Daumier debuts on the Twin Hills roster; shares top billing with Peltzer at $16,500

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

It’s been just six years since Olly and Amber Tait set up sticks at Twin Hills Stud. In its pretty corner of Cootamundra, the farm is home to Peltzer, Smart Missile, Denman and Hallowed Crown.

However, there’s a new face among them this season with the announcement of the 2023 Twin Hills stallion roster. Blue Diamond winner Daumier, a son of Epaulette, will stand for $16,500 (inc GST).

Daumier’s retirement to Twin Hills Stud was news in early March, with the horse heading to Twin Hills straight off the back of his track career. For Olly Tait, who also stands Denman in partnership with the Godolphin operation, Daumier was the first time his farm had taken a Godolphin horse straight from racing for a fledgling career in the breeding shed.

Daumier was lightly raced with just eight starts, but in his juvenile season, he was one of the best of his generation. He won the Listed Blue Diamond Preview (Colts and Geldings), was third in the G3 Blue Diamond Prelude (Colts and Geldings) before leading home the likes of Jacquinot in the G1 Blue Diamond S.

At Twin Hills this spring, Daumier will jointly head the roster with Peltzer, whose fee remains unchanged at $16,500 (inc GST). There’s also Smart Missile at $13,200 (inc GST), which is down slightly on last year’s $16,500 (inc GST), and both Denman and Hallowed Crown will sit at $8800 (inc GST).

Like any studmaster, Tait is excited to have a new project on his roster for 2023, the last time being Peltzer in 2021. However, Daumier is a particularly sharp acquisition as the outstanding 2-year-old colt of his generation.

“You’re always looking for every opportunity in a business, and one of those opportunities is stallions,” Tait said. “Part of that is connected to the identity of the farm. If it’s a farm that stands stallions, their identity is in many ways pinned to the stallions they stand, so you’re always seeking a stallion that you think, above all else, will be successful.

“That’s what you’re always trying to find and, as we know, it’s not easy to find stallions that you think are going to be successful. But you keep at it, and our plan is to try and get hold of any stallion that we think we can give an opportunity to, and a stallion that we believe in.”

At $16,500, Daumier is promising value for a Blue Diamond winner.

“We felt that was the right price point to give him the opportunity of the best mares,” Tait said. “He’s tremendously well-priced for a Blue Diamond winner, and he was the only 2-year-old Group 1-winning colt of his year. He was unique. And that’s not only a fun fact. It shows you how difficult it is to win those races as colts.”

One of the considerations around Daumier was that he was a late November foal. From the Street Cry (Ire) mare Illustrate, herself a daughter of the dual Group-winner Parables (Lonhro), he was born on November 26, 2019.

He debuted on the racetrack on Australia Day last year, wrapping up his juvenile season with two fourth-place finishes behind Fireburn (Rebel Dane) in the G1 Golden Slipper and G1 ATC Sires’ Produce S.

“The Blue Diamond was the earliest 2-year-old Group 1 race, and I think he’s the only November foal to have ever won the Blue Diamond,” Tait said. “He was precocious, which is an overused word, but Daumier was precocious. And he was talented.”

Twin Hills will be reaching out for 100 mares for Daumier in the spring, but Tait isn’t too fixated on a figure. Peltzer has covered 83 and 84 mares in his first two seasons, if that’s a gauge on anything.

“If you can get in excess of 100 mares to a horse like Daumier, that gives him a good opportunity,” Tait said. “But whatever number they cover, stallions can cover 200 mares and get it done, or they can be a stallion like Rebel Dane and cover much fewer but still get it done.

“Ideally, you’re trying to build a profile around a new stallion so the more opportunities they have for good runners, the better. And in the case of Daumier, there are not many 2-year-old Group 1 winners that go to stud, and we’ve got one of them.”

Daumier will be in good company with history at Twin Hills Stud. While Tait himself will be standing a juvenile Classic winner for the first time, the farm itself has stood Snippets in the past, winner of the inaugural Magic Millions 2YO Classic back in 1987 and, in the same year, the G1 AJC Sires’ Produce S. Twin Hills was also home to Sir Dapper, winner of the 1983 Golden Slipper.

Boom time for a So You Think

At $16,500, Peltzer’s 2023 fee is unchanged in his first two seasons. He’s covered around that 80-mark each year, and Tait is expecting similar in the spring.

