Earlier this week it was announced that the Darley stallion Shooting To Win, a half-brother to this season's sensation Deep Field, is heading to Western Australia to continue his stud career. He will go to Oakland Park Stud, just north of Margaret River.
He becomes the latest east-coast stallion to go west, after details in May that Splintex, a three-time Group winner, would stand at Darling View Thoroughbreds, south of Perth. Manhattan Rain was also relocated west this year, moving from Blue Gum Farm in Victoria to Geisel Park.
Shooting To Win will command a service fee of $9900 (inc GST) at Oakland Park this spring, after seven seasons as a Darley sire in the Hunter Valley.
“I’ve been a Godolphin customer on a yearly basis for many years, so I’m always in the loop,” said Neville Duncan, the studmaster at Oakland Park Stud. “There was some mention of Shooting To Win (being relocated), so it was a process that had been going on for a while and we signed off on him just yesterday (Monday).”
Neville Duncan is studmaster at Oakland Park Stud | Image courtesy of Oakland Park Stud
Shooting To Win will stand in Western Australia on a lease agreement between Godolphin and Oakland Park Stud.
The 10-year-old stallion has seven stakes winners to his name to date, including this year’s G1 Maori S. winner Mascarpone (NZ), plus the latest winner of the Listed Gai Waterhouse Classic, Centrefire.
“What interested me about him, for a start, was that he was Danehill-free,” Duncan said. “But also Deep Field has been kicking all sorts of goals, and he and Shooting To Win have similar stakes percentages in Australia.”
The Deep Field factor
Shooting To Win has five crops of racing age going around, and from them has come the likes of Mascarpone, Group 3 winners Tailleur and Ms Catherine and Listed winner Kubrick, each among his 145 total winners.
Kubrick was also Group-placed when second in the G1 JJ Atkins S., while Dom To Shoot was Group 1-placed in Western Australia.
Tailleur when racing | Image courtesy of Ashlea Brennan
Shooting To Win has had 18 stakes performers from his 245 runners so far, which is a fact that didn’t escape Neville Duncan.
“When I’m looking at stallions, we initially work here on producing winners, because our default position is we don’t sell to race,” the studmaster said. “It’s done us well over many years, so what happens in Hong Kong is great on a commercial basis but, from my point of view, before a stallion stands here he has to do the job in Australia.
“Most often, what happens in Australia is very different to what happens in other localities, so that was my first perameter, and Shooting To Win and Deep Field are a line ball with their stakes horses in Australia.”
“... what happens in Hong Kong is great on a commercial basis but, from my point of view, before a stallion stands here he has to do the job in Australia. Most often, what happens in Australia is very different to what happens in other localities...” - Neville Duncan
At Newgate Farm, Deep Field is commanding $88,000 (inc GST) this season upcoming. Just last week, he toppled into rare air, becoming the highest-earning sire for a single season in Hong Kong history.
“Deep Field has twice as many horses running so he’s got a higher profile, but Shooting To Win has already worked very well in Western Australia on limited numbers, and that’s in terms of horses bred on the east coast and brought here to race.”
Along with Dom To Shoot, Shooting To Win has had Charleton Eddie in the west, a smart 2-year-old that was second in the Listed Placid Ark S., plus Fatale Femme, who was second in the same race and fourth in the G2 Karrakatta Plate.
The outcross value
Shooting To Win was a G1 Caulfield Guineas winner in his day, backing that up with a win in the G2 Stan Fox S. By Northern Meteor, he is free of Danehill (USA), which is a particular selling point in a limited, western broodmare market.
“We’ve got quite a few Danehill-line mares, as most people have,” Duncan said, “and the current stats on horses with two lines of Danehill is that they significantly underperform.”
Duncan has kept tabs on these figures since 2018. They total around 11,000 runners and, with horses boasting two Danehills in the pedigree, he found that all under-performed the average.
Danehill (USA), the breed-shaping stallion who is ever-prevalent in the pedigrees of many Australian broodmares | Image courtesy of Arrowfield Stud
It was a significant reason for him to question things.
“When you’ve got such a superior horse as Danehill, there’s something going on there,” he said. “You know how hard it is to get a winner, so when you’re starting off with a 30 per cent less chance, why do it?”
At Oakland Park Stud Duncan has 28 of his own mares out of 60 total mares on the property. It’s not a heavy collection of Danehill-line families, but it’s like any in Australia, he said... there are Danehill mares among them.
“I would suggest that most studs in Australia would have in excess of 50 per cent of mares with Danehill in them,” he said. “Many of them would have Redoute’s Choice, and it goes on and on.
“Danehill was such a strong factor in our breeding, and one would have thought that doubling up would have got good results, but in fact it’s the reverse. It’s just been a weird quirk.”
“Danehill was such a strong factor in our breeding, and one would have thought that doubling up would have got good results, but in fact it’s the reverse. It’s just been a weird quirk.” - Neville Duncan
Based on this, Duncan was looking for an outcross stallion and Shooting To Win suited him well.
The horse will be open to outside breeders and, while most of the Oakland Park mares are already booked to sires this spring (nine of them will go to the east coast), he’ll be heavily used in-house next year.
“If we get 60 mares for him this year, we’ll be over the moon,” Duncan said. “The mare numbers in Western Australia are only about 1100 or so from memory, so there’s not a lot to go around.”
Shooting To Win | Standing at Oakland Park Stud
Shooting To Win will fly from the east coast at the end of the month, arriving at Oakland Park Stud around July 24. He will join Sessions in residence, a son of Lonhro who has stood in Western Australia since his debut stud season in 2015.
“We’ve had two stallions off and on for a decade now,” Duncan said. “Western Australian breeding being as it is, it can be very difficult to have more than a couple of places for stallions on a farm, and diversity is very important, particularly from my point of view.”
