Wootton Bassett up to €200,000; Paddington to Stand at €55,000

Coolmore has introduced three new names to its Irish roster for next year with Paddington (GB) heading the list of newcomers at €55,000. The son of Siyouni (Fr) won six of his eight races this year, including four Group 1 victories in the Irish 2,000 Guineas, St James's Palace, Eclipse, and Sussex S.

Little Big Bear (Ire), winner of the G1 Phoenix S. at two followed by the G2 Sandy Lane S. this year before finishing runner-up in the G1 Commonwealth Cup, will stand for €27,500. The Antarctic (Ire), a dual Group 3-winning brother to Battaash (Ire), joins Castle Hyde Stud at €6,000.

Of the current Coolmore residents, Wootton Bassett (GB), who covered 218 mares this year, leads the field at €200,000, up from €150,000 in 2023. He was represented with a new Grade I winner at the Breeders' Cup by Unquestionable (Fr) in the Juvenile Turf. His other top-level winners this year include King Of Steel and Bucanero Fuerte (Fr).

No Nay Never, who stood at €175,000 in 2023, is advertised at €150,000 for next season. He stands alongside four of his sons on the roster: Arizona (Ire) (€5,000), Blackbeard (Ire) (€20,000), Little Big Bear, as above, and Ten Sovereigns (Ire) (€17,500).

The European champion 2-year-old and 3-year-old St Mark's Basilica (Fr) will have his first foals for sale from later this month and his fee has been trimmed to €50,000. He has stood at €65,000 in his first two seasons at stud. Another son of Siyouni, the Arc winner Sottsass (Fr), will have his first runners on the track next year and will remain at €25,000.

Coolmore's David O'Loughlin told TDN Europe, “We're delighted to have three new exciting prospects for the coming season in the shape of Siyouni's brilliant son Paddington, No Nay Never's European champion 2-year-old Little Big Bear and Battaash's well-performed own-brother The Antarctic. Many of our stallions have enjoyed fantastic seasons but, in line with prevailing market conditions, we've decreased the fees of 10 of the 18 which remain on the roster from last year.”

A decision on whether Saturday's GI Breeders' Cup Turf winner Auguste Rodin (Ire) remains in training next year at four or retires to stud will be made next week.

The full list of Coolmore fees for 2024:

Arizona (Ire) €5,000
Australia (GB) €17,500
Blackbeard (Ire) €20,000
Calyx (GB) €12,500
Camelot (GB) €50,000
Churchill (Ire) €30,000
Footstepsinthesand (GB) €8,000
Gleneagles €17,500
Holy Roman Emperor (Ire) €8,000
Little Big Bear (Ire) €27,500
Magna Grecia (Ire) €10,000
No Nay Never €150,000
Paddington (GB) €55,000
Saxon Warrior (Jpn) €25,000
Sioux Nation €27,500
Sottsass (Fr) €25,000
St Mark's Basilica (Fr) €50,000
Starspangledbanner (Aus) €45,000
Ten Sovereigns (Ire) €17,500
The Antarctic (Ire) €6,000
Wootton Bassett (GB) €200,000

 

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Sea The Stars Heads Aga Khan Studs Roster as Fees Rise

The Aga Khan Studs' stallions Sea The Stars (Ire), Siyouni (Fr) and Zarak (Fr) are all set to stand for increased fees in 2023.

Heading a powerful roster, Sea The Stars, sire of the brilliant Baaeed (GB) and Stradivarius (Ire), will cover at an all-time high of €180,000 at Gilltown Stud. Currently third in the sires' table behind Dubawi (Ire) and Frankel (GB), Sea The Stars is the sire of 19 Group 1 winners among his 101 stakes winners. His rising number of sons at stud include the aforementioned duo, who join the British ranks next season. Now 16, Sea the Stars started his stud career at €85,000 and his fee has risen gradually through his 13 seasons. For the last three years he has stood at €150,000.

Also on the rise is the current champion sire in France, Siyouni (Fr), whose fee will be increased from €140,000 to €150,000, having spent his first four years at stud standing for €7,000. The son of Pivotal (GB) has been represented by more than 30 stakes horses in 2022, including the Aga Khan's smart juvenile filly Tahiyra (Ire), who is unbeaten for Dermot Weld and won the G1 Moyglare Stud S. on her second start.

