Paradoxium
Of the many reasons to send a mare to Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), one in particular received another huge boost on the weekend when Paradoxium (Extreme Choice) won the Todman Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m).
Newgate Farm’s $330,000 stallion is of course a siring sensation, despite his well known fertility problems, with Paradoxium one of his 18 stakes winners from 148 runners at a thumping 12.16 per cent stakes winners to runners.
But he’s working especially well with mares from a line of that outstanding broodmare sire, More Than Ready (Southern Halo).
Since Extreme Choice has only averaged 25 runners through each of his six racing crops to date, the sample sizes for his nicks aren’t huge, but this one forms a compelling argument.
Extreme Choice over More Than Ready mares has hatched five winners from six runners – two of them at stakes level. One is Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) hero Knight’s Choice, the other the dual Group winner and Group 1 placed Tiger Of Malay, now an Extreme Choice barnmate at Newgate.
More Than Ready’s sons are showing great promise with Extreme Choice as well. Extreme Choice over Better Than Ready has just the one runner – Paradoxium – for a neat 100 per cent stakes winners to runners ratio. Putting the stallion over Sebring has four victors from six runners, including one stakes placegetter in Tessa’s Choice.
Those stats echo the strong results for Extreme Choice’s sire Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice) over More Than Ready, which has realised six stakes winners from 42 runners at 14 per cent – the stallion’s equal second best stakes winners to runners nick for more than eight runners. The pick of the nick is its (dual) Group 1 winner, Miracles Of Life.
It was these kinds of workings that led breeding pals Brian McGuire, Brian Clarke and Collum McCullagh to send their Better Than Ready mare Paredo to Extreme Choice in the spring of 2022.
They’d come together to buy Paredo privately off the track after a 15-start career for Toby and Trent Edmonds that netted two wins, including one at Doomben, and a Listed placing at the same track.
And there was other evidence – aside from the Not A Single Doubt – More Than Ready nick – that pointed the way to Extreme Choice in her first spring at stud.
McCullagh worked with trainer Peter Snowden at the time, and in the spring of 2022 he had a two-year-old colt by the stallion showing great promise ahead of his first start.
Don Corleone won at Sydney’s first official two-year-old barrier trials, and would soon launch a glittering first season in which – aside from a winning debut at Randwick – he would run elite-level seconds in the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) and ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), either side of a meritorious fourth in the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m).
And he happened to be out of Paredo’s half-sister, the also stakes-placed Snipzu (Snippetson), who’s also left another juvenile Group 1 placegetter in The Drinks Cart (Unencumbered).
Paredo’s second dam was Briscay (Marscay), one of the more successful mares of breeder Geoff White, having thrown Ranvet Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) winning gelding Arkady (Myocard) and the dams on three stakes winners. Third dam Brianne (Knightly Manner) was another stakes producer.
“That Not A Single Doubt – More Than Ready cross had worked quite well historically,” McGuire tells It’s In The Blood. “Plus Don Corleone was showing a lot of promise, so we wanted to throw the dice and breed a horse on a very similar cross.
“Plus it was a good physical mating. She was a nice, compact, good style of mare with a good head, and she fitted Extreme Choice nicely. Even though he’s on the smaller side, he has a good bit of length to him.”
So Extreme Choice had been lined up for Paredo. Now, to breed a three-quarter sibling to Don Corleone, she just had to get in-foal.
The three friends would need luck on their side – more even than usual for Extreme Choice. This would be, statistically speaking, his worst season for conception.
A bout of colic at the start of the spring meant he didn’t start covering mares until the middle of October. After that, things still weren’t great, with his fertility rate by season’s end just 39.6 per cent. Compare that with 2024 when, with a clean run and a few more tricks of the trade learnt, it came in at a career-high 63 per cent.
Luckily for the three friends, they struck it lucky. Now with their mare in-foal, it was time to cash in.
“The intention was always to sell her on – that was the end goal,” McGuire says. “Extreme Choice pregnancies were rare, particularly in that year when he’d missed the first half of the season. It was just going to be too juicy a proposition to pass up.”
Paredo was offered in-foal at the Inglis Chairman’s sale of 2023 via Segenhoe Stud’s draft. She was passed in initially, but a deal was done to sell her for $475,000, to Silverdale Farm.
McGuire stayed in for a share, meaning he’s now among the breeders of Paradoxium along with Silverdale owner Steve Grant and his long-term associate Ken Lowe, of Carpe Diem fame.
Paredo’s purchase soon worked out swimmingly for her new ownership group. In the spring of 2023, Don Corleone added two more stakes placings, which would ultimately count towards a stud deal. Two days after the second of those placings, the group had their desired result when Paredo smoothly birthed a colt. He was one of just 41 live foals for Extreme Choice born in 2023.
And when that colt was being prepared for sale a year later, another one named Private Harry (Harry Angel) made a winning debut. The Nathan Doyle-trained sprinter would keep on winning, in a five-race stretch culminating in Rosehill’s The Galaxy (Gr 1, 1100m).
This was a boon to Paredo’s owners since Private Harry was out of another daughter of the mare’s dam Pilgrim (Danehill), in Happy Pilgrim (Congrats).
Private Harry hadn’t won that Group 1 by the time Paredo went to the Gold Coast Magic Millions sale of 2025, but his first four victories effected a handy pedigree upgrade.
“He was a really good first foal,” says Silverdale’s Rob Petith. “She was a lovely, kind mare, and the colt was very straightforward to prepare. He had a really good, even, workmanlike temperament, and he appeared to enjoy his work.”
Ridgmont’s Mitch Cunningham made one bid and snared the colt – for $400,000 – in cahoots with trainer Bjorn Baker and his main bloodstock agent Jim Clarke.
Little more than a year later, the colt is on the verge not just of being a lucky strike for a group of breeders patronising Extreme Choice, but an example of hitting the jackpot.
After winning two of his three starts, Paradoxium is a $5 favourite to become Extreme Choice’s second Slipper winner, after Stay Inside, just ahead of another Baker-Ridgmont colt in Warwoven (Sword Of State) at $6.
Victory for Paradoxium on Saturday week would be extremely timely for Paredo’s owners, who’ll offer her second foal through Silverdale’s draft at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale later in March, a filly by champion sire Zoustar (Northern Meteor).
That filly’s page has also been updated with Wintery (Frosted), a granddaughter of Snipzu, winning and being Group 3 placed in Melbourne, and by Hot And High (Too Darn Hot), who also descends from Briscay, and has won all three starts in Perth, including in Listed class.
Paredo now has a filly by I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) at foot, and is carrying again to Zoustar.
Further scanning Paradoxium’s pedigree, the colt does have double Danehill, but at least it’s of the statistically superior gender-balanced variety, at 4m x 3f, via Extreme Choice’s grandsire Redoute’s Choice, and as Paradoxium’s second damsire. Plus the perils of doubling Danehill seem to be fading, the deeper he recedes into pedigrees.
“Double Danehill is becoming more prevalent,” McGuire says. “In fact, we saw a couple of runners in the Slipper last year with three lines of Danehill.
“The fact this was gender balanced, and at four-by-three, meant it didn’t concern us.”
The only other bit of in-breeding Paradoxium carries is Danzig (Northern Dancer) at 5m x 5m, 4m. He’s there as Danehill’s sire, but also as the sire of Better Than Ready’s damsire, Agnes World.
That most influential of mares, Natalma (Native Dancer), is the most repeated female in the pedigree, with nine mentions from columns six to nine, while Nearco (Pharos) is the dominant stallion, with 18 spots.