George Washington infertile!

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tigers_eye

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Just read it in H&H - that will be a blow to Coolmore after he was so staggeringley succesful on the track. His full brother has been retired with immediate effect from racing to try and replace him for this season according to H&H.
 
gosh
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my copy hasnt arrived in the post
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so i am going to have to wait until tomorrow to read more....
 
Well apparently he's going to have all sorts of investigations done to determine whether it's fixable. But yes, one does wonder. I don't know how Coolmore does it, but I know many colts are syndicated with astronomical prices paid based on their future value at stud - which all turns to dust if they can't actually sire anything...
 
The horse is likely insured against infertility - I hope they geld him and he can carry on racing. It is very sad for his breeder Lael Stables - they had 3 of the top horses in the world last year; Barbaro, George Washington, and Showing Up - only one is left as breeding potential.

Holy Roman Emperor has been retired and is nothing close to his full brother - they share the same sire, DaneHill who has a lot of offspring at stud. TBH if I was paying $65,000 to breed to George Washington, and they put something that did not race or prove himself as a three year old I would want concessions made - HRE 2 year old career was good, but his three year old one was unfulfilled hopes and dreams.
 
You know far more about the TB industry than I do, but I thought most of it went largely uninsured, as to underwrite horses for their true value - whether as breeders or racers - would mean whopping premiums, so big that they would wipe out a fair part of the profits?
 
They havnt stipulated a price for Holy Roman emperor as yet although he has an open book and is avaliable to anyone not just the people who were booked to George Washington.
They also havnt said he is sterile yet so hopefully as with a number of young stallions it is temporary.
The one thing Holy Roman Emperor has going for him is he did run 7 times as a two year old which is more than some that race 2 seasons.
 
As far as insurance, it all depends on how it is set up - farms like Lael, and Darley insure for minimal amounts if at all - these farms generally still own the dam and have a number of top quality horses which making the premiums too much. However when it goes into a syndicate for business purposes I am not sure if that trend is followed.

Cigar was slightly different in the fact that he raced until 6 years of age, so once he was deemed infertile they retired him to the Kentucky Horse Park - he did not go back to the track.

From what I have read HRE was bought in to fill GW book (why else would they retire him?) - who knows the deals that have been struck between Coolmore and the mares owners, but I am sure there was some dealing. What is bad about Coolmore in Ireland is they do not have any other stallions in that price range - in the US they have quite a few nice ones!
 
Apparently all the other ones similar in price and breeding were already fully booked.
Also Rock of gibralter who would have been the obvious one is in Japan this year.Definately bought in to cover Georges book of mares and any others as well.
 
Without RoG Coolmores prices go from €30,000 to €115,000 - they do not have anything at a similar price even if they had RoG he would have been €30,000 more than GW.
 
Our friends bred him and produced him for the yearling sales when he broke the yearling record.
Shame he's proving infertile, he'd make a bloody nice sports horse stallion though, even if he wont cover in-hand.....
 
The thing is you cant go by advertised prices.
So much depends on the mare etc.
We sent a couple of mares over to coolmore Ireland and didnt pay anything like advertised prices.
Darley are the same they offered us a couple of stallions this year that were around 50% of the advertised price.
One was 9K to start with so not just the cheaper stallions ,depends who you know.
If they liked the mare enough i expect they would cover it for next to nothing.
We managed to get a cover in 2005 for a mare that had been a foster mare .
The people whos foal used the mare oaid £1800 when the advertised stud fee was 8K
 
Its a huge blow to Coolmore - i was there looking at stallions about 6 weeks ago and at that stage he had 200 mares booked into him.
 
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