Three-time Group 1-winning stallion Militarize has been pulled from service just weeks into his stud career due to fertility problems and he will be put back into training with Chris Waller.
It is understood that Newgate Farm will geld Australia’s joint champion two-year-old of 2022-23 after Militarize’s lack of potency in the breeding shed was uncovered when a large proportion of the mares he served in the opening weeks of September were found not to be in foal.
The ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes, Champagne Stakes and Golden Rose-winning stallion, a banner horse for the Newgate, China Horse Club and Trilogy Racing colts partnership, had been retired to stud at a fee of $38,500 (inc GST) after his three-year-old season and was bound to be popular with breeders.
Problems emerged for Newgate Farm and the stallion’s shareholders when veterinarians undertook the standard practice of scanning mares at 15 days who had been covered by the son of Arrowfield Stud’s Dundeel, only to find the vast majority were not pregnant.
The unfortunate situation led to Newgate principal Henry Field and his partners conducting an array of tests before a decision was made to remove Militarize from the Hunter Valley stud’s 17-horse stallion roster.
It is believed that Militarize, a winner of almost $2.6 million in his 13-start career that also included Group 1 placings in a Randwick Guineas, George Ryder Stakes and a Doncaster Mile as an autumn three-year-old, will be gelded once an insurance claim has been paid out and then returned into the stables of Waller.
It’s a bitter blow for Newgate as fellow sire sons of Dundeel, Super Seth and Castelvecchio, are making waves with their first crop three-year-olds, the latter responsible for Saturday’s Group 1 Spring Champion-winning colt and possible Victoria Derby contender El Castello.
Field was effusive about the horse’s prospects at stud when Militarize's racetrack retirement was confirmed in April.
“He donkey-licked them in the ATC Sires’ and the Champagne,” Field said.
“He came back as a three-year-old and his turn of foot in the Golden Rose – another stallion-making race – was just phenomenal.
“He’s a beautiful horse by Dundeel, an elite sire, and out of a Dubawi mare so he’s an outcross.”
A not uncommon occurrence across the breeding industry, it’s not the first time that Newgate Farm, Australia’s busiest stallion operation in 2023, has been hit by sub-fertile sires on its roster.
Criterion retired to stud in 2016 and, despite persevering, his fertility did not go above 22.1 per cent in his maiden season, eventually forcing him to be pensioned after three years, as was Deep Field after eight years at stud whose fertility dived unsustainably in his last two years at stud.
Extreme Choice, however, is Newgate’s best-known sub-fertile stallion with many of his progeny proving to be well above average on the racetrack.
From just 104 runners, Extreme Choice has sired 13 individual stakes winners - Golden Slipper winner Stay Inside and Group 1-winning mares Espiona and She’s Extreme among them - at an elite strike rate of 12.5 per cent.
Coolmore’s Starspangledbanner was also declared subfertile in his early years at stud, but he has since forged a successful dual-hemisphere career, firstly at Rosemont in Victoria and later at Coolmore’s Australian and Ireland operations.
His Australian fertility rate has increased from a low of 37.4 per cent, which occurred in his first year at stud in 2011, before reaching a high of 71.4 per cent in 2020 and 2021. He is on track to record a similar figure this foaling season.
Godolphin's 2018 Randwick Guineas winner Kementari also returned to the racecourse after a failed career at stud when his only crop conceived in 2019 produced just five live foals.
Upon returning to the racetrack for trainer James Cummings, the gelded Kementari would win a further four races as well as finishing seventh in the 2022 Everest, won by Giga Kick.
Kementari was retired in May 2023.
