted Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Mendelssohn in 2019 while No Nay Never and Caravaggio were named to return from the previous year.

It meant that a quarter of Coolmore’s 16-strong Australian roster were sons of Scat Daddy (although Caravaggio was injured and withdrawn on the eve of the season) and added into the mix was that another Coolmore-owned son, Sioux Nation, was debuting at Swettenham Stud in Victoria.

Fast forward three years and it is intriguing that there are no sons of Scat Daddy on a stallion roster in Australia in 2022.

The reasons are varied. No Nay Never hasn’t shuttled since 2018 as he was Europe’s best first and second-season stallion and simple economics dictated there was more value confining him to Ireland then sending him to Australia as well.

Justify, whose first Australian-bred horses have just turned two and hit the track this season, is being rested from shuttling from Ashford Stud in Kentucky, with the intention he will return in 2023.

Caravaggio and Mendelssohn had just one season in Australia each, as did Sioux Nation. There was strong support – 143 mares – for Caravaggio in 2018, but after he missed that 2019 season through injury, momentum was lost and he has remained in Ireland. Breeders weren’t as warm in their support for Mendelssohn and Sioux Nation, but that is not surprising given the sudden influx of Scat Daddy bloodlines in that year.

What all that means is that while there will be none of Scat Daddy’s genetics on offer at stud in Australia this spring, it shapes as a huge racing season for the sireline in this part of the world.

Not only will we witness Justify’s much anticipated first crop after he was bred to an all-star cast of mares, but we will also see the only crops of Mendelssohn and Sioux Nation and the final Australian crop of No Nay Never.

No Nay Never’s Australian racing crops to date have produced 49 winners, with three stakes winners. After the brilliant start from his progeny in the Northern Hemisphere, he stood that 2019 season at $44,000 (inc GST), four times his initial fee, and accordingly had his highest quality book of mares.

No Nay Never has already produced some elite racehorses in Europe such as Alcohol Free and Ten Sovereigns but judging from his win on Saturday. Little Big Bear could be on another level again.

The nature of the breeding game means the success of a strategy like backing in multiple sons of what had been to that point an unproven sireline in Australia, won’t be known for several years. The next 18 months will tell a lot of stories about whether Coolmore were on the mark with their focus on Scat Daddy‘s sons in 2019.

The difficult thing for Australian breeders is if the local progeny of these sons of Scat Daddy turn out to be a raging success, like they have been in the Northern Hemisphere, there will be very little opportunity for them to get in on the action and a bit like happened with breed-shaper Galileo in the 2000s, the chance may have passed them by.

‘Too slow, won’t sell’ – How the deck is stacked against Melbourne Cup-winning stallions