Cool Aza Beel makes flying start
Richard Edmunds - Raceform • June 6th, 2025 3:30 PM • 4 min read
Five years after Karaka Millions and Gr. 1 Sistema Stakes victories stamped his superiority over New Zealand’s 2019-20 crop of two-year-olds, Cool Aza Beel is making an early statement again – this time at stud in Australia.
The son of Savabeel stands at Newhaven Park in New South Wales. A flurry of first-crop successes has propelled the former Te Akau Racing star into fifth place on the Australian first-season sires’ premiership, trailing only Ole Kirk, Wootton Bassett, Farnan and Lucky Vega. He is ahead of higher-priced and higher-hyped names such as Bivouac, King’s Legacy, Hanseatic, Tagaloa, Anders and Graff.
Cool Aza Beel’s first crop has so far produced four winners from 18 runners. The headline act has been Cool Archie, who has had eight starts for four wins, a placing and more than A$1 million in stakes.
Racing in the colours of prominent trans-Tasman owner Max Whitby, Cool Archie has strung together an increasingly impressive sequence of four wins in a row. After taking out a maiden at Doomben on April 16, he stepped up to black-type level and added the Listed Dalrello Stakes on May 3, the Gr. 2 Spirit Of Boom Classic on May 17, and last Saturday’s A$1 million Gr. 2 BRC Sires’ Produce Stakes at Eagle Farm.
Another member of Cool Aza Beel’s first crop, the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained Cobra Club, has placed in two of his four starts including a close second from a wide gate in the A$500,000 Inglis Nursery.
Meanwhile in New Zealand, Te Akau’s promising filly Cool Aza Rene improved her career record to three wins from four starts with a first-up win over 820 metres at Wingatui on Sunday.
These early successes have been enormously satisfying for Te Akau principal David Ellis, who bought Cool Aza Beel for $150,000 from Fairdale Stud’s draft at Karaka 2019. Jamie Richards trained him through a career that featured four wins from just six starts, headed by his Karaka Millions and Sistema heroics at Ellerslie.
Injury prevented him from racing beyond his championship-winning juvenile season, but now he is well and truly making his mark in a new role.
“It’s incredibly exciting to see Cool Aza Beel establish himself as one of the better first-season sires in Australia this season,” Ellis told RaceForm. “It was a terrific performance by Cool Archie to win the million-dollar Group Two race in Brisbane on Saturday, and he looks like he’ll be a leading chance in the Gr. 1 JJ Atkins in a couple of weeks’ time.
“Our promising filly Cool Aza Beel was also a winner over the weekend, her third win from only four starts, and we’ve got a few others by him in our stable that are looking promising too.
“I strongly believe that Cool Aza Beel would have gone on to be a very good three-year-old if he hadn’t been injured, and I think his progeny are showing similar signs. They’re looking like they will continue to get better as they mature and head into their three-year-old seasons.”
Cool Aza Beel is part of a growing Te Akau presence among Australian stallion ranks. The Newhaven Park roster also features the former Te Akau superstar Xtravagant, who was an eight-length winner of the Gr. 1 New Zealand 2000 Guineas and Waikato Sprint during his three-year-old season. Like Cool Aza Beel, Xtravagant struck an early blow in a big-money race with his second-crop daughter Xtravagant Star taking out the A$2 million Inglis Millennium in Sydney in 2022.
“Cool Aza Beel is following in Xtravagant’s footsteps in some ways, retiring to Newhaven Park Stud and enjoying early success in big-money races,” Ellis said. “We’ve got a great relationship with the Kelly family at Newhaven, a 15,000-acre property in South West New South Wales, just magnificent and beautifully farmed, and they’ve bred some great horses there.
“Interestingly, our Wingatui winner Cool Aza Rene is by Cool Aza Beel and out of an Xtravagant mare, so that’s a real Te Akau-Newhaven pedigree.”
Elsewhere in Australia, Heroic Valour has sired over 70 winners in a successful career in Queensland, while last year’s Gr. 1 Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes winner Move To Strike is about to take up duties at Lovatsville in Victoria.
“It’s great to see so many of our Group One-winning colts finding homes at stud in Australia,” Ellis said. “The amount of support that Move To Strike is receiving already is enormously encouraging. He’s getting lots of mares booked, including a number from New Zealand.”
Despite the early success that Cool Aza Beel has had in his first season, the team at Newhaven has resisted the temptation to increase his service fee from A$16,500.
“Breeders are finding it difficult at the moment, especially at the middle and lower end of the market, but when a horse like Cool Aza Beel is going well, it gives everyone hope,” stud principal John Kelly said.
“Cool Aza Beel has stayed at the same fee for his first four seasons, and the people who have got weanlings by him and mares in foal to him will be pleased with his success so far. It’s not just Cool Archie. He has four winners, and Cobra Club was beaten a whisker from the outside barrier in the Inglis Nursery.
“So we’ve been very encouraged with Cool Aza Beel’s results. But we’re going to remain conservative with his fee this year. We want broodmare owners to have an opportunity to do well with us, so he’ll be staying at the same price.”
New Zealand bloodlines run strongly through the Newhaven roster, with Cool Aza Beel joined by Xtravagant as well as the newcomer Mo’unga. A son of Savabeel and the Group-placed O’Reilly mare Chandelier, Mo’unga won five races and more than A$3.8 million. He was a Group One winner of the Rosehill Guineas and Winx Stakes, and placed on another 10 occasions at the elite level.
“His first foals are due this spring and he got a great book of mares in his first stud season,” Kelly said. “He received strong support from his shareholders, and we sent him Media, the granddam of Cool Archie, as well as the likes of Gr. 2 Reisling Stakes winner Frolic, Gr. 2 Angus Armanasco Stakes winner Lavish Girl, and dual Group One winner English.”