The roster at Haras de Bonneval is also enhanced by the rising young stallion Zarak (Fr). The son of Dubawi (Ire) and the champion racemare Zarkava (Fr) (Zamindar) has been represented by five group winners from his first two crops with a strike-rate of 11% stakes winners to runners. His fee, which started at €12,000 and rose to €25,000 last year, has been set at €60,000.

The trio of French stallions is completed by Group 1 winner Dariyan (Fr), a son of Shamardal out of the G1 Hong Kong Vase winner Daryakana (Fr) (Selkirk), whose fee has been maintained at €5,000.

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This Side Up: A Gift That Keeps On Giving

Hang on a minute. Weren't the seven fat years supposed to be followed by seven lean years? The way the market has gone in 2021, we have barely had seven lean minutes. Nothing, certainly, approaching the kind of reset required, logically and historically, for the cyclical functioning of capitalism.

The prospect of some such “correction” had been the only latent comfort, cold as it was, for a bloodstock market confronted by the global economic shock of the pandemic. Because a decade of almost relentless growth wasn't even ending due to any inherent weakness of the industry: we were just being broadsided, out of nowhere, by something that nobody could ever have factored into their calculations. (Not, at any rate, without Pharoah summoning Joseph from the dungeon). If we took our medicine, at least we knew that the graph now had more space to accommodate a fresh spike in the profit line.

In the event, the market barely wobbled. There were some terrifying days for the 2-year-old sector, admittedly, while clearance rates often suggested a nervous pragmatism, notably in the European market. But overall demand on both sides of the Atlantic proved far more resilient than anticipated. And we have all seen-with due relief, among those who had felt trapped by the slow cycles of our business-how values have come roaring back in 2021.

On the face of it, then, some will be wondering whether we should also renew their anxiety that the market, at some point, remains bound to overheat? The long bull run up to 2020, after all, had been driven by fiscal responses to the last emergency in 2008: continuous doping of the economy with cash, via low interest rates and quantitative easing. This recovery already has a very different feel. It must negotiate rising inflation and fractured supply chains, while the panic of stock markets Friday betrayed an ongoing instability.

Well, whatever happens, our own particular niche of the economy should not overlook a “correction” that did actually take place, this time last year. At that point, even volatility felt like a remote prospect. Everything was stuck. Whether on moral or business grounds–or both, which should perhaps always be the case for capitalism to operate healthily–many stud farms felt obliged to show breeders that they were “all in this together” and took a scythe to their fees.

Nor were they just talking a good game. Sure, even at the best of times they will always trim a few stallions that need a little help. But this time the top dozen Bluegrass farms collectively cut sires with their first foals due, for instance, by 16.2%. In 2020, they had eased the preceding intake by just 0.5%. Stallions about to present their first yearlings were slashed by 19.9%, compared with 8.33% for their predecessors in 2020. And those launching their first juveniles came down fully 22.8%, again more than double the 10.2% squeeze on the equivalent group the previous year. Moreover many senior, proven stallions–who should really have been at a premium, as a relatively safe harbor in turbulent times–also took generous cuts.

Now that the boom times seem to have returned so quickly, however, it is hardly as though stud accountants can turn round to breeders and say: “Well, thank goodness the storm seems to be abating. We do hope you guys will remember how we stood by y'all in an hour of need. But you will understand that we must now restore our prices to the levels we felt competitive, and mutually viable, before last year.”

Instead they have obliged breeders with the kind of selective cuts customary in a normal trading environment–only this time, of course, from a much lower base. And that has to mean one of two things. Either stallion fees were way too high, up until last year; or they are now pitched at such a level, in a humming market, that breeders have a pretty historic opportunity.

Take Omaha Beach, who looked very fairly priced when retiring to Spendthrift at $45,000 and duly welcomed 215 mares in 2020. The one and only reason to cut him to $35,000 for 2021 was that the late B. Wayne Hughes–leading the way, as so often, and promptly emulated by most rival farms–had responded to the crisis by reducing 15 of the farm's 21 stallions. Remember that when Bolt d'Oro had similarly started with 214 mares, in 2019, Spendthrift had left his 2020 fee unchanged.

Omaha Beach promptly replicated his debut book precisely, with another 215 covers, and has made a spectacular debut at the sales, dominating the freshmen weanling averages at $144,692. Nonetheless the Spendthrift team, respectful of the Hughes legacy, have indulged clients by giving him an extra trim to $30,000. This is the type of gesture often made by commercial farms when a young stallion, whose early supporters are demonstrably disposed to use new sires, must compete with the rookies meanwhile brought into play on two subsequent turns of the carousel. It's an incentive to keep the faith, in anticipation of continued momentum at the yearling sales and then on the racetrack. So it's a coherent and familiar strategy, albeit not one that every farm would consider particularly necessary after a sire has passed his first tests (book sizes/sales debut) as well as Omaha Beach. Without the pandemic, however, Spendthrift would surely have been cutting him from $45,000 to $40,000. So, in effect, we're getting a 25% saving on one of the most plausible prospects in Kentucky–even though the market for the sale of his foals has basically retrieved its 2019 values.

Now we all know that our industry faces some uncomfortable challenges; and that it isn't addressing some of them terribly well. But there are another 51 weeks in the year to gnash our teeth over those. For once, let's recognize some positives. A lot of people out there seem to be eager to buy themselves a Thoroughbred, just at the moment when breeding one has become more affordable. Perhaps, after the frustrations of lockdown, the affluent have been reminded that life is for living. If not, well, purse money at some tracks is even threatening to give their investment an air of viability.

So whatever twists and turns await, the initial road out of the pandemic has proved straight and smooth. And let's not forget that we were all given some free gas in the tank.

Sure, maybe stallion fees were too steep before. But they do represent a critical variable, when other base costs–such as keep and labor–are pretty constant, and sufficient to make skimping on your choice of stallion a false economy. Given how marginal a “correction” we had to absorb, in ringside demand, we should count ourselves fortunate that the stallion farms volunteered to substitute one of their own.

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Haras d’Etreham Announces 2022 Service Fees

Almanzor (Fr) (Wootton Bassett {GB}), the sire of a pair of stakes horses from his eight winners to date, will stand the 2022 breeding season for a fee of €30,000, officials at Haras d'Etreham announced Saturday.

The best son of the in-demand Wootton Bassett, Almanzor is already the sire of winners in Ireland, England, the USA and France, where his three first-crop winners include the filly Queen Trezy (Fr), a three-length maiden winner at Lyon-Parilly Sept. 8 and a latest runner-up in the G3 Prix des Reservoirs at Deauville who has the G1 Prix de Diane as a long-term objective; and Saving Grace (Fr), not worse than second in her three runs to date and most recently second in the Listed Prix Isonomy at Deauville Oct. 20. Abbado (GB) has won two in a row for Sir Mark Prescott and Cheveley Park Stud and is likely to be aimed for a Derby trial next spring, while Unanimous Consent (GB) was a very impressive maiden winner on debut for Chad Brown and Klaravich Stables last month. The John & Thady Gosden-trained Filistine (Ire) became his sire's latest winner when taking out a novice race over seven furlongs at Newmarket Oct. 29.

City Light (Fr) (Siyouni {Fr}) is represented by his first crop of foals in 2021, some of which are headed to the upcoming breeding stock sales, and he covered a book of 119 mares this past breeding season. His service fee holds steady at €7,000.

Persian King (Ire) (Kingman {GB}) was well received in his first year at stud in 2021 and remains at €30,000 fo 2022 after covering a full book this year, while Hello Youmzain (Fr) (Kodiac {GB}) will stand for €25,000 after being fully booked for his inaugural season.

“I would like to take advantage of this announcement of our stallion fees to thank once again all breeders, both new and loyal clients, for their support in 2021,” said Haras d'Etreham's Executive Director Nicolas de Chambure. “This is also an opportunity to confirm that our stallions will once again be limited to 140 mares for the season. In a polarized market where the risk of overproduction is real, this choice seems both obvious and necessary. The rarity factor is a creator of value and in this way, we aim to guarantee the enhancement of returns on investments for breeders who support us and our stallions.”

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