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Son of O’Reilly to stand for $27,500.
Brutal (O'Reilly) will stand his first season at stud at Newgate Farm for a fee of $27,500 (inc GST) this season.
Trained by Michael, Wayne and John Hawkes, Brutal retires from racing the winner of five of his ten career starts with earnings totalling over $2.6 million.
A five length winner over 1200 metres on debut at Caulfield in July 2018, Brutal then won the Mitchell McKenzie Stakes (Listed, 1200m) at his next start the following month and then captured the Antler Luggage Plate (Listed, 1400m) at Flemington three weeks later.
Resuming from a spell in February last year, Brutal ran third to Eckstein (I Am Invincible) in the Southern Cross Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) and then finished second to Winx (Street Cry) in the George Ryder Stakes (Gr 1, 1500m) at his sixth career start. His breakthrough victory at Group 1 level came two weeks later when he landed the Doncaster Handicap (Gr 1, 1600m) defeating Dreamforce (Fastnet Rock) and Hartnell (Authorized).
Brutal had three starts last spring resulting in a victory in the Premiere Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) and a third in the Sydney Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m).
Connections had hoped that son of O'Reilly (Last Tycoon) would run in the Queen Anne Stakes (Gr 1, 1m) at Royal Ascot after a tilt at the Queensland Winter Carnival, however, the Coronavirus pandemic put an end to those plans.
"It's disappointing but that's the way the cookie crumbles," said Henry Field last month following the announcement that the colt had been retired.
"The long-range plan was to bring him back and run him in Brisbane and Rupert (Legh, part-owner) had aspirations to go to Royal Ascot.
"If we could have envisaged this would have happened we would have got him ready for the All Aged Stakes but it wasn't to be. It's just a shame we couldn't knock off a few more Group 1 races before he went to stud."
Bought for $220,000 by Hawkes Racing at the 2017 New Zealand Premier Yearling Sale, Brutal is out of the Group 3-placed mare Alberton Princess (Golan) who has produced four other winners including the stakes winning Talaria (O'Reilly). His second dam is Listed winning juvenile Straussbridge (Strassbrook), the dam of six winners including Te Akau Rose (Thorn Park) with this also being the family of Group 1 winner Wyndspelle (Iffraaj).
