A flurry of Group I performers has sent the stocks of Cox Plate winning sire Shamus Award soaring with Rosemont Stud upping his service fee for 2022 to $88,000 up from $33,000 last year.
Shamus Award started his stud career at Widden Stud, but waning popularity in his fifth season when his fee was dropped to $11,000 saw the horse head interstate with Rosemont Stud his new home.
Shamus Award has always enjoyed rock solid support from his owners Sean Buckley and Viv Oldfield, but a new wave of fans are now coming on board thanks to his formidable achievements and last year he covered a whopping 216 mares to be the second busiest sire in Australia.
Shamus Award is running fifth on the Australian General Sires List with progeny earnings topping $12million with his 65 winners including five stakes-winners headed by his Group I winners Incentivise, Duais and El Patroness.
His 6.9 % stakes-winner to runner strike rate marks him as an elite stallion and has been achieved largely without the benefit of top class mares given his initial years at stud were at a fee of $27,500.
A Champion 3YO by champion sire Snitzel, Shamus Award started off at Widden in the same year as Zoustar, whose immediate success thanks to Sunlight made it that much harder for Shamus Award to shine.
While Zoustar was Champion First, Second and Third Season sire, Shamus Award took a little longer to get going and this year has a $4million lead on his old barn mate in the current Australian General Sires List.
Their lifetime strike rate stats for winners, stakes-winners and Group winners are remarkably similar, although in the sale ring Zoustar has become a market favourite and had the honour of siring the most expensive yearling in Australia this year with his $3million colt from Solar Charged topping Inglis Easter.
Zoustar stands this spring at a fee of $198,000, so in that context Shamus Award is undoubtedly still great value at his new fee.
Rosemont Stud’s other two young sires Hanseatic (Street Boss (USA) and Strasbourg (I Am Invincible) remain with their fees unchanged at $17,600 and $11,000.
Strasbourg will have his first weanlings on sale later this year, while Hanseatic covered a big book of 195 mares making him the busiest first season sire in Victoria.
New to the roster will be Extreme Choice’s stakes-winning son Extreme Warrior, whose fee will not be set until the end of his current campaign, which starts on Saturday week in the Listed MRC Bel Esprit Stakes before a possible tilt at Group I sprints in either Adelaide or Brisbane.
A brilliant winner of the Group III MRC Blue Sapphire Stakes during the spring, Extreme Warrior has a quality Black Type pedigree being a half-brother to stakes-winner Thrillster from the family of Group I winner All Thrills Too.
