Recommendation
It so often happens in breeding that – for want of a less harsh term – one farm’s poison becomes another’s meat.
Merchant Navy (Fastnet Rock) was sold by Coolmore to Kooringal Stud, Wagga Wagga, and within days had a Group 1 winner in Royal Merchant.
Scissor Kick (Redoute’s Choice) was shown the gate at Arrowfield and ended up in Morocco by the time his son Giga Kick emerged as an Everest (1200m)-winning superstar. Epaulette (Commands) had gone from Darley to Turkey when his son Daumier took the Blue Diamond (Gr 1, 1200m), and so on.
The latest stallion who might be heading into similar territory is Shalaa (Invincible Spirit).
Having shuttled for six seasons to Arrowfield, he was bought last year from his French owners Al Shaqab stud by Eddie Hirsch to stand at his Woodside Park farm in Victoria.
It was no banishment. The sale took several months to finalise, with many behind Shalaa, convinced he could still make it after a series of tantalising results, agonising over the decision.
In any event, Woodside appears poised to benefit greatly from its decision to pursue a speed sire for the Victorian market.
Witness last Saturday’s Bletchingly Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m), in which the stallion sired the quinella, with the exciting Ciaron Maher-trained Recommendation beating fellow four-year-old Semillion, one of Shalaa’s first Australian stakes winners.
Granted, Recommendation might have become a winter star, having won his previous start in another Caulfield Group 3, the John Monash Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) by a whopping seven lengths on July 13. But he now has four stakes victories to his name, amid eight wins from 18 starts, and appears to be going places.
Furthermore, Shalaa would have had a strong chance at siring the trifecta in the Bletchingly but for the scratching of his third son among its seven acceptors, Mornington Glory.
That Mornington Glory, who turns six on Thursday, came within 1.6 lengths of becoming Shalaa’s first Australian Group 1 winner – and second worldwide – when third in Caulfield’s Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m) five months ago, ironically hints at why he didn’t quite become airborne at Arrowfield.
Shalaa started with a very loud bang when another from his maiden Australian crop, Shaquero, won the first juvenile males race of the 2020-21 season – the ATC Breeder’s Plate (Gr 3, 1000m) – and three starts later the Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) at the Gold Coast.
Those results helped Shalaa finish fourth, by earnings, on the Australian first season sires’ table.
Another stat was not so glorious: he’d had only seven winners, finishing a more sobering ninth by that marker, and from 41 runners at 17.1 per cent.
Still, breeders and trainers had pegged him as a sure fire sire of early running two-year-olds and fashioned their expectations of his progeny accordingly.
Two years later, Shalaa finished the 2022-23 season ranking just 17th by winners on the Australian two-year-olds sires’ table, with seven from 34 at 20.6 per cent. He also entered Wednesday’s final day of the season 17th for 2023-24, with eight juvenile winners from 32 starters.
Mare owners had flocked to Shalaa in the weeks after Shaquero’s Breeders Plate win, swelling his 2020 book to a personal-best 170 covers. But as the market waited for the other shoe to drop in terms of his two-year-olds, in 2021 he covered just 88 mares, and in 2022, his last season at Arrowfield, it was 111.
So, the big picture numbers would suggest that, in the mould of many a European stallion, Shalaa is not quite the sire of early-going babies for which the Australian market clamours, though of course no rules in breeding are hard and fast, and all sires can have outliers.
Semillion sums that up. He won two stakes races at two, didn’t win again for two years, then took the Takeover Target Stakes (Listed, 1200m) at Newcastle in April, and has two stakes placings from three starts since.
What’s mostly being seen now – and has Woodside counting its blessings – is that Shalaa’s stock stock tend to grow better with age.
Shalaa hasn’t quite become a siring sensation, though he’s climbed again on the general sires’ table, from 36th to 28th after four years of runners. But he does appear on the right track, and his fee drop from $22,000 to $19,800 for this spring will enhance his appeal.
“He’s had 33 metro winners [worldwide] since New Year’s Day,” Woodside’s stallion nominations manager Mark Dodemaide tells It’s In The Blood.
“He’s also had 16 stakes winners now. People jump up and down when a stallion gets one good horse, and you’ll often see their fee go up – but then drop back down again. But if you’re a sire with 16 stakes winners and metro winners everywhere, that’s a pretty solid sire.
“He’s one of the best-looking stallions you’ll see anywhere, and he’s perfect in Victoria for VOBIS bonuses.
“Of his 16 stakes winners, he’s had six two-year-old black-type winers, so they can get running early too. But when you see that he’s capable of having three runners in the Bletchingly, they look like they’re racing maybe better than ever as four- and five-year-olds.”
