European Group 2 winner and Australian Group 1 placegetter Eminent (Ire) is the first son of the unbeaten champion Frankel (GB) to go to stud in the Southern Hemisphere. TDN AusNZ chatted with Brighthill Farm studmaster Nick King about their new arrival.
TDN AusNZ: How did Eminent cope with the travel?
NK: We take these things for granted with stallions from all around the world when they travel, but he’s got the temperament to do it. He raced in England, Ireland, Hong Kong and Australia and he’s coped with everything really well.
TDN AusNZ: How has he settled in and is he is an easy horse to handle?
NK: He’s got a lovely attitude toward life and he’s settled in really well. He’s an intelligent horse and figured out pretty quickly that he’s not a racehorse anymore. He’s got a lovely temperament and is easy to handle, he’s parading really well and nothing seems to bother him. He’s enjoying being out in the paddock with his Mark Todd rug on and enjoying the New Zealand environment very much.
Eminent has settled well into his new life at Brighthill Farm
TDN AusNZ: Have you been pleased with the response from breeders to Eminent?
NK: It’s been really good, considering we got to it a little bit later than some other horses. It’s been positive and the relevance and importance of Frankel and his importance in years to come is a real plus. People have got a real understanding of what a champion racehorse he was and what a great job he’s doing as a stallion.
Eminent has really impressed at his parades and he’s a very attractive sort of horse and the feedback we’ve had most is how well he moves. He’s a beautiful walker and floats across the ground, that and the fact that he’s so relaxed and parading well so well has been great.
Everybody knew the horse due to Sir Peter Vela’s ownership and the media attention around him because it was a pretty cool thing for a Kiwi-owned horse to be doing what he did in Europe. The more you look at him the better he gets.
He’s by Frankel (GB) and he’s from an outstanding female family, a really good stallion’s pedigree and he’s got an excellent race record to match. The people that have seen him so far have reacted very favourably.
Eminent on parade at Brighthill Farm
TDN AusNZ: How many mares will Brighthill commit to him and will he suit a broad range of mares?
NK: We’ll be sending 10 of our own mares to him and on the other side of the coin being a Frankel out of a Kingmambo (USA) mare and then a Sadler’s Wells (USA) mare and a Darshaan (GB) mare he ties up so well with a lot of New Zealand mares.
When you are standing these stallions it’s really about getting to the third year and ticking a box and saying we’ve given them the opportunities and then it’s up to the horse. It’s all we can do and if you’ve got a well-bred son of Frankel you’re ahead of the game before you start.
TDN AusNZ: Tell us a bit about the share-holder group?
NK: It’s super strong and Sir Peter came to see him at the farm the other day and he’s really excited. He’s got a lot of his families lined up to come to him and we all know the quality we’re dealing with there.
Hubie de Burgh is involved as a co-owner and he’ll be in with some of those matings I’m sure. The syndication was really successful and got a lot of the bigger farms involved like Cambridge Stud, Windsor Park, Haunui, Hallmark, Valachi, The Oaks Stud, Curraghmore, Raffles, Nearco Stud and Mapperley so it’s got real depth to it.
What that means is that those people will all support him with nice mares and give him a really good start, it’s great to have them on board. At times, this game can be really tough and I was talking to John Thompson about his new horse (Ace High) and he found the syndication of his horse went really well and we found it to be similar.
It’s a positive thing that we can bring these new horses in, rather than one farm carrying the can. We can spread everything out and as we do all know in New Zealand if one horse is successful we all benefit, that’s the scale of our industry and the syndication side of things is so important. It’s nice to see farms getting on board.
TDN AusNZ: How did you arrive at a NZ$8000 + GST service price?
NK: We did come to the market place a little bit late so we were conscious about that and how we create the opportunity. As we all know you need good numbers in that first year and that was a major consideration to make sure we got support.
Change in the industry is coming, but we do realise it’s a tough market out there so we wanted to create a situation where there was plenty of room for a return. At that sort of money he’s a very low risk horse and that’s what we wanted to achieve.
