Tyreel Stud hooked and booked for local sires

Cover image courtesy of Tyreel Stud

It has taken just seven years for Linda and Laurence Monds to nurse their Hawkesbury Valley property, Tyreel Stud, to the fore of Australian breeding. From the farm has come Classique Legend (Not A Single Doubt) and Behemoth (All Too Hard), along with Aethero (Sebring), Montefilia (Kermadec {NZ}), Every Rose (Choisir) and Tiger Of Malay (Extreme Choice).

From a broodmare band that rarely swells above 35, Tyreel Stud can boast 20 stakes winners or Group performers since June 2014, a significant figure from a young and boutique operation.

“It’s not been long at all,” said Linda Monds of the timeline. “But I can tell you, the farm couldn’t have squeezed any more from me as far as time and energy is concerned.”

Each spring, with the arrival of new foals, the Monds begin thinking about their mating plans a year in advance. They might get a cracking foal that makes them inclined to go this way or that with a stallion next year, but it’s April before the plans for the season upcoming kick off in earnest.

“I sit down and write a list of all the mares and write a list of all my thoughts next to those mares,” she said. “There could be four different stallions sometimes and I shuffle and juggle around that, around new sires retiring to stud and, of course, the stallion inspections.”

Monds works closely with Stud Manager Rob Sims, and takes plenty of advice from Damon Gabbedy of Belmont Bloodstock. It's months of discussions before any matings are finalised.

This season, Tyreel Stud will breed 34 mares and, as it stands, the run sheet is largely final and largely Australian. Stallion choices include All Too Hard, Capitalist, Exceed And Excel, Ole Kirk and Star Turn, among 20 others.

She is open-minded about the shuttle options, but is mostly all about the locals.

“I’m a Colonial girl,” she said. “I support the Australian brand, from the supermarket to the stallion barn. The internationals have played an enormous part in our gene pool, and have helped to create the strength of the Australian market, but for a small breeder like me, I would rather leave the risk to the bigger boys.”

Invincible for Classique dam

The most prominent of Tyreel’s broodmares is the Encosta De Lago mare Pinocchio, who has produced Classique Legend and Aethero from only four named foals.

In 2018, the 12-year-old grey mare delivered Fairy Legend (So You Think {NZ}), which sold at the 2020 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale to Legend Racing for $1.1 million. The now 3-year-old gelding is with Chris Waller.

Pinocchio has an I Am Invincible yearling filly at Tyreel and will foal to Pierro this season. Monds has booked her back to I Am Invincible this spring.

“I keep saying each year that every foal this mare has had has improved on the previous one,” Monds said. “You’d wonder how she could do that, but this I Am Invincible filly that we’ve watched grow from a foal is outstanding. I’ve had outsiders look at her, and they’ve looked at all the other progeny and they believe that physically she is near perfect. On that, I thought why not go back to Yarraman's champion stallion I Am Invincible.”

Monds will be keeping the yearling filly from Pinocchio, which is the first filly from the mare. Like her dam, and her famous The Everest-winning half-brother Classique Legend, the I Am Invincible filly is grey.

"We've always offered our entire draft as yearlings," Monds said, "but I feel this one is a special filly, and we may not get another filly from this mare again."

Pinocchio herself was lightly raced by trainer Guy Walter, with only eight starts to her name before her retirement in 2013. She was purchased for Tyreel in 2014, at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale for $320,000 from Milburn Creek (as agent).

Back to the Champion well

The broodmare Couredge, by Show A Heart, is a second top-shelf mare on the Tyreel run sheet, the dam of the G2 Light Fingers winner Every Rose (Choisir), who also won the G3 Gimcrack S. at Randwick as a juvenile.

Couredge slipped to Exceed And Excel last season, but this season she will head to the Darley stallion once again.

“She has produced consistent winners and runners, and she throws us all different types,” Monds said. “We do have an Exceed colt on the ground, and he is a ripper, so we just feel when you’re getting these outstanding types by these Champion sires, it’s well worth going back to them. We love Exceed And Excel, and have had great results with his progeny.”

Exceed And Excel is looking towards his eighteenth season at stud. His fee is $132,000 (inc GST) this year, unchanged from 2020 but the most he has ever stood for. To date, he is the sire of 107 stakes winners for 201 stakes races.

Couredge cost the Monds $190,000 at the Inglis Weanling and Broodmare Sale in 2016, sold by Dave and Alison Hush’s Davali Thoroughbreds.

In 2019, at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, Tyreel Stud sold Every Rose to Darby Racing and Hubie de Burgh for $160,000 and, since then, Brooke’s Edge (Hinchinbrook) for $250,000 to Darby Bloodstock and Will Johnson (FBAA), and Hell’s Fury (Hellbent) for $150,000 to Greg Hickman Racing.

Gallery: Some of the progeny of Couredge

Trying something new

Written Dash (Written Tycoon) is another of Tyreel’s choice broodmares, the dam of the consistent 4-year-old gelding Osamu (Exceed And Excel).

