Brutal retired to Newgate Farm after abandonment of Queensland carnival
The coronavirus outbreak has forced Doncaster Mile (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Brutal (O’Reilly) into immediate retirement rather than enjoying a Queensland winter campaign before heading to stud later this year.
The Group 1 winner, a striking juvenile-winning four-year-old entire by champion New Zealand sire O’Reilly (Last Tycoon), will form part of the Newgate Farm stallion roster in 2020 having been successful in five of his ten starts.
Trained by Michael, Wayne and John Hawkes-trained, Brutal was being set for a Stradbroke Handicap (Gr 1, 1400m) swansong after a lead-up preparation aimed at the Doomben 10,000 (Gr 1, 1200m) and the Kingsford-Smith Cup (Gr 1, 1300m) before Racing Queensland scrapped the carnival to save money as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
“He was always going to be a horse, on form and time analysis, who would become a true Group 1 weight-for-age horse and be top-class,” Newgate Farm director of stallions Bruce Slade said yesterday.
“He did something very special at three, winning the Doncaster, then a few things didn’t quite go right with him and now we have been struck with ‘corona’.
“The good thing is, we’ve spoken to a lot of breeders about this horse over the past the few months and there’s a really positive vibe out there for him and I expect that he is going to cover a full book of mares at a really realistic fee given the circumstances of this year.
“He’s a black cat, black kittens type horse. He’s a magnificent specimen purchased by John Hawkes as a yearling and he cost a fair bit of money. When people see him they will be blown away – he will leave a good commercial type of yearling.”
Newgate Farm principal Henry Field and partners swooped on the then colt, who won his first three starts including a five-length demolition at Caulfield in July of his two-year-old season followed by a further two Listed victories in Melbourne, after he won last year’s Doncaster Mile at just his seventh start.
Rupert Legh, who raced Brutal from the beginning, is set to support the horse at stud alongside high-profile investors Winstar Farm, GIG Racing and Breeding, Highgrove Bloodstock and Dahlia Bloodstock.
He returned in the spring to win the Premiere Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) first-up at Randwick, his first start for his new connections, and also ran third in the Sydney Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) before pulling up sore with a bone chip when unplaced in the Golden Eagle (1500m) last November.
“We have got some great shareholders on board already, including ourselves, who will support him with some great mares and I know how much interest we’ve had on the horse,” Slade said.
“Touch wood, everything goes to plan from here on in with ‘corona’ and everything else. He’s retired now but we won’t (officially) launch him until later down the track when we’ve got a bit more clarity around ‘corona’ and there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.”
Brutal, who was a NZ$220,000 New Zealand Bloodstock Yearling Sale purchase in 2017 from the Mapperley Stud draft, is the best of two stakes winners out of the stakes-placed mare Alberton Princess (Golan), herself a three-quarter sister to Lady Alberton (Golan) and a half-sister to Te Akau Rose (Thorn Park), both of whom were Group winners.
Adding depth to his female family is the fact that Brutal’s family includes Group 3-winning juvenile Cavalry Rose (Charge Forward), and fellow high-class performers in Testarhythm (Testa Rossa) and Wyndspelle (Iffraaj), victorious in this season’s Captain Cook Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) in New Zealand.
Legh, who also shares in the ownership of fellow stallion prospects Exceedance (Exceed And Excel) and Alabama Express (Redoute’s Choice), believes Brutal had more to offer on the racecourse but connections’ hand was forced due to Covid-19.
“The horse has never looked better or worked better in his life,” Legh told Racing.com.
“We’re that disappointed we couldn’t get to Queensland and run in races such as the Stradbroke but our intentions have now been all undone.
“In order to prepare the horse properly for life at stud, to properly let down and get the mares right, it’s the right time to make the decision – it’s too late in two or three months’ time.”
A service fee for Brutal has not yet been announced.