Paddock accident leaves Per Incanto in doubt for breeding season
Little Avondale’s Williams to nurse elite stallion back to full health as no risks are taken
Leading New Zealand stallion Per Incanto (Street Cry) is recovering from a hind leg injury suffered in a paddock accident, a setback which could rule him out of the 2023 breeding season.
If the Little Avondale-based stallion’s leg injury does heal quicker than expected then he will only cover shareholders’ mares in a delayed start to the breeding season.
Per Incanto suffered the injury on Saturday and the long-term prognosis for the horse to return to full health is good.
Studmaster Sam Williams was emphatic last night that the stallion’s best interests would come first and that he would not be rushed back into the serving barn before he was right.
“He has been so good to Little Avondale, to the whole syndicate and to the New Zealand breeding industry,” Williams told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“When we bought him, he cost shareholders NZ$10,000 a share and he’s repaid them God knows how many times.
“We owe the horse.”
Per Incanto has sired 28 individual stakes winners from nine crops of racing age, including this season’s Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Little Brose and Little Avondale’s dual Flemington Group 1-winning mare Roch ‘N’ Horse.
The Lisa Latta-trained Belclare is also a winner at the highest level in New Zealand this season for the Little Avondale mainstay, the five-year-old taking out the NZ Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes (1600m) at Pukekohe in April, while across the Tasman the John O’Shea-trained sprinter Lost And Running, who won the Premiere Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) this season, has been a regular advertisement for Per Incanto.
He is also the sire of 38 individual winners in Hong Kong, which saw him crowned champion sire (by winners) in 2020-21 and 2021-22.
Per Incanto’s yearlings this year averaged NZ$192,013, a crop conceived off a NZ$9,000 (plus GST) service fee. On the back of his progeny’s success, particularly in recent years, Per Incanto’s fee was increased to NZ$50,000 (plus GST) last year.
The sales ring recognition didn’t stop at the yearling sales, either, with a colt by Per Incanto also topping last month’s New Zealand Bloodstock National Weanling Sale at Karaka, selling for NZ$150,000 to Riversley Park’s Sam Beatson.
His service fee was unchanged for the upcoming season.
“This season has been massive for him,” Williams said.
“The [By The Numbers] article in ANZ had him as the fourth most commercial stallion in Australasia for return on service fee in the yearling ring; he’s one of only three stallions in Australasia to have sired three or more Group 1 winners and New Zealand-breds have sired five Group 1 winners in Australia this season over 1200 metres and he’s had two of them.”
The juvenile Group 1 success in Australia of the Ben and JD Hayes-trained Little Brose was “unheard of for a New Zealand-bred” and Williams had been buoyed by the continued demand for Per Incanto’s progeny in the sales ring and from breeders wanting to use the son of Street Cry (Machiavellian) whose Little Avondale stud career started at a modest fee of NZ$4,000 (plus GST).
“Just recently I acquired a stakes-performed mare closely related to Little Brose and I had a half-sister just booked into Per Incanto. He had a beautiful full book, so it is a real shame, but it is what it is,” Williams lamented.
The US-bred Per Incanto, Italy’s joint champion sprinter in 2007, won six of his 13 race starts which also saw him race in England and the US before being acquired by Little Avondale to begin stud duties at the historic Masterton-based stud in 2011.