“He hasn’t covered huge books, but they’ve been solid books of mares that have given him good opportunity,” the studmaster said. “He’s been very well-supported by us with our own broodmare band, and by our clients. He’s a horse with a lot to like.”

At the time that Peltzer retired to Twin Hills in 2021, his sire, So You Think (NZ), was going well. But last racing season, So You Think hit a different level, at one point vying with I Am Invincible for Champion Sire honours. In the end, he finished second with 149 seasonal winners and was just $500,000 in progeny earnings shy of the overall title.

All this was good fare for Peltzer at Twin Hills.

“The thing that people know most about Peltzer is that he was an unbeaten 2-year-old by So You Think, and he went on at three,” Tait said. “People love him when they see him so he’s a complete package.”

Peltzer’s first foals are on the ground now. They number around 64, spread between those at Cootamundra and others on competing farms. By keeping the stallion at his service fee, Tait is keen not just to maintain momentum around the young horse but meet the economics of these things.

“We’ve obviously had to pay to buy the horse and we represent the shareholders who still own him along with us,” he said. “It’s a business, so we’ve held his fee steady and we feel he’ll be well-supported at that figure again this year.”

An important horse

The 14-year-old Smart Missile is heading into his 12th season at stud, and his sixth at Twin Hills Stud. The son of Fastnet Rock relocated to Cootamundra from Arrowfield in the spring of 2018, and he’s one of the seasoned additions on the roster.

In his day, Smart Missile was Champion First Season Sire in 2015/16, following that by being the leading second-crop sire by winners and wins the following year, and leading third-crop sire by winners and wins in 2017/18.

At $13,200, he has returned to a number at which he stood on his arrival to Twin Hills in 2018. It’s a slight reduction on his $16,500 (inc GST) of last year, but Tait said that was tactical.

“We wanted to put him at a price point that would attract more owner-breeders, as well as commercial breeders,” he said. “The further up you go in fee, the more people are looking to breed better horses for the sales, and the year that he was the most popular with us was when he covered over 200 mares, and that was the year he arrived.”

In 2018, Smart Missile surged into his own record territory with a book of 222 mares. It was his first season at Twin Hills. His numbers have been more modest since then but he’s still getting very good mares.

“We feel this fee is the right mark for him at this point of his career,” Tait said. “He’s still capable of getting good sales horses. He had great sales results this year, particularly with his colts. And at that fee, I think it will make him attractive to a wider group of people.”

Tait said it’s hard for stallions to be as good as Smart Missile has been for that long. He’s been at stud for a decade, and his arrival to Cootamundra put the farm on the map. It was just a year after the Tait family moved in.

“The first year we were here, we stood Odyssey Moon and Bobby’s Kitten, and Bobby’s Kitten didn’t come back,” Tait said. “Smart Missile came then in 2018, and the moment he stepped off the float he started getting winners. We got over 200 mares to him that year, and that exposed us to a really wide clientele.

“As I said before, people really identify farms with the stallions they stand, so his success put us on the map, even if it wasn’t necessarily success we had created; it was success Arrowfield had created in the years before with him, and also Gooree, who owned him.

“As a result, Smart Missile is a horse that is really meaningful to us all at Twin Hills.”

The value options

The pair of Denman and Hallowed Crown are the two remaining horses on the Twin Hills roster. Denman is rising 17 years old and remains at his fee of $8800, while Hallowed Crown, the 11-year-old son of Street Sense (USA), slides slightly from $11,000 to $8800.

“Denman is a very solid stallion,” Tait said. “He’s a consistent sire of good sprinters and there is still a commercial angle for him with his colts. They’re still commanding a good deal of money to go to Asia.

“Hallowed Crown has never had huge numbers of runners to represent him, but he’s still a quality stallion. He got Colette, an Oaks-winning filly, in his first crop, and even last weekend he had Vilana, who was very impressive when winning at Randwick.”

Hallowed Crown has been at stud since 2015. His four stakes winners include Colette, whose G1 Australian Oaks was backed-up with the G1 Empire Rose S. and a pair of Group 2 races, while Vilana won the G3 Hall Mark S. as recently as this month. She could be chasing Group 1 targets in Queensland.

“Hallowed Crown is a horse that can get top-quality runners and he’s at a very, very affordable fee,” Tait said. “For any of our stallions to stand here at Twin Hills, they’ve got to have a profile to begin with and each of them have their own following, as both of these horses do.”

Table: Twin Hill Stud's stallion fees for 2023, *all prices inclusive of GST