Vinrock
Sometimes, when it comes to winning out at yearling sales, it’s the quick and the … not quite as quick.
Australia’s newest two-year-old elite winner Vinrock (I Am Invincible) – who made it three from three in Saturday’s ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) – was offered by breeders Rosemont at last year’s Inglis Premier yearling sale in Melbourne.
Going through a bit of an unprepossessing growth spurt at the time, something of a gawky young teenager if you will, he was passed in short of his $300,000 reserve. Still, there were a couple of trainers interested, and they hot-fotted it to the Rosemont barn.
That raises a question possibly only this column has thought of: Who would you back in a footrace out of Matt Laurie and Tony McEvoy?
No disrespect to McEvoy, as affable a bloke as he is canny as a trainer, but Laurie – who’s a few years younger, a good bit taller, and with a yearling sale still fresh in the mind might be described as an early going athletic mover – would start at Winx odds.
Laurie did indeed get there first and the deal was done, at that reserve price, leaving McEvoy to look on, perhaps having a blow, as the first placed trophy was handed over, that being Vinrock. Thirteen months later, McEvoy’s isn’t the only one feeling like he missed out.
“I don’t quite know why we didn’t stay in,” admits Rosemont principal Anthony Mithen. “We were busy with a lot of horses at the sale, and probably thought that was another one off our plate. We might even have told Matt we’d get back to him but never got around to it. It would have been nice if we had have.
“Still, we were there to sell horses, and whatever share we would have kept has gone to Matt, so I’m glad to see him have the success.”
Mithen relates the story of how Vinrock came about as “the coming together of a clever yearling purchase and a clever breeding right purchase”.
“The only non-clever bit about it was we didn’t race him ourselves,” he says with a laugh.
In 2010, Rosemont’s team went to Karaka with an idea to perhaps shift away from their mainstay of colts to look for fillies to breed with. They bought one they named Girl Gone Rockin’ (Redoute’s Choice). Bred by John Camilleri’s Fairway Thoroughbreds and offered in Curraghmore’s draft, she cost the sizeable amount of $380,000 and you can see why.
By a sire that needed no introduction, her dam was Sorrento (Just A Dancer), who had seven wins spread on both sides of the Tasman – five at stakes level, including Rosehill’s Queen of the Turf Stakes (Gr 2, 1500m) before it became a Group 1.
And Sorrento was one of four black type victors thrown by five-time winning mare Amatrice (Beaufort Sea) including Stargazer (Star Way) – who won no fewer than six Group 2s but couldn’t quite crack the next level – and his sister Spangles. She threw the triple stakes-winning Dragila (Encosta De Lago), dam of Group 3-winning Isabaeva (Johannesburg), who finally threw modern day dual Group 2 winner Jamaea (Headwater).
What’s more, Sorrento’s first foal had been Syreon (Flying Spur), a Group 3 winner who ran third in the 2011 ATC Queen Elizabeth Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m).
Rosemont put Girl Gone Rockin’ with Team Hawkes and her record reads impressively and as if from a “how to make a broodmare” manual. Her first 11 starts brought victories at Ballarat, Werribee and then stepping up to Moonee Valley, along with four placings.
She was then promoted to stakes grade in the VRC Rose Of Kingston Stakes (Gr 2, 1410m), where she ran fifth, and after a Kensington second she returned to Flemington and secured a narrow win in the 2013 Matriarch Stakes (Gr 2, 2000m) and that was it.
It wasn’t by design that with a black type win on her CV her next move was breeding. Her trainers did try for another campaign or two but minor injuries prevented another start.
Girl Gone Rockin’s breeding career began – and badly. She had a 2016 filly by Savabeel (Zabeel) who died soon after birth. A year later she had an I Am Invincible colt who suffered the same fate.
She finally had a racehorse in Rocky Rogue (Written Tycoon), who’s lately been seen in the Northern Rivers, and after missing in 2018 she threw Maisy (Pierro).
Rosemont retained that filly, keeping the cycle going by putting her with the Hawkes stable. She looks alright but has been a slow comer. Now four, she has wins at Seymour and Geelong among only four starts.
Girl Gone Rockin’ returned to Pierro in 2020 but missed, but in 2021 she was put to I Am Invincible again, and the result was Vinrock.
