'I want to pay it all out' - generous incentives to support Stradivarius at stud

Good Morning Bloodstockis Martin Stevens' daily morning email and presented online as a sample.

Here, he talks to Bjorn Nielsen about his very generous incentives to breeders who use Stradivarius. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

All you need do is click on the link above, sign up and then read at your leisure each weekday morning from 7am.

As if Stradivarius’s exceptional race record and various other charms weren’t enough incentive to send him mares in his first season at the National Stud next year, his owner-breeder Bjorn Nielsen is dangling another juicy carrot in front of breeders.

He is offering a range of remarkably generous financial incentives, in the form of a bonus structure for foals by the sire born in 2024.

The breeder of any Group 1 winner in Britain, Ireland or France among that cohort will receive £250,000, while the breeders of any Group 2 and Group 3 scorers will each be rewarded with a still not-too-shabby £100,000.

Furthermore, the breeders of the first ten two-year-old winners by Stradivarius in the same countries plus Germany in 2026 will each take home £25,000.

Explaining the rationale behind the bonuses, Nielsen says: “He sells himself really, as he was a mentally sound horse, and never missed an engagement or even any work. He was also a very fast horse with an electric turn of foot, and although he raced over further, he ran the last three furlongs of a lot of his races in a quicker time than many Group 1-winning milers.

“But I still felt it was important to give him an extra push just to attract as many high-quality mares as we can to him, in order for him to have the best chance of proving himself.

“You have to get those good mares to put the odds more in your favour, because no matter the performance or pedigree of the horse, there’s never any guarantee that they’ll make a good stallion. Just look at Secretariat, who didn't sire any great horses, for all that he had some very good broodmare daughters. It’s all about giving yourself every chance.”

Nielsen could face a payout of millions in bonuses if Stradivarius sires ten juvenile winners and individual Group 1, 2 and 3 scorers in his first crop. That’s not an inconsiderable sum of money to stake, even taking into account the horse earned £3.46 million in prize-money plus a further £2m in Weatherbys Hamilton Stayers’ Bonus payouts.

“It is a lot of money I’m putting up, but at the end of the day I want to pay all of it out, even if it costs me all his first-season fee revenue,” he insists. “It would be good news in the long term because, as we know these days, it’s so important that stallions produce the goods in their first couple of seasons to cement the rest of their career.”

Nielsen reports that he will be sending around half a dozen of his own high-class mares to Stradivarius, including his Royal Ascot winner Agrotera and her dam Lombatina, as well as Reflective, a Montjeu half-sister to Bosra Sham, Hector Protector and Shanghai who produced his Noel Murless Stakes winner Biographer.

“Agrotera and Lombatina are from the Sacarina family, which came up with Sea The Moon by Stradivarius’s sire Sea The Stars, so hopefully that will work,” he says. “They were also relatively quick horses themselves, and they should suit him as I think he was really a 12-furlong horse who happened to stay further.

“I’ll also be buying a few more nice mares for him in the coming weeks, although I don’t expect that to be easy with the market as strong as it is. It’s all about giving him every chance to succeed.”

While Nielsen and his agents will be busily combing through mares for Stradivarius at Tattersalls in the next few weeks, the horse himself will be shown off to visitors just up the road at his new home of the National Stud.

“I think people will be surprised when they see him in the flesh,” says Nielsen. “He looks anything but a stayer, and he has an amazing walk. In fact, at the age of eight and even with all those miles on the clock, he has the same walk as when he was two.

“I hope breeders see him as an opportunity to put a quality like that good walk into a mare who might lack one. The same goes for his turn of foot, or constitution.

Bjorn Nielsen with StradivariusCredit: Edward Whitaker

“Interestingly, we’ve just been putting together a documentary on the horse, and Rab Havlin says that the amazing thing about him was that all the times he rode him in work, no matter how hard they went or the horses he was running against, from the first time to the last time he never once saw the horse blow. He said he’d be fascinated to see the size of his lungs.”

He adds, clearly bursting with pride: “And no-one on their way to Tattersalls in the next few weeks will be able to forget that he’s there as we’ve just had a shiny new sign on the roundabout put in welcoming people to the National Stud, ‘home of Stradivarius’!”

Ideally, broodmare owners should need no extra incentive to use a horse with Stradivarius’s profile, but they are clearly very welcome in a Flat racing industry in which middle-distance horses and stayers are generally underappreciated at sales of untried stock.

Mind you, thinking back to the feeding frenzy at the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale for smart, sound horses who have run well over a mile and upwards – just the sorts that Stradivarius ought to produce – I suspect even those who support the sire and don’t win one of the breeder bonuses could still be well rewarded in the long run.

What do you think?

Share your thoughts with other Good Morning Bloodstock readers by emailing gmb@racingpost.com

Must-read story

“Mariann and I rode out for many years for John Oxx, that’s where we first met Nisriyna, and we bought her here in Goffs and tried to develop her as a broodmare from there,” says Des Leadon about Swordlestown Little Stud’s rags-to-riches broodmare, who gave the operation another big result at Goffs on Wednesday.

Pedigree pick

Get the notebook out again, Flat fans. Kempton hosts another round of informative two-year-old contests this afternoon.

So important is this card, indeed, that it features the debut of the top lot at Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale last year.

Rainbow Sky is a Sea The Stars full-sister to Listed-winning and Group 1-placed two-year-old Star Terms out of Queen Mary and Lowther Stakes scorer Best Terms, and was bought by Godolphin for 1,500,000gns.

She has her first run for Charlie Appleby in the first division of the fillies’ novice stakes over a mile (5.15), though she faces an equally blueblooded debutante in Urban Decay, Clipper Logistics’ homebred daughter of Frankel and dual Listed-winning sprinter Main Desire, trained by the dam's former handler Michael Bell.

Don’t miss ANZ Bloodstock News

Sign up for free to our weekly Asia Bloodstock News publication to receive news and features from all things racing and bloodstock across Mainland China, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and beyond.

Make sure to read this week's Asia Bloodstock News

Subscribe for free for the latest bloodstock news from Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

Good Morning Bloodstock is our latest email newsletter. Martin Stevens, a doyen among bloodstock journalists, provides his take and insight on the biggest stories every morning from Monday to Friday