The 2010 Magic Millions Yearling Sale on the Gold Coast has special significance this year as it is the first yearling sale to showcase youngsters conceived in the dark days of 2007 when the EI outbreak crippled the industry leaving destruction and chaos in its wake.

For many breeders, EI threw a major spanner in the works as long held breeding plans for valued commercial mares were ditched in favour of what was do-able at the time.

Some popular shuttle sires did not serve at all in 2007 such as Red Ransom and Shamardal, while others such as Tale of the Cat were whisked away early after covering only 23 mares.

Australian horses returning from shuttling to the Northern Hemisphere were also severly hampered in starting their season late with Encosta De Lago and Exceed and Excel, two of the more notable ones.

Neither began covering until the last week of September and both carded their worst ever fertility rates in that year according to the Stud Book, Encosta De Lago dropping to 74.2% and Exceed and Excel to 67.2% as they struggled to cover massive books of mares in a shortened space of time.

Both have strong representation at this sale though with 32 (down from 39) for Encosta and 17 for Exceed and Excel (up from 9).

The stallions that were on their farms and ready to go gained a head start on their rivals when the breeding season was allowed to start early by a few days, albeit the travel restrictions in place at the time  meaning outside mares still had to wait their turn or be covered by the stallion on the farm they were at.

As a result, farms like Arrowfield and Widden with largely undisrupted stallion rosters and big on-farm broodmare populations were able to continue comparatively unscathed.

Arrowfield heavyweight Redoutes Choice maintained high fertility of 87.7% and has a foal crop of 131, smaller than the previous years 159, but still plenty to go around with 23 for the Gold Coast, just three less than in 2009.

At Vinery Stud, More Than Ready was also well placed to continue as per program and his 35 yearlings entered for 2010 is one more than 2009, coming from a healthy foal crop of 126, his second largest to date.

The unique circumstances of the time created unprecedented opportunity for some stallions with Coolmore based Fastnet Rock an obvious winner, covering a huge book of 257 mares with fertility of 80% creating 181 live foals so expect to see them at the yearling sales this year in droves starting with 52 at the Gold Coast.

Coolmore shuttler Fusaichi Pegasus was another horse to take advantage of the circumstances picking up many of the elite mares booked in that first month to Encosta De Lago at Coolmore.

In hindsight, you might wonder what breeders were thinking, given that he has been deathly quiet in this part of the world for the last 12 months, but back then in the spring of 2007 the Kentucky Derby winner was basking in the afterglow of siring the best three year-old colt in Haradasun and the best tqo year-old colt in Zizou.

The fact that he can throw a superstar should not be forgotten either when it comes time for yearling buyers to judge his stock next year with 10 catalogued for the Gold Coast including the first foal, a colt from the former star racemare Aqua dAmore.

The dilemma of what to do with commercial grade mares stuck on properties isolated from the main stallion farms resulted in increased opportunity for a number of what we might term bread and butter sires including two obvious ones in Dane Shadow and Magic Albert.

Results in the past 12 months have seen Kitchwin Hills based Dane Shadow elevated from the bread and butter ranks to a more upwardly mobile position in life and he is covering an outstanding book of mares this spring at the increased fee of $16,500 but back in 2007, he was a young unproven son of Danehill embarking on the always tricky third year at stud.

Mick Malone and the Kitchwin Hills team elected to punt their horse (the only stallion on the farm) and let him cover a significant number of the on farm mares resulting in by far and away his biggest and best quality foal crop to date of 81 youngsters.

15 of them are entered for the Gold Coast, eight of them consigned by Kitchwin Hills, so Dane Shadow finds himself in the enviable position for a young stallion of having produced the goods from humble beginnings and yet already having the better quality ammunition in the pipeline to maintain his momentum.

For most stallions that fire early from a low base they hit an inevitable lull until the better quality follow through books of mares start to make an impact with an obvious example in recent times being More Than Ready.

The death of Catbird in June 2007 left Yarraman Park with only one proven sire on their roster and that was Magic Albert, so when EI shut down Scone, there was really only one choice for many of the Yarraman mares due to be covered early that spring.

A son of Zeditave, Magic Albert falls into the previously mentioned category in that he showed good potential with his first crop, which included Group One New Zealand Two Thousand Guineas winner Magic Cape, but suffered from some fairly average books of mares to follow through after that.

With Magic Cape emerging in late spring 2006, Magic Albert was suddenly back in the game in terms of popularity with breeders and covered 180 mares that year resulting in 125 foals that are now two-year-olds.

Come 2007 and the EI debacle, it made plenty of sense to give him his chance with the better mares so Magic Albert will have 20 yearlings at Magic Millions, 13 of them to be offered by Yarraman.

Magic Millions is but the first chapter in what promises to be an intriguing sales season as we see a generation of horses including many resulting from matings that were not the first choice of their breeder.

Story courtesy of Breednet (www.breednet.com.au)