Vinery’s son of Written Tycoon lands first-season sire award

They are big shoes to fill, but those at Vinery Stud have fingers crossed it has unearthed the stallion that can become the mainstay that More Than Ready was for the Hunter Valley operation.

Ole Kirk capped a dream first year at stud with an all-the-way win in the Australian Champion First-Season Stallion award.

The son of Written Tycoon has been towards the head of the table since the first two-year-old races of the season in Sydney, when King Kirk won the Group 3 Breeders' Plate, becoming the first of four Black Type winners for the season.

Ole Kirk has a long way to go to match More Than Ready, but has the team as excited as they have been since that superstar shuttler burst onto the scene in Australia almost 20 years ago.

"More Than Ready, he was an exceptional stallion and went on to be a world-class stallion, and that first year he equalled an Australian record for Stakes winners in a first crop with six," Vinery's general manager Adam White said.

"This horse has definitely started in an exciting way, just like More Than Ready did.

"I think the signs are that once he gets a bit older he's going to go to that next level, so it's given us that spring in the step, definitely."

In addition to King Kirk, who died before he could commence his autumn campaign, Ole Kirk is the sire of O' Ole, winner of the $3m Restricted Listed Magic Millions 2YO Classic, Group 3 SA Breeders Stakes winner Legacy Bound and Listed winner Prestige Forever.

Legacy Bound put up the highest Timeform rating of any of Ole Kirk's first crop, the 112 figure he earned in his 2-3/4-length win at Morphettville among the top 15 performances by a juvenile during the 2024/25 season.

Ole Kirk's four Stakes winners are among just 32 to race. He had nine other individual winners combine for 19 wins in total for $3,419,360 in stakes, which afforded him a comfortable win over Coolmore's Wootton Bassett $2,868,905 in the prizemoney category.

In third place was Kia Ora's Golden Slipper winner Farnan ($2.17m), who had one more individual winner and 17 wins overall. Farnan had 43 individual starters for the season.

The results are particularly pleasing for Vinery given Ole Kirk's best results on the track came as a three-year-old, when he won the Golden Rose and Caulfield Guineas at Group 1 level.

He covered 170 mares in his first season, which dropped to 160 and 146 the following two seasons, but was up to 172 last year and is this year booked out in a season he will stand at a fee of $99,000, including GST, a rise of $44,000 on his first four seasons.

"I know from our perspective, some of the ones that were born here and bred here, having known them as young horses and knowing that they would probably not get up and hit the ground running as a two-year-old but would be better off as three-year-old," White said.

"There have been a few in in that situation that have had really good jump outs and trials and a couple of them even got to the races just because again they've got great brains.

"Now that that they've been given the opportunity to go back out and develop more and they're about to hit that age where you know they're really going to come to the fore I would think.

"There's definitely a new wave of them not far away and I think we'll see a lot of them during the Spring which is which is when he was sorted at his peak as a racehorse himself."

Only established superstar stallion Snitzel bettered Ole Kirk in terms of two-year-old sires with the recently-deceased Arrowfield sire producing progeny who banked $4,487,095, the bulk of which came via Marhoona's win in the Golden Slipper.

Ole Kirk follows in the footsteps of last year's Champion First-Season Sire, Too Darn Hot, who backed up that win with a dominant victory in this season's second-season sire award.

His progeny, which include Golden Rose and Rosehill Guineas winner Broadsiding, won a tick over $10m, more than $3.7m up on second-placed Blue Point.

Too Darn Hot and Blue Point are both Darley stallions, barnmates to Champion Third-Season Stallion Harry Angel whose progeny amassed more than $15m for the season, affording him a comfortable win over Justify.