Better Than Last Year - Amended

The Australian Studbook covering statistics for the 2025 breeding season hold plenty of interest and we’re taking a look at the stallions that increased their book size on the previous year.

At the top of the table is Arrowfield Stud’s Castelvecchio, who is there in part because his 2024 season was cut short when he suffered an illness requiring surgery, so stopped covering mares pretty much after the first week of November.

However, coming into that spring of 2024, he was not looking popular and as a result his fee had been dropped to $22,000.

Spring is a great time of year for changing the fortunes of a stallion and it certainly did that for Castelvecchio with El Castello winning the Group I ATC Spring Champion Stakes and Aeliana announcing herself as a star of the future.

Breeders that missed out in 2024 when his star began to rise were obviously happy to get on board last year at an increased fee and 155 mares is the biggest book of mares he has ever covered.

In Victoria these days after kicking off at Newgate Farm, Blue Gum Farm’s Flying Artie has the benefit of a great crop of three year-olds running for him this season and of course his star mare Asfoora winning multiple G1 races in Europe, one in August and one in October if anybody needed reminding during the spring as to how good a horse he can get.

His book climbed from 37 to 96 mares at his value fee of $11,000.

In Western Australia, Alwyn Park’s Maschino was coming into the spring of 2025 after his outstanding three year-old filly Machine Gun Gracie had won the WA Derby and Oaks double and up and coming sprinter Jokers Grin won the $5million Quokka.

That sort of success on the track does not go unnoticed by mare owners in a state where there aren’t a lot of options outside Playing God at the elite level.

Newhaven Park’s Cool Aza Beel was riding the afterglow of producing Group I winning 2YO colt Cool Archie in his first crop when jumping from 75 mares to 125 and that’s not easy for a stallion to do that stands outside of the Hunter Valley.

Like Castelvecchio, this was also his biggest ever book of mares.

I Am Immortal is a bargain priced son of I Am Invincible that enjoyed some good timing when his talented son McGaw came out and won the 2025 $1million TBV VOBIS Showdown and then trained on the be competitive with the good 3YO sprinters in the spring winning the Group II VRC Danehill Stakes.

Flicking down the list Harry Angel (IRE) is an interesting one as he had a fee increase to $66,000 and covered his biggest ever book (165) of mares and was the busiest sire on the Godolphin roster ahead of Broadsiding and Anamoe.

Below is a table of the stallions that covered more than 10 mares in 2025 above what they covered in 2024.