One Man’s Opinion: The ‘fickle nature’ of stallion popularity

The breeding season is about to get serious, where those who are still in the breeding game have potentially made up their minds about where to send their mare(s) and to be served by which stallion(s).

Naturally, there will be stallions who will serve more mares than others, and therefore their popularity will at least be assured for another year. But for some, their numbers reflect a fall in popularity, and this puts a real question mark over their sheer existence in what is an incredibly competitive environment.

At this time, the writer wishes to make the point that he has no connection or attachment to any stud or stallion.

With the pool of mares in decline in NZ, I want to focus on Vincent, the son of Art Major, who retired as the fastest three-year-old pacer in Australasia (1:50.2) and won multiple Group 1 classics, with 16 wins from just 19 starts and $610,000 in earnings, to emphasise my point.

Last week at Auckland, one of his daughters, Shezsofast, was a very impressive winner of a Sires Stakes heat in 1:56.2 MR, clearing out from her rivals in a style that promises much more to come for her connections.

Bred by the Fleming family of Taranaki, she was a $35,000 purchase by Mark Purdon at the 2024 yearling sales at Karaka. From their very good mare River Polka (11 wins, $128,000), in turn from the Roydon Glen mare Isle of Inishfree (nine foals for eight winners), this family has been a great source of success, developed over several generations by the breeders.

Vincent was an outstanding racehorse. He won an Auckland Cup in only his third start as a four-year-old and was most likely going to be an open-class powerhouse before injury curtailed a very promising race career.

His stud career began with a bang, serving 530 mares in his first five seasons in both NZ and Australia. With his oldest crop now five, 27% of his NZ foals have been winners, 30% in Australia. With the likes of Vessem and Sherlock in NZ, both Group 2 winners, and Turn The Page and Reinette in Australia, both Group 1 winners, one might suggest that his numbers are more than respectable.

Seventeen of his winners are $100,000+ earners and 27 of them have won in better than 1:55.

In the 2024 season, the stock of Vincent went well enough to place him in the top 10 in both the two- and three-year-old stallion tables here in NZ.

In Australia, his popularity seems to be holding up numbers-wise, but the picture in NZ looks quite different. The breeders have spoken with their feet, and in the 2023/24 season he served just 36 mares. In 2024/25 that number dropped to a mere 18 for the royally bred stallion offered on behalf of Alabar and Nevele R studs.

What does that mean for the 2025/26 season about to begin? It would appear that Vincent, as an example, is a victim of a shrinking pacing market, where the list of “popular” stallions is getting smaller and smaller. It would seem the NZ commercial breeder doesn’t see Vincent as a viable option rendering a healthy return.

In the 2022/23 NZ season, five stallions served 100+ mares. That number reduced to three in 2023/24, then just two in 2024/25 (Always B Miki and Sweet Lou).

Poor Vincent probably doesn’t deserve to be so ruthlessly discarded by the NZ breeders and their respective decision-making, but the horse breeding game has always been a numbers game, and his days in NZ, at least, look numbered.

If Shezsofast lives up to her name and wins a race like the Sires Stakes Final, would that be enough to reverse the current trend? Her breeding didn’t put Mark Purdon off, and later this week he debuts another two-year-old son of Vincent, Imon, at Cambridge. He is a master horseman, and he must think positively of the progeny.

Who would want to own a stallion?