Sire champ Snitzel extends Danehill legacy

Tuesday 1 August 2017, 5:19pm

Australia's most expensive sire for hire Snitzel has dominated the end-of-season winners tables to back up his skyrocketing service fee of $176,000.

The jewel in Arrowfield Stud's crown landed a record-equalling 26 individual stakes winners in Australia, smashed the prize money record with $16.1 million and fell just one win short of Lonhro's incredible 160 winners set in 2013/14.

His outstanding 2016/2017 season completed an unprecedented three-generation sequence of Australian sire championships with his own sire Redoute's Choice (three titles) and grandsire Danehill (nine titles).

The son of Snippets' Lass also lays claim to the first single-sire trifecta in a Group One two-year-old race since 1982, following Invader's success in the ATC Sires Produce Stakes over Summer Passage and Trapeze Artist.

"He's actually built up to this level of performance over several years. Bill Oppenheim's APEX ratings first identified him in 2012, so the past year isn't a flash in the pan," Arrowfield proprietor John Messara said.

"Snitzel's achievements this season were so dominant and so widespread that I believe his success will spill over into subsequent years."

Globally, 29 of Snitzel's progeny won black-type races with Summer Passage, Heavenly Blue, Invader, Redzel and Russian Revolution all winning Group One races.

That boosted the Snitzel fever at sales as 111 yearlings went for more than $41 million, including two individual sales of $1.7 million.

The 15-year-old's service fee has gone up eight-fold since 2009 to sit at an impressive $176,000 and could go higher if his sire is any indication.

After Redoute's Choice's first title win, mare owners were more than willing to part with an eye-watering $330,000 during the 2007 and 2008 breeding seasons.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »