Rosemont's red-hot form turns up the heat ahead of Magic Millions

Cover image courtesy of Magic Millions

Sometimes the spring is an explosive time for a stud, but sometimes it can be a time for quiet achievers, which has been the case for Rosemont Stud as they prepare a draft of 17 to take to the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale next week. The advent of Extreme Warrior’s first runners and the first crop of 3-year-olds from Hanseatic have been the icing on the cake of a graduate-rich first half of the racing season.

“It was a spring that crept up on us a little,” said Rosemont Stud Principal Anthony Mithen. “We didn’t have a headline horse outside Bosustow being aimed at the Group 1s. So in some ways it felt a little bit underwhelming at times for us, but it's amazing how you can go in with low expectations and get pleasantly surprised.”

Proof in performance

“We ended up having as good a spring as we have ever had,” Mithen continued. “We were equal leading breeders during Cup week with Godolphin, we bred three winners for the Flemington carnival. Bosustow ran really, really well without necessarily winning, but he has given us the confidence to send him to the Magic Millions Cup.”

Rosemont-owned and raced Bosustow (Blue Point {Ire}) opened his spring with a narrow second in the G3 Bill Ritchie Handicap and added a third in the G3 Rising Fast Stakes at the beginning of November, as well as producing strong performances in Group 1 company.

The leading excitement amongst Rosemont’s juvenile graduates has been $300,000 Magic Millions graduate Tornado Valley (Too Darn Hot {GB}), winner of the G3 Maribyrnong Plate and second in the G3 BJ McLachlan Stakes at his most recent start, which almost certainly will springboard him into starting in the R. Listed Magic Millions 2YO Classic, where he currently sits second on the ballot.

“There’s also been the Bivouac filly, One Day At A Time, who’s been stakes-placed for Tony and Calvin McEvoy, and the Pinatubo colt, Carnevale, who ran fourth in the Maribyrnong Plate for the Hayes brothers,” Mithen added.

While the latter has been sent for an extended spell after his gallant Listed fourth and is unlikely to return until the late autumn, his debut gives Mithen enough encouragement to be happy being patient.

“It's just nice when you get endorsement of your product through performance, and I feel like that's what we got, which is very pleasing,” he said.

An Extremely good beginning

The Rosemont team had begun the spring with fairly low expectations for first season sire Extreme Warrior, who Mithen freely admits is blessed with the same reproductive challenges as his sire. The results - currently sitting at a stakes winner and a metropolitan winner from six starters, with only 47 foals in the crop - have exceeded expectations already.

Few sires in history can roll into the first yearling sale of the season and claim that 12.8% of their first crop of foals have made it to the races already.

“That’s the other layer to the spring and our low expectations,” Mithen said. “ We have the first season sire with the smallest crop of 2-year-olds, given he's not the easiest boy in the shed like his father. We've sort of joked for a couple of years now that we'll cop the tricky behaviour in the shed, if we also get the performance from his progeny, we'll happily work extra time to try and get as many mares in foal as possible.

“And it's shaping a little bit that way. Maybe there's a family trait going on there, that (they are) not particularly fertile, but blessed with the ability to pass on a fair bit of genetic ability to their progeny.”

It hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Rosemont team that Extreme Choice produced 48 foals - just one more than his son - in his first season at stud from a similar sized book, from which he produced four 2-year-old winners, three of which were at stakes level. At the same point in time, he also had six runners for two winners, although neither had struck at stakes level yet.

“It's not been lost on us that they're wanting to get up early and run, and they look like that type,” said Mithen. “They sort of had to be 2-year-olds by the way they looked, and if they weren't going to be 2-year-olds, we're probably in a bit of trouble with him. But thankfully, they are up and running 2-year-olds, which is what this market is insatiable for.”

When preparing for the stud’s stallion parades ahead of the season, Mithen had come across an interesting statistic of which he feels that Extreme Warrior could follow the pattern.

“I was intrigued to go back through a few stallions who had turned themselves into proper stallions here in Australia and their first crop numbers,” he said. “And the likes of Danehill (52), Street Cry (57), Extreme Choice (48) - you think, ‘wow, how did they get to where they have gotten to? Well, they got there because they produced supreme athletes.

“It doesn't really matter what the number of individual winners is. We are almost judged on the percentages of good horses. For him to have a stakes winner and a Saturday winner already before Christmas, he's getting a job done that we're all a little surprised at.

"But when you go back through, history reminds you that you don't need big numbers to be a good stallion. We shouldn't be that surprised.”

Chasing the crown

It was a point of pride to see the stallion sit at the top of the first season sire rankings as 2025 drew to a close, and Mithen jokes that he was “a bit peeved” when fellow first season sire Home Affairs posted his first Australian winner Guest House on December 27, with the metropolitan prizemoney nosing him in front of Extreme Warrior.

“I thought, ‘oh, that'd be nice to turn the new year and have the leading first season stallion in our barn’, but he just pipped us at the post!,” he said. “But that's okay, we're happy to be wedged between two high-profile stallions in Home Affairs and Stay Inside.”

There’s still plenty of time to go before the first season sire crown is cemented, and Mithen is pleased to see the runners keep coming.

“Lloyd Kennewell’s Eternal Warrior who won the Listed Merson Cooper Stakes is hopefully going to the Magic Millions in a couple of weeks’ time,” he said. “And I spoke to Annabel (Archibald) this morning about Half Pipe, who trialled up tremendously before debut. She actually recognised that they pushed the button too early with him and he was a trial behind, and it was all a bit too soon for the horse.

“Now that the Magics raceday out of the equation, she can plot her way into the autumn with the horse, but she thinks he is well and truly above average 2-year-old material.

“We’re racing six or seven (Extreme Warrior offspring) ourselves, and we have a couple that are showing well and truly above average ability. There's a bit more to come out of a very small crop of 2-year-olds, so that's really exciting.

“There's enough smoke around to say it might ignite and become a bushfire, which would be unbelievably exciting for us.”

The quiet achiever

Second season sire Hanseatic might not have received the same accolades as some of his peers, but his ability to keep chipping away at winners hasn’t gone unnoticed. He has posted 14 winners in Australia so far this season and has already surpassed the total prizemoney from his first crop of 2-year-olds, while his two offspring to hit the track in New Zealand have both scored victories.

“He's just going along sneaky good,” Mithen said of the Street Boss (USA) son. “It seems every time I look at the results, there's another new winner for Hanseatic. There's a very nice horse that Lindsey Smith produced to win a maiden about a week or so ago that he's got very high hopes for - it brained them and won in very good style.”

Three-year-old Set Me Loose put on a show at her second start to post victory by three and three quarter lengths just before Christmas. She is one of six winners of seven races to creep in over the month of December for the stallion.

Rohesia had been a star for her sire in her juvenile season, running third in the R. Listed Inglis Banner 2YO Stakes on debut and going down by a touch over three lengths in the $1 million VOBIS Showdown at her next start.

She returned this spring to break her maiden at Geelong before clinching second in the Listed William Crockett Stakes by a neck, and running a gallant fifth in the G3 Thoroughbred Club Stakes in November. If she could break through in the autumn, it would turn the spotlight firmly back on her sire.

“He needs a headline act and we're well aware of that,” Mithen continued. “He's hanging in there with enough statistics to suggest that he's going to be at least a bread and butter stallion, and he might be even better if he can find a proper horse to headline for him.”

Irons in the fire

It can be difficult to keep track of a sizeable stud’s graduates over time - and particularly over the festive season - and Mithen is glad that the reward to following Rosemont-bred horses closely is delivering win after win.

“It’s a labour of love, isn’t it?”, he said. “Ten or 15 years ago, my brother-in-law and I used to speak about how Arrowfield Stud was just chock-a-block full of high quality stallions - Redoute’s Choice, Hussonet, Flying Spur - and we used to sit back and say, ‘how much fun must John Messara have every Saturday watching the offspring of his stallions running all over Australia, winning races, winning feature races, winning Group races?’. That was sort of our dream.

“I go back to that in my thoughts sometimes. We don’t have a Champion Sire like Redoute’s Choice, but we've got a few irons in fires that are keeping us on our toes on any given Saturday, which is quite nice.”

The breeding shed at Rosemont has been full of hot irons as well, with the arrival of Group 1 winners Schwarz and Henry Longfellow (Ire) for their first seasons at stud this past spring. Alongside them, Rosemont has celebrated the first foals from G2 Caulfield Sprint winner Doull, which Mithen looks forward to presenting at the 2027 yearling sales.

“We have a few things in the works, we haven’t quite hit the lotto numbers just yet like with a Redoute’s Choice or an I Am Invincible or So You Think, but hopefully there’s one in there on the roster somewhere,” he said. “And while you still have a ticket for the lottery, you have a chance to win it.”

One of those tickets could rest with Mailman (I Am Invincible), who passed in on the Gold Coast last year. Sent to the stable of John O'Shea and Tom Charlton, the Rosemont team have hopes the son of G1 Coolmore Classic winner Krone (Eurozone) can raise the bar this autumn.

“Lots of people told me he was, if not the nicest, one of the nicest colts at the sale and we had an $800,000 reserve on him, which we thought was reasonable, given he’s by I Am Invincible out of a Group 1 winner,” Mithen said. “It’s called Magic Millions after all! When no one put their hand up for him, we ended up keeping him. A couple of guys in the Rosemont Alliance took shares, which was great, and he’s a lovely horse.

“We wanted to give him a chance to be a Slipper horse. We were mindful that I Am Invincibles don’t necessarily get there early, but we'll give him his chance.”

And Rosemont know a thing or two about early offspring of Yarraman Stud’s Champion Sire, having bred and sold his G1 Sires’ Produce Stakes-winning son Vinrock in 2024.

“That’s another feather in our cap,” Mithen said. “All the buyers at Magic Millions will remember that our farm produced him in the not too distant past.”

Golden times ahead

It’s with that in mind that we turn to the 17 horses heading to Magic Millions in Rosemont’s 2026 draft. Mithen highlights a couple of standouts that he is sure buyers won’t want to miss when bidding commences on January 13.

“The Snitzel colt out of Krone (Lot 429) is a lovely horse, he’s near the top of our draft,” said Mithen. “Plus the Too Darn Hot colt out of the Savabeel mare Ethekwini (Lot 258), those are our two headline acts.”

‘Off the beaten track’, but high in Mithen’s expectations, is Lot 458, the only son of Extreme Warrior in the sale.

Gallery: Anthony Mithen's highlights from the Rosemont Stud draft for the 2026 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, images courtesy of Magic Millions

“He’s an absolute ripper,” said Mithen. “Every time he's come out for pre-parades at the farm, I've had to catch my breath a bit and say, ‘wow’. He's done that to most people that have seen him as well. He’s the only colt by his sire in the sale, so he could be a bit of rare air, which is exciting for us.”

A close relation to Extreme Warrior will also be available in Rosemont’s draft; Lot 299 is a daughter of Free Thrills (Unencumbered), a half-sister to the sire.

“She’s a lovely filly,” Mithen said. “She is another one that, every time she comes out, there’s a bit of ‘what’s that horse?’. She’s got a beautiful big hip and looks like a powerful 2-year-old type.”

It was through Free Thrills that Rosemont were able to get a hold of Extreme Warrior in the first place.

“We had a partner in the horse called Richard Boyd, and then he went into one of the next offspring from the mare as well, which happened to be Extreme Warrior,” Mithen shared.

“He sold us part of his share after he realised that Extreme Warrior was going to be pretty good, because he'd had a good time racing (Listed-winning half-sister) Thrillster and Free Thrills with us. He wanted to keep the band together. It’s funny how these things come together.”