Champion Dad flies back for baby's arrival
No, it’s not an Aussie cricketer or rugby player dashing home in time for the birth of his child.
It’s much bigger than that.
Champion sire Redoute’s Choice arrived back in Australia over the weekend, just ahead of his first 2013 foal’s arrival at 8.40 am on Wednesday morning. He’s been busy in France courting a bevy of European beauties at HH The Aga Khan’s Haras de Bonneval.
Argentine-bred US Grade 1 winner Miss Match (by A.P. Indy’s son Indygo Shiner) was one of the first mares he served in Australia last September and she conceived on one service, with a due date of 6 August. The strapping bay colt she produced a week early at Arrowfield Stud is her first foal.
Arrowfield’s Operations Manager Sam Fairgray is very pleased with the Stud’s first foal of the new season, saying “He has plenty of size, strength and bone, he’s a good effort for a first foal.”
His arrival signed off an outstanding season for his sire. Redoute’s Choice ends 2012/13 with a worldwide tally of 20 stakeswinners, including two new Group 1 winners, and $11 million prizemoney; two sons, Snitzel & Stratum, alongside him among Australia’s top ten; and his first top ten finish among Australia’s leading broodmare sires.
There were highlights for Redoute’s Choice in the sale-ring too: the $5 million Australasian record price paid for the Helsinge colt and his ninth year as the Easter Sale’s leading sire by average.
Redoute’s Choice is now completing quarantine requirements and breeders can welcome him back to the Hunter Valley when he parades for the first time at Arrowfield this year at the Stud’s Stallion Open House, 22-25 August – click here for more information.