Waikato Stud has confirmed that the 2020 book is full for rising star stallion Ocean Park (NZ).
The Cox Plate winner served 153 mares in 2019 and had been available for a service fee of $20,000 for the upcoming breeding season.
The 2019-20 season was a breakout year for Ocean Park, who won the Dewar Award for champion New Zealand-based sire by total progeny earnings between New Zealand and Australia.
This is the eighth straight year that a Waikato Stud stallion has won this prize – O’Reilly (NZ) won it from 2012-13 to 2014-15, and Savabeel was the reigning champion over each of the last four seasons.
Ocean Park’s dream season featured 171 winners in New Zealand and Australia. He was represented by seven individual black-type winners, and his progeny amassed a total of more than NZ$11 million.
He finished 12th on the Australian sires’ premiership.
Remarkably, Ocean Park’s 2019-20 stakes winners included a Group One-winning sprinter, a Group One and Golden Eagle-winning miler, and a multiple stakes-winning stayer who booked herself a place in the Melbourne Cup.
Tofane (NZ) stepped up to stakes level with Group Three victories in the Furphy Sprint and Bass Strait Beef Steaks Stakes, then moved up to the elite level with a brilliant victory in the Gr.1 All Aged Stakes and placing in the Galaxy Handicap.
Kolding (NZ) won the Gr.1 Epsom Handicap in the spring, beating the subsequent multiple Group One winner and Cox Plate placegetter Te Akau Shark (NZ) (Rip Van Winkle). He then became the inaugural winner of the A$7.5 million Golden Eagle at Rosehill.
Oceanex (NZ) captured the Gr.2 Matriarch Stakes and the Listed Port Adelaide Cup and Andrew Ramsden Stakes, the latter earning a ballot exemption for the Melbourne Cup in November.
Ocean Park’s four other stakes winners in Australasia during the 2019-20 season included Star of the Seas (NZ), who won the Gr.3 Maurice McCarten Handicap and placed in the Gr.1 Doncaster Handicap and Epsom Handicap.
Another Dollar (NZ), who was a Gr.1 performer as a 3-year-old, added stakes success as an older horse with victories in the Gr.3 Premier’s Cup and Listed Gosford Gold Cup. Out of the Park (NZ) won the Gr.3 South Island Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes, while Pretty to Sea (NZ) took out the Listed Newmarket Handicap.
