'We'd rather have some of his progeny than none' – meet the frustratingly subfertile 'freak' of a stallion

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Here, Martin Stevens speaks to Bruce Slade, Newgate Stud Farm’s director of bloodstock, about Melbourne Cup-winning sire Extreme Choice – subscribers can get more great insight every Monday to Friday.

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Extreme Choice has been showered with praise since his son Knight’s Choice pounced late for a shock victory in the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. He has been described variously as “something seriously special”, “a phenomenon” and even “a freak” by commentators.

The son of Not A Single Doubt is only the second sire, after the legendary Sir Tristram, to supply winners of both the race that stops a nation, a two-mile test for battle-hardened older campaigners, and the Golden Slipper, the prestigious six-furlong sprint for fresh-faced two-year-olds – his first-crop son Stay Inside having prevailed in that race in 2021. That’s some versatility. 

 Extreme Choice also restored some Australian pride when it came to the Melbourne Cup, which for years has been dominated by European and New Zealand exports. Knight’s Choice is the first winner by an Australian-bred sire since Rogan Josh in 1999, and only the fourth horse with an AUS suffix to have scored in the Flemington showpiece in the new millennium.

What really sets the stallion apart from the rest, though, is the extraordinarily high concentration of quality in his output, as demonstrated by a 12.3 strike-rate of stakes winners to runners.

Knight’s Choice is the fourth top-level winner to have emerged from the 77 live foals across his first two crops, joining Stay Inside and She’s Extreme, who landed the Champagne Stakes at two and the VRC Oaks at three, and Espiona, who took the notable scalp of Pride Of Jenni in the Coolmore Classic last year. 

Extreme Choice’s custodians at Newgate in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales have no doubt revelled in all those plaudits for their exciting young charge in the past few days, and yet the celebrations must also have been a little bittersweet, as the only reason he has relatively so few offspring is that he suffers from subfertility. 

It’s difficult not to wince when you think what more he might achieve if he were able to fire on all cylinders.

Bruce Slade, Newgate’s director of bloodstock, perfectly sums up the mixed emotions involved in standing the stallion when he says: “It’s highly frustrating, but at the same time we’d rather have some of his progeny than none of them.”

Extreme Choice, a neat chestnut out of an unraced daughter of Hussonet and Canadian stakes winner Going To Extremes, entered Newgate’s orbit after scoring in a valuable Inglis nursery at Randwick on his first competitive start and backing that up with a smooth success in the Group 3 Chairman’s Stakes at Caulfield second time out.

“We’re always trying to find new stallion prospects, and do a lot of form analysis with Daniel O’Sullivan,” says Slade. “He said he did a unique thing on debut, getting a rating of more than 100, which was a sure sign of a Group 1 colt in the making. So we jumped in and secured him ahead of the Blue Diamond Stakes, which he also won nicely.”

Knight's Choice, ridden by Robbie Dolan, wins the Lexus Melbourne Cup at Flemington on TuesdayCredit: Reg Ryan/Getty Images

Extreme Choice doubled his tally of top-level victories at three, winning the Moir Stakes at Moonee Valley by clear water, and he continued to acquit himself well in elite sprints throughout that season, until he was retired to Newgate. 

His pedigree and performance made him a fine commercial proposition, and he was given a competitive opening fee of A$38,500 (£19,700/€23,600), so breeders bit the stud’s hand off for bookings. It was all going too well. 

“He was a popular horse in that first season, very busy in the shed, and so we soon got a heap of early scan results 15, 16 or 17 days post ovulation,” recalls Slade. “It didn’t take more than a month before the negative scans were returning at such a scale that it was obvious we were in trouble.

“He was getting some in foal, obviously, which meant we could make a partial claim on the insurance, but not a full one, because he wasn’t infertile, only subfertile. We got the partial payout and from thereon we just did our best with him, but commercially he was dead. Completely dead. 

“It’s difficult enough to get breeders on board in a stallion’s second, third and fourth seasons when they’re unproven, let alone when they’re both unproven and subfertile, so his commercial prospects were highly questionable. It became almost impossible through those first four years for him to get any support without any runners.”

