'We want to hand-pick our mares’ - Yarraman makes shock cut to I Am Invincible’s service fee

I Am Invincible sired his 17th Group 1 winner on Saturday and his second this month, but Yarraman Park has reduced the three-time champion sire’s fee this year, declaring the shock decision as “the right thing to do”.

I Am Invincible’s fee has been slashed from a career-high $275,000 to $220,000 (all fees inc GST), the same figure the rising 21-year-old stood for in 2021 and placing him below that of Extreme Choice ($330,000), Zoustar ($275,000), Too Darn Hot ($275,000) and Snitzel ($247,500) in 2025.

The Yarraman Park mainstay is fourth on the general sires’ premiership by earnings, $3 million behind current leader Pride Of Dubai, making his task of a fourth straight title unlikely but I Am Invincible is still one of the country’s most commercial sires.

“He’s had a good run over the carnival, he won the Sires (Produce Stakes with Vinrock), he won the Arrowfield with Enriched and he won the (Group 1) Sangster with Charm Stone, so I don’t have to tell you that he’s an elite stallion, he throws the best types of all the stallions and he’s doing incredibly well,” Yarraman Park’s Harry Mitchell told The Straight, adding “we’re not going to deal on him or anything”.

“But we’re aware that he’s 20 years of age now and we want to sort of hand-pick our mares a bit, so therefore with the reduced fee we can hand-pick them because we’re going to get plenty of people ringing us up, I would have thought.”

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Closing in on Redoute’s Choice’s record of 81 seven-figure yearlings, and eight ahead of Arrowfield’s four-time premier sire Snitzel, I Am Invincible’s 75 yearlings to be sold this year have averaged $531,540, almost on par with his 2021 season but below that of the past three years which reached a high in 2023 of $675,489.

The Matt Laurie-trained Vinrock, I Am Invincible’s second Group 1-winning two-year-old and first in Australia, was also significant for the stallion, going some way to dispel the perception that he was primarily a ‘fillies sire’.

“He’s got a lot of good colts, he’s got a lot of sons at stud, even the ones that went to stud at the lower fee, like I Am Immortal are starting to do very well from quite a low base,” Mitchell argued.

“Home Affairs has been very, very popular for Coolmore, they’ve done very well out of him, and I’d be surprised if he doesn’t come out of the blocks pretty hot. So look, there has been a perception of fillies, but I think a lot of these elite stallions are the same.

“I think I remember the same being said with Redoute’s Choice, but then he got some great colts, didn’t he?”

Yarraman Park roster mate Hellbent, one of I Am Invincible’s Group 1 winners and a Group 1-producing sire in his own right, will stand for an unchanged fee of $38,500 while Brave Smash has had his fee reduced to $27,500.

Hellbent’s dual Group 1-winning mare Magic Time, who was bred and raced by John Muir’s Milburn Creek until being sold to Yulong, has raced consistently this season, winning the Expressway and finishing third in the Group 1 Canterbury Stakes.

Two-year-old colt Tremonti also won the Maribyrnong Trial Stakes and fellow juvenile Savvy Hallie was placed in the Group 2 Percy Sykes earlier this month at Randwick.

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Brave Smash, who started his career at stud at Aquis Farm firstly in the Hunter Valley before moving to Queensland, has his first Yarraman Park-conceived weanlings on the ground and there’s a noticeable upgrade in the quality of the stallion’s foals in Mitchell’s opinion.

“To me, he is a horse that when you watch them run, they’ve all got ability and they all seem to find the line, so I’m looking forward to his crop from down here,” says Mitchell of Brave Smash, the sire of Sir Rupert Clarke winner Kimochi.

“I think he’ll have a massive upgrade, and it’s probably a very clever year to breed to him, I would have thought … and I’d say the same for Hellbent, actually, because there’s horses that have got upward trends, and there’s horses that have got downward trends, and that’s the quality of mares and they’ve both got massive upgrades.”

*Hellbent (left) and Brave Smash (right)*

More broadly, Mitchell said the cost of production had skyrocketed in years, compounding the impact of a slight downturn in the bloodstock market.

“I think the market’s been very resilient, really, and in all honesty, we say the bottom end of the market’s not as good, but you’ve got to produce a pretty good product in any business, and horses are no different,” he said.

“It’s not just a matter of sending a mare to a horse and saying, ‘oh, well, I’ve got a foal and I paid $20,000 for the service fee, therefore I should get $70 or $80,000’, but it doesn’t work like that.

“I think the market’s held up pretty well, but I do think the smaller breeders need a bit of help, and I didn’t think it was a year to be putting prices up, let’s say that.”

Yarraman Park Service Fees: