No Rest For Studs, Or Stallions, As Season Nears End
The Age
Friday November 25, 2005
THE breeding season may be heading to wind-down mode in coming weeks but for most commercial studs, there is no time time to rest, with the Magic Millions Gold Coast sale kicking off the 2006 yearling sales season in the second week of January.
At Victoria's biggest stud farm, Eliza Park at Kerrie, north of Melbourne, the eight resident stallions will have covered about 750 broodmares. But several won't get a break as they head to the northern hemisphere on December 28 for the breeding season there.After not shuttling for a couple of years, Sunline's veteran sire, the 17-year-old Desert Sun, is getting back on the plane and it was announced this week that he would be joined by first-season horse Danbird, who is finishing off his full book of 120 mares. Danbird will be standing alongside Eclipse Stakes winner Elmaamul at Beechwood Grange Stud in Yorkshire.The agreement to shuttle Danbird continues the increase in interest from European breeders in Australian-bred sires, particularly those by Danehill, with Exceed And Excel and New Zealand-based Danroad being other sons of the champion sire to be heading to England for the coming season.Eliza Park has sought to shuttle its stallions to the northern hemisphere and Danbird fitted the bill for Beechwood Grange. "They were looking for a Danehill horse that had performances at two, with a big pedigree and a big looker, and this fellow (Danbird) fits the bill," said Eliza Park's marketing manager, Shane McGrath.After waving Danbird and Desert Sun goodbye, McGrath will be setting his mind to selling the progeny of Eliza Park's first-time sellers Bel Esprit, Planchet, Grass Wonder and Delago Brom.It seems only yesterday that Bel Esprit and Delago Brom were winning group 1 races but this time next year, their first sons and daughters will have been tested on the racetrack. Both horses have been hugely popular with breeders in their first three seasons at stud and yearling buyers no doubt will be seeking out their progeny."They (Delago Brom and Bel Esprit) will just about market themselves. Local trainers are well aware of how much ability they had," McGrath said.Grass Wonder and Planchet will require more work to get their yearlings out of their boxes for inspections - Grass Wonder because he raced in Japan and Planchet, mainly because he retired to the same stud in the same year as Delago Brom and Bel Esprit.He might be something of an unknown quantity in Australia, but Grass Wonder has plenty going for him. He was the unbeaten two-year-old of his year in Japan and went on to be a group 1 winner as a three- and four-year-old, with all his wins being on turf. He is from the Roberto sire line, which has been well represented locally in the past few years by Red Ransom, while his dam has a similar pedigree pattern to Danehill.His oldest progeny are three-year-olds in Japan, where he had 15 individual two-year-old winners in his first crop and has had 43 individual winners to date from his two racing crops.Grass Wonder was at his best at 1600 metres and further; Planchet, a representative of the Star Kingdom line through his sire Canny Lad, was an out-and-out speedster.At two, he was the equal-top-rated two-year-old male sprinter alongside Bel Esprit, winning the group 2 Pago Pago Stakes and being placed at group 1 level. He won another three black-type races as a three-year-old but couldn't match the efforts of Bel Esprit, who went on to win the group 1 Doomben 10,000.With Woodlands Stud, which raced him, supporting him strongly in his initial seasons at stud, many of his runners will have every chance to succeed in the John Hawkes stable.
© 2005 The Age