Champion sire Southern Halo has died in his paddock in Argentina.  The 26 year-old had been pensioned by Haras La Quebrada near Buenos Aires prior to this year’s southern hemisphere season.

“I said good-bye last weekend…he didn’t suffer or feel pain,” La Quebrada owner Hernan Ceriani Cernadas III said.  “He was the Sadler’s Wells of Argentina.”

Southern Halo was bred in Maryland by E.P. Taylor.  By Halo out of the Northern Dancer mare Northern Sea, he went through the 1984 Keeneland July yearling sale, where he was purchased for $600,000 by the the British Bloodstock Agency.  He initially raced in Ireland, where he was unplaced in two starts.

Campaigned by the Niarchos family, he won five races in North America for trainer D. Wayne Lukas and was also runner-up in the G1 Swaps Stakes and Super Derby.

Southern Halo was the leading sire in Argentina from 1994 to 2000, and again in 2004 and 2007.  He currently heads the broodmare sires’ list, which he also topped from 2004 to 2008.

The sire of 167 stakes winners, including 57 at G1 level, Southern Halo enjoyed the majority of his success in South America, where he sired champions such as Team, El Compinche and Miss Linda, who also captured the G1 Spinster Stakes in the US.

Such was his early impact in Argentina, he shuttled to Ashford Stud in Kentucky for seven seasons from 1996.  It proved to be a successful move as his first Kentucky crop contained G1 King’s Bishop Stakes winner More Than Ready, himself now a successful sire in both hemispheres.