THE number of elite two-year-olds in Europe continues to decline. Speaking at this week’s press conference to launch the 2025 Classification, Irish handicapper Mark Bird said: “To put it in context, we had 40 horses in total this year in the Classification, 30 colts and 10 fillies. Since the mid 1990s, we have a steady decline in the numbers.”

He said the five-year average is currently running at 41, down from 46 in the five-year period before that, and it had averaged 50 and 53 before that.

“So there’s a continuing decline, essentially, in the number of really top-class horses that we have, or that we’re seeing or being able to rate as two-year-olds in Europe.”

Bird also put Aidan O’Brien’s achievements with two-year-olds in 2025 into context.

“Whilst he didn’t have the champion two-year-old colt this year, Aidan O’Brien and Ballydoyle really dominated the juvenile landscape, pretty much from start to finish.

“He trained three of the six Royal Ascot two-year-old winners. He had seven individual Group 1 or Grade 1 winners who won nine races at that level. He has 15 of the 40 horses on the Classification, his highest number except for 2018 when, I think, he had 16. He also had 40 individual two-year-old winners in Ireland. So it’s pretty much an unprecedented domination of the European two-year-old landscape.”