The meagre opportunities granted to Extreme Choice in his wilderness years only serve to underline his sire power. Knight’s Choice, for example, is out of Midnight Pearl, a seven-time winner by More Than Ready, but his dam was bought by his small breeders Elswick Stud for A$1,000 (around £500/€600) and he is the first stakes winner in five generations of his maternal pedigree. 

Since Extreme Choice has emerged as a potential game-changing sire, his books have taken on a very different complexion. His subfertility still has to be carefully managed, but his fee is now A$275,000 (£140,000/€168,000), making him the joint-most expensive stallion in Australia this southern-hemisphere season with I Am Invincible and Zoustar, and he is sent a who’s who of high-class racemares and producers. 

“He gets great management under our stud manager Jim Carey,” says Slade. “For the best results, he covers one mare a day. That basically gives you a flip-of-a-coin chance of the mare going in foal, a 50/50 shot. That’s as good as we can get him, and that’s with a lot of vetting, and getting the mares as close to ovulation as possible.

“In terms of morphology, a lot of the sperm is defective and dies very quickly; it doesn’t stay around for long. That means he gets a low number of viable sperm, and the viable ones basically have only a 24-hour window to fertilise the mare’s eggs, otherwise they just don’t seem to go in foal.”

All of which makes Extreme Choice’s book each year a bit of a moveable feast. How many mares he serves, and which ones, is subject to variation. 

Bruce Slade: 'People are happy to keep using him until very late in the season'Credit: Newgate Stud Farm

“The numbers can be a bit deceiving,” says Slade. “He’ll cover one mare a day from September 1 right through to when the mares dry up beyond Christmas time. Because of what he’s done so far, and the scarcity value of his progeny, people are happy to keep using him until very late in the season. 

“In fact, we open him up later in the season, especially in December, as it’s a good opportunity for breeders with mares who might be more middle-distance or very high-end, and can therefore produce a November foal who’ll still be viable commercially. The average price for his November-born foals at the yearling sales is something like A$300,000, so people still get paid well for them.

“But otherwise, what generally tends to happen is a shareholder will send a mare early in the season, and if that mare doesn’t go in foal, they’ll switch in another mare later on. He doesn’t get two cracks at many mares, it’s usually only one and then the owner will try another mare instead.

“So he’ll end up covering around 100 mares in a season, but it will result in something like a 70-mare book. The majority are owned by shareholders and breeding right holders who have equity in the stallion, and then we sell a handful of nominations to outside breeders or arrange high-end foal shares to cover our standing rights.”

Among the most glittering names in Extreme Choice’s book this season are the brilliant racemare Tofane, fellow Group 1 winners I Am A Star and Speak Fondly, and high-class performers Blanc De Blanc, Heatherly, Nurse Kitchen, Pretty Brazen, Queen Of The Ball, Satin Shoes and Savatiano – not to mention Speedboat, the dam of Captivant.

“It’s a great book,” says Slade. “It’s all about the future with him. You’ve got to remember that nearly everything by him that has raced so far, from three-year-olds and upwards, were bred from mares whose owners knew there was a high risk of them not going in foal, and so they weren’t the most important members of their bands, commercially. 

“That all changed after he got the Golden Slipper winner in his debut crop, and the foals resulting from his first book of good mares, who are now two-year-olds, have come out flying. Last month at Randwick his daughter Bel Merci won the Gimcrack Stakes and his son Tempestuous was just touched off in the Breeders’ Plate. 

“They’re the first two-year-old races of the season in Sydney. To do that with a crop of just 40 foals, he has to be a freak.”

Freak is the word, especially when the reason for Extreme Choice’s outstanding talents as a sire seem so hard to explain. Yes, he was a top-class racehorse, and, yes, he is pretty well bred, but he apparently wouldn’t knock your eye out.

“I’m not sure what it is,” says Slade. “It’s quite interesting, he’s got an incredible action but he’s very small, only 15.1 hands in fact, and he wouldn’t be considered a stocky, square sort of horse that people like; he’s actually small and refined. 

“Henry [Field, Newgate managing director] and I were talking about it the other day. Why is it these small stallions seem to do such a wonderful job? Obviously you go back to Northern Dancer and Nureyev, in Australia we’ve had Not A Single Doubt, who has an incredible record, and in Europe you’ve got Havana Grey, who’s doing great things. 

