The indomitable Galileo’s son Highland Reel has had his first year stud fee set at €17,500 and joins the powerful Coolmore band after his scintillating Gr1 Hong Kong Vase success on Sunday.
Highland Reel in track work last week in build up to his big win
Highland Reel was the highest earning European-trained horse of all time recording seven memorable Gr1 wins including the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes over Ulysees and Decorated Knight.
Bred on the same Galileo/Danehil cross as Frankel and Teofilo, Highland Reel hails from the family of Starspangledbanner who sired a remarkable 25% Stakes winners to runners from his first northern hemisphere crop.
And trainer Aidan O’Brien’s message was clear after the Gr1 Hong Kong Vase win on Sunday – Highland Reel is ‘Irreplaceable’ as the unique son of Galileo heads to a new career as a stallion at Coolmore.
Highland Reel closed out his globe-trotting career with a second victory in the HK$18 million Vase at Sha Tin Racecourse, a win that epitomised his remarkable time as a racehorse: a street-fighting, stamina-laden seventh Gr1 success on a racetrack thousands of miles from home.
Ryan Moore – ‘massive team effort’
Ryan Moore, who rode him to that first Vase win in 2015, was full of praise for the Galileo entire. Highland Reel is the third horse to win the Hong Kong Vase on two occasions and the first to achieve the feat non-consecutively.
“It’s been a massive effort from everyone to keep bringing him back for the last three years. He’s been all around the world and it’s a fitting way for him to finish. He’s been a brilliant racehorse,” Moore said.
Highland Reel will now head off to stud with a record of 10 wins from 27 starts in six different countries.
“He’s a very special horse – he’s irreplaceable, really,” O’Brien said. “It’s very rare that you get a horse that can travel like him. He’s been doing it since he was a two-year-old – he won the Gr2 Champagne (Stakes) at Goodwood as a two-year-old and he’s travelled the world in the meantime, so an incredible horse, really.
