Yarraman snaps up Brave Smash after deal agreed for Hunter move

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Yarraman’s new stallion promises to be a Smash hit in the Hunter Valley 

Yarraman Park has turned to one of the nation’s most promising young stallions in Brave Smash (Tosen Phantom), the Japanese-bred, dual Australian Group 1-winning sprinter, to boost the ranks at their Scone stud in 2023.

The Mitchell family late yesterday officially reached a deal to relocate the formerly Queensland-based Aquis Farm stallion, who already has a cluster of exciting two-year-olds turning heads on the racetrack, to the Hunter Valley. 

The sire of first crop stakes-performed juveniles on either side of the country, Brave Smash will stand alongside Australia’s champion stallion I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) and his progressive son Hellbent at Yarraman Park later this year.

The Mitchells have bought a majority ownership of Brave Smash, the Australian Bloodstock-purchased and raced tried horse out of Japan, who won a stakes race as a juvenile in his country of birth before winning the Futurity Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) and Manikato Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) in Victoria.

“We don’t stand many stallions, but we felt Brave Smash fitted within our very specific criteria that is needed for us to take on a new stallion at the farm,” Arthur Mitchell said yesterday. 

“We will be giving him the greatest chance by sending a lot of our best mares to him and some of the best breeders in the country have already pledged they will also support the horse. 

“Although he is Japanese bred, he is very much made in the mould of your typical Australian sprinter and we believe breeders will be very impressed when they come and inspect him on the farm. 

“He is a young horse with his whole career ahead of him and, given the fact he is also a complete outcross, he could very well prove to be a very important stallion to the Australian industry.”

Trained in Australia by Darren Weir and then Kris Lees for four races at the end of his 34-start career, Brave Smash was also Group 1-placed four times and ran in the first two editions of The Everest (1200m), filling third place behind Redzel (Snitzel) and Vega Magic (Lope De Vega) in 2017, the inaugural running of the now captivating high-stakes, big-money race.

Australian Bloodstock’s Jamie Lovett and Luke Murrell and their partners, as well as Aquis, have retained equity in the rising 11-year-old stallion whose first crop of now two-year-olds has so far netted five individual winners of nine races. These include Melbourne Listed winner Brave Mead and Western Australia’s speed machine Brave Halo, who finished fourth in both the Blue Diamond Prelude (Gr 3, 1100m) and Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) during his brief Victorian campaign.

Kimochi, one of Brave Smash’s five winners and who is trained by a man who knows a thing or two about elite juveniles in dual Golden Slipper-winning trainer Gary Portelli, will be out to enhance her sire’s growing reputation in Saturday’s $1 million Percy Sykes Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) at Randwick on day two of The Championships

Rather than perceiving it as a negative that Brave Smash was moving states for a second time – he started his stud career at Aquis Farm’s now-defunct Murrurundi stallion operation at Emirates Park in 2019 – the Queensland stud’s director of sales Jonathan Davies said the relocation of the stallion was a win for all parties involved.

“It’s very exciting news that Brave Smash is moving to Yarraman Park to stand alongside Australia’s premier stallion. It’s great for the shareholders and everyone involved in the horse,” Davies told ANZ Bloodstock News.

“It is an enormous positive for Aquis and also for our shareholders and everyone who has supported the stallion in recent years. 

“They will be the beneficiaries of this move down to Yarraman. It just goes to show that people who invest in stallions with Aquis can be rest assured that we will always do the best thing for them and their stallions.”

Davies is confident that what Brave Smash’s two-year-olds have shown on the racetrack is just the start of things to come.

“He has got an incredible bunch of two-year-olds on the ground at the moment and everything that’s hitting the track is showing great ability,” he said. 

“He’s got horses earmarked for stakes races left, right and centre over the coming few months and his yearlings this year who graced the sale ring have sold exceptionally well and gone to great stables, so he’s every chance of being the next big thing.

“We hope, for Yarraman’s sake, the shareholders and our sake, that he is.”

Brave Smash has covered 403 mares in his four seasons to date, serving 89 mares in 2022 at an advertised fee of $22,000 (inc GST).

A 2023 service fee for the sire will be announced at a later date.

Colts funds such as the James Harron Colts Partnership, Newgate Farm-China Horse Club syndicate, Coolmore, Rosemont Alliance and the Kia Ora-Tony Fung Investments partnership, among others, have dominated the yearling sales and the majority subsequently have hit the jackpot on the racetrack with valuable stallion prospects.

That segment of the market, once again on show at this week’s Inglis Easter sale, has made it increasingly difficult for other farms such as Yarraman to, firstly, identify and, secondly, purchase young stallions off the track.

Mitchell yesterday acknowledged the predicament faced by studs such as theirs when coming up against the might and collective capital of the stallion syndicates.

It led to Yarraman exploring different courses of action to add a third stallion to the roster.

“We’ve been offered a lot of horses, we’ve looked at a lot of horses and some of them are ridiculously expensive as we know in this country and that makes it very hard to find buyable stallions off the track,” Mitchell told ANZ Bloodstock News.

“The Slipper winner this year (Shinzo) will obviously go to Coolmore and that’s the way it’s going. The colts syndicates seem to be working their magic.”