<\/p>\n
If Half Yours wins the Caulfield Cup on Saturday, his new connections will make almost 10 times their original investment made less than 12 months ago. In Australian horse racing, it\u2019s rare to achieve a more efficient and lucrative turnaround.<\/p>\n
His new owners, who spent $305,000 to purchase Half Yours last November at an on-line sale, stand to collect a $3 million prize if successful on Saturday. They would be the most visible winners, but by no means the only ones.<\/p>\n
A Half Yours win on Saturday would surely prompt a big cheer also from stud farm Brackley Park in central Victoria. Brackley Park stand Half Yours\u2019 sire St Jean, who\u2019s eight-year history as a stallion has produced just 67 live foals and very few success stories. Until now.<\/p>\n
For those eight seasons, St Jean has commanded a fee of just $3300, but in an indication of what might be to come, his fee this spring rose to $11,000. So far, just 14 mares have visited him this spring, but that number will swell considerably in another 12 months if Half Yours can get the job done on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting this season to be that much better than last season because most of the mares are already booked in,\u201d said Brackley Park\u2019s Grant Dwyer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, if Half Yours was to win the G1 on Saturday, maybe next year we\u2019ll get a lot more.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you stand a horse at $2500 or $3000 you don\u2019t get quality mares. Usually, to make a stallion, you need quality mares and you need volume and he\u2019s got neither but he\u2019s still got a potential G1 horse. He\u2019s done it the hard way.\u201d<\/p>\n
St Jean also did it the hard way when he was racing. A untimely tendon injury just as he was emerging in 2014 was compounded by a racing ban imposed by Racing Victoria after St Jean was one of the handful of horses caught up in the Ibuprofen mess, where horses who were treated with the anti-inflammatory, continued to test positive to the drug some 12 months after their treatments had finished.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, St Jean lost two years of his racing career because of that,\u201d Dwyer explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually, he went over to New Zealand with Donna Logan and he won the (G3) City Of Auckland Cup (2400m), but unfortunately broke down again and that was it for his racing career.\u201d<\/p>\n
A short time later, the chance to take St Jean as a stallion prospect arose and Dwyer did some fact-checking and back-grounding.<\/p>\n
\u201cAaron Purcell (the horse\u2019s former trainer) rang me up and asked if I wanted the horse and so I looked at its pedigree,\u201d Dwyer said. \u201cHis pedigree was outstanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got down to the third dam, which is Height of Fashion, who won for the Queen at Royal Ascot, but more importantly she produced Nashwan, who won the English Derby. Then she produced Nayaf and actually produced five stallions in all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fourth dam is Highclere and that is the third dam of Deep Impact so you\u2019ve got a lot of stallion strength in both sides of the pedigree.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, on that pedigree, if this horse won a G1, he\u2019d be standing at one of the big studs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a good runners-to-winners ratio at about 55 per cent which is good for a stallion who doesn\u2019t get a horse that can perform under 1600 metres.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll go down on Saturday to watch. It\u2019s not very often you stand a stallion that gets a horse that can win a G1 when you are standing them for $2000 or $3000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
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