Castelvecchio retired as Snitzel and Written Tycoon lead Arrowfield roster
Top-class stallion Written Tycoon (Iglesia) will stand at Arrowfield Stud this year in a significant partnership with Woodside Park.
Victoria’s long-time premier sire Written Tycoon will stand for $77,000 in his first season in the Hunter Valley while Arrowfield Stud’s champion stallion Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), in line for a fourth consecutive title, will stand for $165,000 alongside dual Group 1-winning newcomer Castelvecchio (Dundeel) who will not race on next season.
The shake-up of the Australian stallion ranks, caused in part by the global coronavirus pandemic, has also seen Arrowfield Stud and Shadai Stallion Station agree to suspend the shuttling this year of their Japanese stallions, Maurice (Screen Hero), Mikki Isle (Deep Impact) and Real Steel (Deep Impact).
Victoria’s premier stallion Written Tycoon (Iglesia) and dual Group 1 winner Castelvecchio (Dundeel) will help Arrowfield Stud offset the loss of grand servant Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice) and the absence of its Japanese shuttle stallions.
Arrowfield Stud, in conjunction with Woodside Park Stud, yesterday confirmed that Written Tycoon would relocate to the Hunter Valley to continue his successful stallion career while John Messara also announced the immediate retirement of three-year-old Castelvecchio.
The Richard Litt-trained Castelvecchio, who won the ATC Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) at two and returned to finish runner-up in the Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) and take out the Rosehill Guineas (Gr 1, 2000m) this autumn, was slated to race on as a four-year-old.
But Messara, the Arrowfield Stud principal, cited the ongoing and significant effect of Covid-19 as the reason for Castelvecchio heading to the breeding barn later this year with a $33,000 (all GST inclusive) service fee.
“We’ve had that twice now where we’ve had three-year-olds who were going on to conquer the world (The Autumn Sun and Castelvecchio) and we’ve had to put them here to work because of the premature death or we’ve had other stallions taken out of service,” he said.
“We invested in those horses as long-term stallions but in both cases it’s happened earlier than I would have hoped.
“We had a jockey lined up in Craig Williams. Our trainer had a stable worked out at Flemington for the Cox Plate … but he will get a second-to-none chance this year of any first season sire because he gets all those mares who are Danehill line and we’ve got over 300 mares here that we own.”
Not A Single Doubt, the sire of this year’s Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Farnan, was pensioned earlier this year after it became apparent he would not be able to complete a 16th covering season this year owing to pulmonary disease, an outcome that led to Messara to chase Written Tycoon and retire Castelvecchio.
Castelvecchio’s own sire Dundeel (High Chaparral) will remain at a fee of $66,000 this year.
Messara said that the deal to bring Written Tycoon to NSW under an initial one-year agreement had been in the works for a number of weeks and as a result he expects him to be very popular with breeders.
No equity has been sold in the horse, with major shareholders Woodside Park and Iskander Racing and Breeding committed to sending a full complement of mares to Written Tycoon this year. He will stand for $77,000.
“It’s the first of what could be more deals with Woodside in Melbourne. We might have a horse that might suit their market and this horse certainly suited us here and particularly a lot of mares we are going to support him with,” he said.
“It’s good for everybody concerned and I just thought that our proposition appealed to Woodside and it represented the opening of a potential longer-term relationship between the two farms, so I think that was attractive.”
Woodside Park Stud chief executive James Price was in no doubt Written Tycoon – whose sire sons Capitalist, Written By and Winning Rupert also reside in the Hunter Valley – would be well received by commercial breeders.
“Outside I Am Invincible, he is probably the best outcross stallion we have in this country,” he said.
“When you run second to I Am Invincible in those stakes I think you are doing pretty well. That is obviously why John targeted him and he approached us and we did the deal. There’s only upside for everyone, I can assure you.”
Meanwhile Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), a probable favourite to land his fourth straight champion sire title this year, will stand at $165,000, a reflection of the economic conditions rather than his on-track success.
“It looks like he could win the title again this year. He is $250,000 ahead and that will make it four years in a row which will be the first time this has happened since Danehill 25 years ago. It’s a great feat and he just goes about his work in a very modest and humble manner,” Messara said.
“The two years sandwiched between year one and year four being his year, they were years where his prize-money was affected by The Everest and Redzel. You couldn’t say that in year one and you couldn’t say that now, so he is doing it under all circumstances.”
Messara argued that Snitzel, who is in a championship battle with I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) and Pierro (Lonhro) this season, had achieved greatness despite being limited to a small segment of the mare pool.
“The interesting thing that nobody has really cottoned on to is because he’s a dominant Danehill representative, he can’t really serve most of the mares from that sire line,” he said.
“He is missing out on so many stakes winners and great mares who otherwise would have come to him. He’s one of those horses who has had to do it without having access to the elite mare population because he’s by Redoute’s who’s by Danehill. It’s amazing.”
Arrowfield Stud has Redoute’s Choice’s son Pariah entering his third season this year, while a son of Snitzel, Showtime, enters his second year.
Shalaa (Invincible Spirit), who remains at $33,000, will also shuttle for a fourth season from Europe this year, but Arrowfield’s Japanese experiment has been put on hold for 12 months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Maurice (Screen Hero), Mikki Isle (Deep Impact) and Real Steel (Deep Impact) will all remain in Japan this year but Messara was adamant that they would return next year, should the Covid-19 crisis subside.
Messara, who withdrew Arrowfield’s Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale draft last month as the seriousness of the pandemic started to hit to instead offer them privately, was mindful of setting service fees that would enable breeders to remain profitable.
“The quality of mares we get here and the end of the market we trade in, I think breeders will continue to (send their mares to stud) after all they will be looking at selling the produce in three years’ time,” he said.
“It’s another world now to what it was last year and it will be another world in three years’ time. You’ve got to try and look forward.”
On Arrowfield’s 60-lot draft of yearlings who were initially set for the Easter sale, Messara said: “We have sold two thirds of them for about 25 per cent above the sale average (of $306,290) which is not that different to normal years for us.
“We averaged that. It was OK, but it’s not brilliant, and we’ve still got a number of horses to sell like most breeders.”