Shinzo supercharges Snitzel’s Slipper legacy

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Champion Arrowfield stallion Snitzel has had more Golden Slipper runners than any other sire this century and, with Shinzo his second winner of the race, the stallion joins Redoute’s Choice and More Than Ready, as the most successful sire in the Golden Slipper since 2000.

Snitzel’s (Redoute’s Choice) association with the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) didn’t begin as would have been hoped. Backed into the $3.60 favourite for the 2005 edition of the race, the Gerald Ryan-trained colt endured a difficult, wide run under Glen Boss and was well beaten into 12th, with another son of Redoute’s Choice (Danehill), Stratum, claiming the prize.

Snitzel’s Group 1, and stallion-making moment, would come 12 months later in the Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m), but ever since he retired to Arrowfield Stud, he has been a constant influence in the world’s richest two-year-old race.

This column, By The Numbers, is designed to see major racing and bloodstock stories through a statistical lens, and when you run the numbers on Snitzel’s progeny in the Golden Slipper, you can see there has been no more prolific producer of contenders this century.

Snitzel has had 23 runners in the Golden Slipper, including Saturday’s victor Shinzo, two more than Exceed And Excel (Danehill), who had Cylinder finish second at Rosehill in this year’s race.  

Then follows Snitzel’s own sire, Redoute’s Choice, who produced 19 Slipper starters. Thanks to Shinzo’s dominant success, both sire and son now have two winners apiece, a colt and a filly.

Given their sireline, it is no shock. Redoute’s Choice’s sire Danehill (Danzig) is the most dominant Slipper force of modern times, with five winners among his 26 starters arriving across 12 years between 1994 and 2006.

Golden Slipper runners since 2000
Sire	Runners	Winners
Snitzel	23	2
Exceed And Excel	21	1
Redoute’s Choice	19	2
Fastnet Rock	18	0
More Than Ready	17	2
I Am Invincible	13	0
Not A Single Doubt	12	1
Danehill*	10	1
*had 16 runners and four winners prior to 2000

What Shinzo’s victory does for Snitzel is confirm the four-time Australian champion sire as one of the most influential stallions in one of Australia’s most important races.

He already had produced a Golden Slipper winner thanks to Estijaab in 2018, and he is also a Slipper-producing broodmare sire thanks to Mossfun (Mossman), but he now has a Slipper-winning colt, one of the most valuable subsets in Australian bloodstock.

Snitzel already has a bevy of high-quality sons at stud in Australia, among them are Group 1 producers Shamus Award, Russian Revolution and Invader, as well as the late Spill The Beans, but Shinzo’s likely progression to standing at Coolmore Australia once his racing days are over adds another dimension to Snitzel’s legacy, with plenty of quality yet to come from the still active 21-year-old.

Coolmore has not stood a son of Snitzel to this point, although Best Of Bordeaux, second in the Golden Slipper last year, is likely to precede Shinzo to Jerrys Plains.

The global powerhouse stud has, of course, stood Slipper winners. It purchased a controlling share in the 2012 two-year-old Triple Crown winner Pierro (Lonhro) after his racing days were complete, while it secured Vancouver (Medaglia D’Oro) in the weeks after his 2015 Golden Slipper victory.

Shinzo, significantly, is the first Golden Slipper winner in Coolmore’s world-famous navy colours and is the first Slipper winner bred by their Australian arm.

How a son of Arrowfield icon Snitzel and Blue Diamond Stakes winner (Gr 1, 1200m) Samaready (More Than Ready), who raced in the Vinery Stud colours, was bred by Tom Magnier’s Katom outfit, is an interesting story in itself.

Magnier’s buying spree during the Covid-plagued 2020 Australian sales season was significant for many reasons. He provided a much-needed boost to an uncertain market, spending close to $10 million across the yearling season – including a couple of Snitzel colts and a certain future Group 1-winning son of I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) in Home Affairs.

He then backed it up by spending $10.9 million on five elite mares across the two major Australian broodmare sales. Magnier’s investment was seen as an enormous sign of faith in the Australian racing and bloodstock industry at a time of considerable global turmoil. It helped reassure the market.

But it was also very canny shopping. The mares bought included Group 1 winners Sunlight (Zoustar), Invincibella (I Am Invincible), Booker (Written Tycoon) and Samaready, purchased in-foal to Snitzel.

The latter, sourced from the Inglis Chairman’s Sale, was carrying a Golden Slipper winner.

Samaready, who finished third in the 2012 Golden Slipper when the short-priced favourite, has – and continues to have – a difficult breeding record. Her only other live foal to this point has been Snitzel’s daughter Exhilarates, who provided another global powerhouse, Godolphin, with its own Australian two-year-old feature success when she won the Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) in 2019.

The $1.8 million which Magnier paid for Samaready has already returned Coolmore many times over thanks to Shinzo, who has not only banked $3 million in just four starts, but is now worth in the $30-million range as a stallion prospect. Not that Coolmore will be selling him.

There have been only eight Golden Slipper-winning colts since 2000, and just five of them, Stay Inside (Extreme Choice), Farnan (Not A Single Doubt), Capitalist (Written Tycoon), Vancouver and Pierro, are still active at stud, making Shinzo, who boasts a pedigree to match any of them, a very rare and valuable article.

There are two other aspects of Saturday’s victory likely to feature prominently in Coolmore Australia’s future marketing of Shinzo as a stallion.

The first is the time he ran; 1:09.65. It is the fastest in a Golden Slipper since Forensics (Flying Spur) in 2008. The good track undoubtedly helped Shinzo, but it reads very well when comparing him to other Slipper winners of recent times.

The second aspect is that it was a dominant win – by a length and a quarter – in a Golden Slipper dominated by colts, proving him to be the best, at least to this point, of the stallion prospects in his crop. The last time the first five across the line in the Slipper were colts or geldings was the 1999 edition which was won by Catbird (Danehill).

That seemed a very unlikely possibility back in January when the Magic Millions 2YO Classic saw the first five placings filled by fillies. But things change quickly in the two-year-old landscape. Another measure of that is the fact just two juveniles from that race; second-placed Platinum Jubilee (Zoustar) (12th in Slipper) and Empire Of Japan (Snitzel) (the first colt home on the Gold Coast in sixth, and then fifth at Rosehill on Saturday) contested both the 2YO Classic and Saturday’s Golden Slipper.