BREEDING FORUM

Posted: **Thu Oct 11, 2012 14:55 pm**

In 2013 we are going to see the beginning of an experiment in the accommodation of reverse shuttle (Southern Hemisphere) stallions standing in Europe.

Redoutes Choice will stand in France. An admirable sire who it is suggested (tongue in cheek I believe) will start a revolution in European breeding. He will be 17 years old next spring and he has done spectacularly well with mares from solid Australian backgrounds. He will not find mares like that in France. I understand he is well booked if not sold out already and he was standing at a very high nomination value. Perhaps the Aga Khan has earmarked a huge number of mares for him. They will be very high quality mares but unlikely to hit the market as yearlings in 2015 so by the time he is either proven or written off he will be over 20 years old. There will be no revolution!

Darley will stand both their Southern Hemisphere ‘champions’ Sepoy and Helmet at fees which will have little appeal to many commercial breeders. I know they were much better than anything they showed on the track here or in Dubai but the price policy must be questionable. In recent times Darley have started new sires at very reasonable fees. They have attracted a broad spread of mares and when the horses have done well they have restricted access and significantly increased the cost.

There is nothing wrong with that as a policy but history suggests that when the restrictions go up and the stallions cover more ‘in-house’ mares the success goes down. By starting Sepoy and Helmet at what appears to be very high fees they may be missing out the initial success phase all together. So there will be a question over just how revolutionary this part of the experiment might be.

I hope that Coolmore adopt a much more commercial approach with SYT who frankly looks damaged goods now. If they stand him at a really commercial fee for a season or two he may break the mould as he has a much more familiar pedigree and is a truly fine specimen.

Whitsbury Manor Stud are standing Foxwedge. As a son of Fastnet Rock with a distinctly US bottom half he may be a better proposition for the smaller owner breeder looking for something different in a stallion.

The more reverse stallions we stand here the more chance we have of success. Our gene pool could do with some new blood but the overwhelming feeling I get is that in six or seven years no one will look back on the coming season as any sort of game changer.