Champion USA first-season sire Congrats will shuttle to Vinery from 2011.  

He is the second stakes winning son by A.P Indy to be imported to Australia following Bernardini.  The Darley resident finished fourth on the 2010 USA freshman sires’ table behind Congrats.

Congrats sired 15 individual stakes horses in his first crop headed by Group 1 winners Turbulent Descent and Wickedly Perfect.

“Congrats was a Group 2 winner who started his stud career off in Florida so on a comparative basis, he wasn’t serving a particularly high standard of mares,” Vinery Stud general manager Peter Orton explained.  “Yet the quality and class that he put into his stock has obviously come through and now he is getting phenomenal results.

Orton said Congrats satisfied a number of crucial criteria that Vinery look for when adding a stallion to their roster, not least that his own sire, A.P Indy is a giant in breeding.

“A.P. Indy has been one of the great sires in America for a good while and we have been keen to get one of his sons,” Orton said. “And we have already seen the benefits of Bernardini and of course Congrats himself who was Champion first season sire.”

Congrats is bred on the same cross as Pulpit and Malibu Moon, the leading sire sons of A.P. Indy and, like him, are out of mares by Mr. Prospector. 

“Congrats is from the La Troienne line which we have done well out of with More Than Ready.  It is a really well balanced pedigree and we think it should work quite well down here.

“He is essentially an outcross,” Orton noted.  “That has been our modus operandi in the past when choosing to stand a stallion. Vinery have always looked for an outcross and this one has been very successful already.”

Pedigree and race performance aside, Orton stressed that the underlying motive for adding Congrats to their line-up was his record.  “Proven stallions like Congrats reduce the amount of uncertainty that you get with unproven horses.  He is a particularly good looking horses and has obviously stamped that in his stock as a sire and upgraded his mares significantly.”