The story of Recommendation’s creation has a distinctly international flavour, also taking in Hong Kong, the UK, and India (to where, incidentally, another son of Invincible Spirit in Cable Bay was sold out of Victoria a couple of years ago, just before Uncommon James won him his first elite-level race, in the 2023 Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m)).
Recommendation was bred by Pacific King P.L., a breeding concern headed by Hong Kong-based Australian businessman David Boehm, a part-owner of agistment, spelling and breaking property Muskoka Farm.
Boehm, now also the man behind the IRON horse syndication business, had his interest in horses boosted by the fact an Indian associate in Hong Kong had an old school friend who ran a stud farm in India.
The stud owner’s son, Surbrinder “Binku” Sidhu, was active in importing thoroughbreds, particularly from the UK. For Boehm and associates he had sourced an ex-Irish gelding named Dan Excel (Shamardal) who became a south-east Asian star, taking the Hong Kong Champions Mile (Gr 1, 1600m) in 2013, before back-to-back wins in the Singapore Airlines International Cup (Gr 1, 2000m).
Flushed with Dan Excel’s success, Boehm and friends asked Sidhu to find a broodmare or two to import to Australia. At Newmarket’s 2015 December Mares Sales, he did this rather well.
Albanilla (Galileo), whose second dam threw two Group 1 winners including the dam of another, in Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Gr 1, 2400m) heroine Alpinista (Frankel), cost £54,000 in 2015.
In Australia, her six sold yearlings grossed $1.54 million, before her untimely death in foaling last spring. They include Chris Waller’s $340,000 gelding Lenape Vibe (Maurice), who won his third start at Canterbury last month.
The second mare might have been even better buying, being the Juddmonte Farms-bred 2012 throw Adviso (Street Cry). Not only is her father reaching great heights as a broodmare sire, her dam was Proviso (Dansili), winner of four Grade 1s in the US – plus three more stakes races in France.
Proviso was also a half-sister to Royal Ascot Prince of Wales’s Stakes (Gr 1, 1m 2f) victor Byword (Peintre Celebre) and Finche (Frankel), winner of three black-type events in France and Australia, his hugely successful importation also featuring a fourth in the Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).
With the two mares kept at Arrowfield, Adviso first produced Mon Amore (Sebring) before bearing King Adviso (Animal Kingdom). While those two have won five and two races respectively so far, Adviso’s third cover has yielded her only other foal to race to this point – Recommendation.
“Buying the mares from the UK was Binku’s idea,” Boehm tells It’s In The Blood. “And since we’d had so much success with Dan Excel – or ‘the galloping ATM’ as he was called – we decided to put some prize–money back in the industry and give it a go.
“Binku was especially pleased to get Adviso for that price.
“I wouldn’t say we’re serious breeders, compared to some of the big farms, but we’re passionate about horseracing. And we know [Arrowfield owner] John Messara very well, and what they’ve got at Arrowfield in terms of support for broodmares and all the horses at the farm is unbelievable. And we always follow their advice.”
Arrowfield’s pedigrees maven Peter Jenkins conducted a report on Adviso which called Shalaa an ideal match.
Recommendation is built with a 6f x 4m, 5m triplication of Mr. Prospector (Raise A Native), and a 4m, 5m x 4m of Danzig (Northern Dancer), both through three different offspring.
The blending of those two has often been a winning move, and in Recommendation – and the two full siblings who followed – it looks particularly enticing. Adviso’s dam is from a Danzig sireline out of a mare by a son of Mr. Prospector. Shalaa’s damsire War Chant (Danzig) has Mr. Prospector and Danzig the other way around.
What’s also very attractive is Shalaa over Adviso intricately weaves potent lines of Bruce Lowe’s No.7 family.
Shalaa has it in spades. His sire Invincible Spirit is a No.7 through his tail female line, and Shalaa is line-bred to influential brothers Kris and Diesis (Sharpen Up). Rockefella (Hyperion) – who makes three appearances behind Shalaa including two as the damsire of Sharpen Up – packs a potent No.7 strain.
Jenkins therefore reasoned mares carrying No.7 lines would make attractive covers for Shalaa. Adviso fitted the bill, with one strain through her dam’s sireline in Danzig, a proud No.7 member through his tail female line, and another strong vein through Pall Mall (Palestine), third damsire of Adviso’s father, Street Cry (Machiavellian).
“I always feel that’s important, that reinforcing of the number seven family, and I thought it should work well with Shalaa,” Jenkins says.
Recommendation was let go by Pacific King, who withdrew him from the 2021 Magic Millions Gold Coast sale and sold him privately to his current owners.
But Pacific King still has his two-years-younger gelded brother Runjeet, who they intend to import to Hong Kong, while a sister sold for $150,000 at the Gold Coast Yearling Sale this year.
Adviso now has a weanling filly by The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice), and was covered by his Arrowfield barnmate Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) last spring.