Paulele to stand at Darley Victoria
Group 1-winning sprinter to be retired at a service fee of $16,500
Top sprinter Paulele (Dawn Approach) will be retired to Darley’s Victorian stallion operation this year, but not before he gets the chance to add to his Group 1-winning record during the Queensland winter carnival.
Late yesterday, Godolphin announced that rising five-year-old Paulele, this season’s Winterbottom Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) scorer, will stand for an introductory fee of $16,500 (inc GST) at Northwood Park near Seymour, Darley’s first new stallion in Victoria for two seasons.
Trained by James Cummings and having won eight of his 22 starts and $2.4 million in prize-money, the sprinter will target the Doomben 10,000 (Gr 1, 1200m) and possibly the Kingsford-Smith Cup (Gr 1, 1300m) in Brisbane next month; races he was runner-up in last year, before heading to Victoria for stud duties.
A Kindergarten Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) winner at two, Paulele also took out the 2021 Roman Consul Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m), a race with an honour roll that includes leading young stallion Russian Revolution (Snitzel), fellow sires Wild Ruler (Snitzel), Cosmic Force (Deep Field) and Darley’s own Brazen Beau (I Am Invincible).
He stopped the clock for the Randwick 1200 metres in 1:08.59 seconds in the Roman Consul.
Darley Australia’s head of stallions Alastair Pulford was full of admiration for the powerful 16.1-hand stallion prospect.
“He is such a talented horse with form against all the best sprinters in the country really and he was a genuine Group 1 horse who could run time. He was a very precocious two-year-old with two wins pre-Christmas, so he got going very early and turned that into Group performances as a two-year-old in the Kindergarten where he was dominant and that’s a good horses’ race,” Pulford told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“We’ve had Astern and Bivouac win it in recent years and it does turn up a very good horse, and then at three when he won the Rosebud in the early spring we thought we had something really special on our hands because he ran superb time on that day and then followed that up a couple of runs later in the Roman Consul, again running fantastic time.
“Looking back, he ran faster time than Exceed And Excel, Fastnet Rock and Zoustar and horses like that, so it is a race that has been won by a lot of high-class Australian stallions as it turns out and he won it in super quick time.”
While his breakthrough Group 1 win came last November in Perth when coming from last in a field of 16, Paulele is also Group 1-placed a further three times.
Pulford said: “He was a horse who could race on speed and he liked to be up there and thereabouts but when he drew badly (in the Winterbottom) they had to take him back and he showed an amazing turn of foot that day, he had no right to win. He is a super–talented horse.”
A quarter–brother to Group 3-winning juvenile Montsegur (New Approach), herself the dam of this season’s Skyline Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) winner Corniche (Fastnet Rock), and a half-brother to Canonbury Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) winner Tessera (Medaglia d’Oro), Paulele is out of four-time winning sprinting mare Chatoyant (Flying Spur), a $450,000 Inglis Easter purchase in 2004.
Paulele is also from the family of top-producing mare Legally Bay (Snippets), the dam of Merchant Navy (Fastnet Rock), Setana (Fastnet Rock) and Jolie Bay (Fastnet Rock).
Paulele’s sire Dawn Approach and his grandsire New Approach (Galileo) both shuttled to Australia.
While Paulele is Dawn Approach’s best offspring from his five-year southern hemisphere stint, he is also the sire of the former Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained sprinter Dawn Passage and four other southern hemisphere-bred stakes winners. New Approach sired nine Australian-bred stakes winners from four crops, including Australasian Oaks (Gr 1, 2000m) winner May’s Dream.
Crucially, Godolphin had Paulele gene tested, which confirmed he carries the important CC speed gene, suggesting that he will have a higher propensity to sire sprinters.
“He is clearly the best son of Dawn Approach to have raced down here and Dawn Approach, despite not living up to the great expectations at stud, was a five-time Group 1 winner himself and was a superb racehorse,” Pulford said.
“This horse has probably inherited the best of his father’s ability, and he’s as good as his sire got in this part of the world, and that’s a good thing. There’s plenty of these high-class sprinters who make really good stallions.
“He’s going to have to go above what his sire did but I have no doubt that he can. We know he’s suited to Australian conditions, he’s a horse who showed a lot of talent and he showed that right from the day he was broken in really.”
A limited number of breeding rights will be offered by Godolphin in Paulele.