Godolphin’s Group 1-winning stallion Golden Mile will target races such as the All-Star Mile in the autumn after being taken out of service and put back into training.
The five-year-old, who won the 2022 Group 1 Caulfield Guineas, will be gelded and put back into work with James Cummings after an injury sidelined him from the covering barn at the peak of the breeding season.
Godolphin Australia confirmed on Monday that it had taken Golden Mile off its Victorian stallion roster after the son of Astern missed all of October and much of November due to a problem related to his penile sheath.
Golden Mile was on Darley’s Northwood Park stallion roster alongside fellow first-season sire Cylinder as well as the proven Street Boss, Brazen Beau, Kermadec, second-season sire Paulele and shuttlers Blue Point and Ghaiyyath.
Retiring to stud in a difficult season, one where many breeders are anecdotally reducing the size of their broodmare band or being risk-averse as much as possible with their mating plans, Golden Mile covered 15 mares, 14 before his injury and one afterwards.
He is believed to have eight mares in foal.
Those numbers, and the timing of Golden Mile’s injury, commercially left Godolphin management with little other sensible option other than to geld him and put him back into training.
Although a Group 1 winner at three, Golden Mile raced on at four, winning the Group 2 Theo Marks as well as finishing third in the 2023 Golden Eagle behind Japan’s Obamburumai and stablemate Pericles.
Warwick Barr
He also finished fourth in the Group 1 George Ryder and third in the Victory Stakes at Eagle Farm in May, the last of his 20 starts which achieved five wins in the first stanza of his racing career.
“The horse did train on into his four-year-old year and did retire to stud sound with similar racetrack credentials to a horse like Pericles," Godolphin Australia managing director Andy Makiv told The Straight.
“Now returning as a gelding, we’d be hoping he will acquit himself well in similar races to those that Pericles competes in.
"James and the racing team will get him going for the autumn and we may target races like the All-Star Mile and the Doncaster.”
Street Boss gelding Pericles won two of his six starts this campaign, including a last-start victory in the $2 million Five Diamonds.
The brief stud career of Golden Mile comes at a time when Darley’s Australian stallion operation undergoes a major transition.
Jessica Owers
Champion stallion Exceed And Excel was pensioned early last year while the retired Lonhro died in April at the age of 25.
Street Boss, the sire of Godolphin’s champion Anamoe, and Harry Angel are 14th and 16th on the Australian sires’ table this season by earnings, with their progeny both winning more than $4.1 million on the racetrack since August 1.
It’s also not the first time Godolphin has gelded a stallion and successfully brought them back to the racetrack. In 2019, Randwick Guineas winner Kementari was found to be infertile (he sired just two named foals) before returning into Cummings’ care.
He won a further four races and was placed another six times until his retirement last year at the age of eight.
Two of Godolphin’s three-year-old stallion prospects - three-time Group 1-winning colt Broadsiding and the twice Group 1-placed Traffic Warden - are set to return to training next week.