Osamu, trained by Annabel Neasham, is lightly raced, but Group-placed on two occasions and has been on the podium in eight of his 15 lifetime starts. He was a $1.7 million yearling at the Inglis Australian Easter Sale in 2019, and his half-sister, by I Am Invincible, sold at the same Sale this year for $800,000. She went to Neasham in partnership with Brian McGuire.

Tyreel Stud purchased Written Dash for $410,000 at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale in 2016. She has produced four foals for the Monds, and is due to foal to Zoustar this spring.

She is booked to Farnan this season.

“She has consistently thrown us outstanding types, and I think this is a great mating,” Monds said. “Farnan is a very exciting first-season sire, and Written Dash has had proven, proven, proven all the way, so I’m giving her a chance at a young gun.”

The mare has gone to Brazen Beau, Exceed And Excel, I Am Invincible and Zoustar in previous years, so Monds thought it was time to push the envelope.

“We know the mare so well now, and we know the types that she’s giving us, so we can go to these first-season sires with confidence,” she said.

Monds has kept a small share in Written Dash’s $800,000 yearling, who is now a 2-year-old with Neasham. She was reluctant to sell the horse, but said retaining the Pinocchio filly by I Am Invincible will be the compensation for this.

"You just can't keep them all, as much as you'd like to," she said.

Refresher course

Among others in Tyreel’s breeding band is new mare Festival Miss (Bernardini {USA}), who was bought by the Monds, with Belmont Bloodstock (FBAA) as agent, at this year’s Inglis Chairman’s Sale for $310,000 from Holbrook Thoroughbreds.

Festival Miss was a metropolitan winner in Western Australia, and stakes placed in a 25-start career. But her value is on the page, coming as she does from the family of Arcadia Queen (Pierro) on the first line.

Monds has booked the mare to Snitzel for her maiden breeding season, and said Festival Miss is one of eight new mares for Tyreel Stud this year.

“We were lucky enough to buy into Bob Peters' best family,” Monds said. “She is the most beautiful mare, and we’re very excited about her and about sending her to Snitzel. We bounced a few options around for her, but she’s a beautiful, big mare and I just feel, after getting to the stallion parades in June, that Snitzel has done a phenomenal job for such a long time, and it was a perfect mating.”

Monds said it was important to see the stallions in June, to get a refresher on them.

“We do it every year, and it’s great to see the older stallions and remind yourself of their physical attributes,” she said. “We obviously looked at the first-season sires too, although we didn’t get to see the shuttlers. When I saw Snitzel, I was just reminded how much I love him as a stallion, and his racetrack results over the family of Festival Miss will be perfect.”

Tyreel also has debut mare Wild Vixen (Foxwedge) heading to Champion First Season Sire (by winners) Capitalist.

Wild Vixen was a two-time stakes-winning mare in Victoria and South Australia, and was retired as recently as June, with a last-start effort in the G2 Dane Ripper S. at Eagle Farm.

Additionally, Monds mentions Magic Nera (Lonhro), whose last foal was the 2019 colt Narnia (Not A Single Doubt), also in training at Warwick Farm with Neasham. Narnia sold to Tony Fung’s Aquis operation on the Gold Coast this year, fetching $600,000.

Magic Nera is booked to Anders this season, who debuts for Widden Stud at a fee of $16,500 (inc GST).

“Obviously we can’t go back to Not A Single Doubt, but Anders is by Not A Single Doubt,” Monds said. “And physically, Anders is a sensational specimen, I loved him.”

Tyreel will send two mares to Anders this year, the other being Smiles For Layla (NZ) (Zabeel {NZ}).

Stallion choices

Overall, the Monds will support 26 stallions this year.

They have two mares booked to Vinery’s new beau Ole Kirk, two to Bivouac and one to second-season sire Exceedance. Brutal (NZ) is on the list too, as is So You Think (NZ) and Written Tycoon, while Linda Monds has a special penchant for Hellbent, who will enter his fourth season at Yarraman Park.

Tyreel will also support Pierro, Deep Field, Zoustar and King's Legacy.

“We are very lucky in Australia,” she said. “We’ve got an outstanding selection of stallions to choose from and, as breeders, when the service fees come out, it sits us down. It can make you feel that inflation has gotten carried away. But when we’re selling horses in the sales ring, and we receive outstanding prices, we’re pretty happy with inflation. So it’s swings and roundabouts.”

When it comes to stallion selection each season, Monds said she doesn’t follow trends or hype. She will book certain stallions for reasons of success, which importantly includes physical compatibility with a mare.

It’s a bonus when Tyreel produces a remarkable sales yearling, and the stud has had plenty in the last handful of years, but first and foremost, Monds said it’s all about type.

“A good sales horse will keep the business running,” she said. “But we really have to breed for the track. If you can’t produce runners and winners, and base your business model on that, everything else is going to be really hard. Creating the matings is the hardest thing to do in the business because you’re setting the foundation for these mares and so many things can go wrong along the way that’s out of your control.”

From April to September, and even beyond that, Monds fusses over her breeding plans. Nothing is by chance, and she is by nature deliberate and fastidious in her research.

“If you can get these as close to right as possible, I think you set your basis for success,” she said.

Table: Some of Tyreel Stud's mating plans for 2021