Henry Field: managing director of Newgate Stud FarmCredit: Getty Images

“We were reading about the height restriction in his book with interest as we do the same with Extreme Choice, because it’s just too difficult for him to cover bigger mares. 

“Maybe it’s because those smaller horses have to have exceptional biomechanics to compensate for their lack of size in order to be competitive in top races; they have to have amazing athleticism and balance to do it. I’m sure that’s what Extreme Choice had, as he’s the most beautiful mover, with a loose action and huge stride length, even though he’s so low to the ground. 

“And then maybe all it takes is a mare to add in a bit of size to those smaller sires and they start producing superstars. I don’t know, but it’s fascinating.”

Food for thought, with a new tranche of colts retiring to stud in Europe and being shown off in the next few months. Maybe we should all think twice before shaking our heads, scrunching our noses and muttering disapprovingly ‘bit small’ when a more vertically challenged horse is presented to us.

“Nobody would pick out Extreme Choice on looks at first glance,” says Slade. “But when we show him to knowledgeable horse people, and they stand with him for long enough, and then they see him moving, they often say he quickly grows on them. He’s just got that presence that a lot of top-class horses have. 

“He’s also got a super temperament, and his progeny are the same. Knight’s Choice’s connections said they were always confident that he’d get the Melbourne Cup trip because he just relaxes so well in his races, and is so tractable.”

Slade suggests it is those qualities that allow Extreme Choice to be so versatile; able to deliver lightning-quick sprinters in his own image, like Espiona and Stay Inside, and middle-distance horses and stayers, like She’s Extreme and Knight’s Choice.

“I think he’s just passing on exceptional cardio and efficiency of action,” he says. “We’ve got Stay Inside on the farm here and he’s the same: just the most beautiful mover.”

Extreme Choice was opened up to mares being covered on northern-hemisphere time in 2023, in order to capitalise on his bright start and to maximise his earning potential. 

The venture reportedly wasn’t a roaring success, in terms of numbers, but it did leave a smattering of northern-hemisphere foals born this year. One appears in the recently published Weatherbys Return of mares: a filly out of Sweet Strike, a Smart Strike half-sister to US Grade 1 winner Nereid, born in February and bred by Glen Hill Farm.

“It was a bit more difficult than we hoped, as we found the mares weren’t cycling quite as well out of season, and we did struggle with fertility rates, especially through March and April,” says Slade. “But there are a handful of northern hemisphere-bred foals by him out there; I think there is a filly based in France for Peter Anastasiou, and at least four others here in Australia. It’ll be exciting to see what they can do.”

Indeed, Extreme Choice has done it with small numbers before, so it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that his few early northern hemisphere-bred offspring might make a significant impact in European racing – a Royal Ascot two-year-old, even? – and renew demand for his services in the first half of the calendar year in future.

Extreme Choice: 'A foal by him can add real value to a mare’s record and a breeder’s portfolio'Credit: Newgate Stud Farm

Summarising the challenge of standing a superb but subfertile stallion, Slade says: “The question for us is how we make the most of him; how we can get as many mares in foal as possible, in a comfortable and safe fashion.

“To that end, we say to breeders if you do have a mare that you want to give one last crack to, one who you were thinking of pulling up stumps with otherwise, you can come to him later in season, because you’ll still get a foal with considerable rarity value.

“We want those breeders to know that they’re free to always pick up the phone to us, as we’re always very accommodating. There’s possibly a misconception that because he’s elite, and is in the circumstances he’s in, he has a closed or private book. But that’s not the case; we’re happy to talk to people in order to make the most of the stallion right through to Christmas, even January. Foal shares are always on the table for the right mare, too.”

Warming to his theme, he adds: “An Extreme Choice foal can add real value to a mare’s record and a breeder’s portfolio, first in the ring – the market has so much respect for him that one in six of his yearlings sold for a million dollars last season – and then on the track. 

“There’s no telling how far he might go. Pound for pound, no other sire has achieved what he has, certainly not in Australia at least.”

All the meticulous management of Extreme Choice and his fluid book of mares, plus the limit on how much income he can generate, must feel frustrating at times. 

But the frustration is worth enduring for this ‘freak’ of a stallion.

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