Big guns hold all the stallion prospect cards as spring looms
Newgate among those again in possession of an enviable arsenal as available stud prospects appear in short supply
The new southern hemisphere breeding season may have just begun, but already the most likely commercial first season stallions of next year and beyond are being stockpiled by Australasia’s leading stud farms.
Newgate Farm’s enviable arsenal of colts consists of Group 1-winning juveniles Stay Inside (Extreme Choice), Artorius (Flying Artie) and Captivant (Capitalist) as well as stakes winners Tiger Of Malay (Extreme Choice) and Profiteer (Capitalist).
Last Saturday, the Newgate-China Horse Club partnership added three-year-old colt In The Congo (Snitzel) to its growing portfolio of stallion prospects when he won the San Domenico Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m), his first victory at stakes level, and it also has four-year-old entire Wild Ruler (Snitzel), a Group 2-winning, Group 1-placed sprinter, as a likely retiree in 2022.
Wild Ruler resumes in the Concorde Stakes (Gr 3, 1000m) at Randwick this weekend.
More than 30 stallions from more than 24 farms in Australia and New Zealand started their stud careers yesterday but an early snapshot of the likely new offering in 2022 reveals the cohort of talent to emerge thus far is already controlled by just a few powerful players.
First season sires are often considered the safest option for breeders outside the elite, proven stallions. Studs are constantly looking to refresh their rosters in what can be a fickle and fast-moving market.
Henry Field’s collection – acquired at significant cost, it must be said, either privately as in the case of Golden Slipper winner Stay Inside, Blue Diamond winner Artorius and Profiteer or via the vehicle of a yearling sale as in the case of Captivant, Tiger Of Malay, In The Congo and Wild Ruler – naturally gives him the strongest hand.
But the grip on the most probable first season sires does not end there.
Rival stallion farms Darley, Arrowfield and Widden are also already in the ownership of potential stud prospects, likely making it tougher for other studs to launch competitive bids to stand the colts should their records warrant a place on a roster.
New Zealand’s Cambridge Stud was quick off the mark to ensure Sistema Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Sword Of State (Snitzel) would be on its roster when the time came, reaching a deal earlier this year with Te Akau’s David Ellis. The Jamie Richards-trained three-year-old is currently being prepared from Sydney with the view of adding to his value and appeal during the spring.
Darley has its homebred colt Anamoe (Street Boss), placed in the Blue Diamond and Slipper as well as winning the Todman Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) and ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), as next year’s banner first season sire, while stablemate Ingratiating (Frosted), a Talindert Stakes (Listed, 1100m) winner at two who was dominant first-up in the Vain Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) on August 14, is another candidate if he can continue his progression.
Coolmore, too, has invested heavily at the yearling sales in a bid to source stallion prospects and to emerge from its 2020 generation has been Silver Slipper (Gr 2, 1100m) winner Home Affairs (I Am Invincible) and Inglis Nursery (RL, 1000m) winner Acrobat (Fastnet Rock), the latter a one-time Slipper favourite before illness curtailed his autumn campaign.
The Ciaron Maher and David Eustace-trained colt is being aimed at the Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) in a bid to cement a place at Jerrys Plains alongside his champion sire Fastnet Rock (Danehill).
Remarque (Snitzel), the brother to 2018 Slipper winner Estijaab, was retained to race by Arrowfield’s John Messara and his Japanese ally Katsumi Yoshida and the colt appeared to justify the decision early with a first-up win in January before a virus hindered a stop-start preparation towards the Slipper which was abandoned before the Group 1 two-year-old races.
He resumed with a luckless third in the Rosebud (Listed, 1100m) on August 7 and if he was to win a big three-year-old race he would certainly hold value at Arrowfield.
Profondo (Deep Impact), the high-profile $1.9 million colt owned by Ottavio and Wendy Galletta who won his first start on the Kensington track yesterday after a string of impressive barrier trials, would also be short odds to return to Arrowfield Stud, where he was born, if he was able to make a statement at Group level either this spring or next autumn.
The Gallettas also raced dual Group 1 winner Castelvecchio (Dundeel) and have a strong relationship with Messara, who has aggressively pursued Japan’s Deep Impact (Sunday Silence) bloodlines over the past decade and perhaps in Profondo, if he reaches the heights hoped by trainer Richard Litt and the Gallettas, he will have found his colonial successor.
Widden Stud, who is standing the Aquis Farm-raced Anders (Not A Single Doubt) in the Hunter Valley this year, also partnered with Tony Fung in the ownership of Saturday’s Maher and Eustace-trained H. D. F. McNeil Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) winner Bruckner (Snitzel) and principal Antony Thompson also part-owns Dio (Zoustar), the stakes-placed brother to three-time Group 1 winner Sunlight, who races in the Orbis Bloodstock colours.
Group 2 winner Doubtland (Not A Single Doubt), another colt raced by Orbis, stands his first season at Widden Victoria this year.
It is a different scenario to what has played out in the past 12 months with Golden Slipper winner Farnan (Not A Single Doubt), dual Group 1 winners King’s Legacy and Ole Kirk (Written Tycoon), Anders, Russian Camelot (Camelot), Doubtland and Fierce Impact (Deep Impact) among those offered on the open market.
Meanwhile, Field has an embarrassment of riches at his disposal and the studmaster faces a conundrum: can Newgate Farm stand all those sire prospects and provide them adequate opportunity to succeed?
It’s not a dilemma Field is concerning himself with just yet and he only has to look back to 2017 for a successful blueprint.
That year, Newgate launched subsequent champion first season sire Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), runner-up Capitalist (Written Tycoon) and third-placed Flying Artie (Artie Schiller) as well as Winning Rupert (Written Tycoon).
“We stood four stallions (in 2017) who had their first runners in the past 12 months. We launched four stallions in that year and trifecta-ed the (first season) sires’ table, so we are not afraid to stand multiple stallions if they are the right ones,” Field said this week.
“The good thing with some of these horses running around … is they are good looking with plenty of scope and there’s no hard and fast rule as to whether we retire them at three or four.”
But Field wouldn’t rule out partnering with other farms, potentially interstate, to help cater for all the colts, pointing to Invader (Snitzel), the 2017 ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes winner, as an example.
“We raced Invader with Aquis and subsequently they bought him off us when he finished racing and he’s one of the hottest first crop stallions in the market this year, so we are always in the business of looking at ways to do things,” he said.
“We’ve got an A-grade stallion facility, we’ve got an A-grade team of people and we’ve proven with our first crop stallions this year that we can manage them well. As I said, we trifectaed the sires’ table and you can’t do any more than that.
“I suspect it will just organically sort itself out where we will have a nice spread of horses coming onto the farm over the next two years.”
He added: “We regularly have other studs look to partner with us and we are always open-minded about that. I suppose it all comes down to economics.”
There does, however, remain stakes-winning colts who have yet to be collared by studs. Four-year-old Mo’unga (Savabeel), who last month added the Winx Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) to his Rosehill Guineas (Gr 1, 2000m) win in the autumn, is yet to find a home but he will by the end of the season.
ATC Breeders’ Plate (Gr 3, 1000m), Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) and Pago Pago Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) winner Shaquero (Shalaa), as well as Black Opal Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) winner Kalashnikov (Capitalist), could be front of mind for studs if they can reproduce their juvenile form at three.
Then, if fresh blood does arrive in races such as the Golden Rose (Gr 1, 1400m), the Danehill Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m), Roman Consul Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m), Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) and the Coolmore Stud Stakes, or the array of autumn races, expect studs without a pin-up horse to be on the phone and desperate to land a prospect.
Those owners will certainly have the upper hand if they do ring.