Yarraman Park’s flagbearing stallion was standing for $220,000 (inc GST) at the time. The beauty part, for Rosemont, was they used a breeding right to him they’d bought privately in 2015.
That was a shrewd purchase. I Am Invincible only had two crops running at the time, and finished 30th on the general sires’ table in 2015. Two years later he came fourth, and now he’s won the past three.
A few years after buying their first one, Rosemont purchased another breeding right to Vinnie publicly. That one cost $560,000 – almost triple the price of the first one – but with the stallion’s service fee averaging $250,000 over the past six years, they’re well ahead.
“We’ve been lucky enough over the journey to pick up breeding rights in Vinnie before he was right at his peak,” Mithen said. “It’s given us the opportunity to sell a horse like Vinrock for that sort of money.”
Laurie and Vinrock’s owners benefit from that, with the colt having won $930,000, with plenty more likely to come, and with stud farms circling for a stallion deal.
“He was a very nice foal, but by the time he got to the yearling sale he looked a bit immature and raw,” Mithen said.
“They don’t necessarily get sold at their best time to show themselves off. The common theme among his critics was he might grow a bit too big – but not at all. He’s a great specimen now, with good size and scope about him.
“He looked a three-year-old style of horse at the time, and people thought he might be a Guineas horse rather than a screaming two-year-old. So the fact he’s won the Sires’ is fantastic, and I think the best is yet to come. His half-sister Maisy, John Hawkes says she’ll get better the longer she goes, so that augurs well for Vinrock too.”
Girl Gone Rockin’ has since had a second Pierro filly, for whom Rosemont is contemplating a trainer, and after a couple of misses she’s now in foal to Churchill (Galileo).
“It’s very exciting for the family,” Mithen said. “We might not have stayed in Vinrock, but to have his mum and his two half-sisters by Pierro is very good for us.”
There’s one thing that sticks out in Vinrock’s pedigree, and it’s not a usual suspect. It’s that his sixth dam Ascoli (Gustavo) was a product of some fierce in-breeding: her dad’s dad is also her mum’s dad.
Born in 1940, Ascoli has a rare 2m x 2f duplication. Her sire Gustavo was by British import Solferino (Soliman). And so was her dam Ravenna. And this happened in New Zealand, where horses might not have been as plentiful as sheep, but weren’t exactly thin on the ground.
Aside from that breeding nerd observation, Vinrock hails from the potent cross of I Am Invincible over Redoute’s Choice (Danehill). After last Saturday, he’s in fact its highest-earning performer, which is good going because the cross is Vinnie’s most abundant. It’s hatched 61 winners from 76 runners, although there are plenty of others with better stakes-winners-to-runners ratios than its six per cent (five black type winners).
As is well known because of those numbers, putting I Am Invincible over Redoute’s Choice effects a 3f x 4f duplication of the influential stallion Canny Lad (Bletchingly), via Vinnie’s dam Cannarelle and Redoute’s Choice’s mother Shantha’s Choice.
It also brings a doubling of Danzig (Northern Dancer) at 4m x 4m via two sons, Green Desert and Danehill, which doesn’t hurt.
All that said, while it hasn’t been tried yet, you could probably put I Am Invincible over a drover’s dog and get something that can run.
He racked his 117th black type winner on Saturday, when Blue Hotel took Morphettville’s Dequetteville Stakes (Listed, 1000m). Eighty minutes later Vinrock – already on that list having claimed the VRC Sires’ Produce (Gr 2, 1400m) – provided the stallion’s 258th stakes victory and an important 16th Group 1 winner.
“It was more a type mating than on pedigree,” Mithen said of Vinrock’s creation. “I lean on [Yarraman’s] Harry and Arthur Mitchell for a bit for advice on I Am Invincible. They will recommend a quality mare with a bit of size about her, and that’s Girl Gone Rockin’.
“She’s got good quality about her, she’s a sizeable, roomy mare, and the mating looked good to me. But Vinnie works so often with most things. He’s certainly a very versatile stallion.”
With another elite winner bred by Rosemont – following Mr Quickie (Shamus Award) and South Africa’s Champion 3YO Filly of 2014-15 Alboran Sea (Rock Of Gibraltar) – and with the chance of more top level success when Vinrock contests the ATC Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m), that breeding right purchase is looking like one of the Geelong farm’s more astute recent moves.