Pukekohe feature double adds to Ardrossan’s rise
Dennis Ryan - Raceform • November 28th, 2025 2:30 PM • 4 min read
Quality identified in the yearling sale ring nearly a decade ago is now being replicated on the racetrack with a growing list of class performers by Waikato Stud stallion Ardrossan.
At last Saturday’s Counties Cup meeting, Ardrossan’s tally of stakes winners climbed to seven when his daughters De Armas and Ardalio combined for a black-type double.
De Armas came north from Otaki with a debut win on her home track and remained unbeaten as she dealt easily to some of the north’s best juveniles in the Listed Counties Challenge Stakes.
Three races later Cambridge four-year-old Ardalio, already the winner of last season’s Gr.3 Almanzor Trophy and Cambridge Breeders’ Stakes, completed a notable treble with victory in the Gr.3 Counties Bowl.
Those performances confirmed major summer targets for the pair, with Ardalio’s next mission the Gr.1 Telegraph at Trentham in early January, while De Armas is already the $3.20 favourite for the Karaka Millions 2YO later the same month at Ellerslie.
Both of Saturday’s big winners were bred under the JML Bloodstock banner at Lib and Katrina Petagna’s Matamata nursery Elsdon Park, however only Ardalio races in their familiar colours. De Armas was offered in Elsdon Park’s National Online Yearling Sale draft last autumn and was snapped up for just $16,000 by Johno Benner, who took a bunch of mates into the ownership as he set about rebuilding after a brief hiatus in his training career.
“Johno had been telling me for quite a while how well she goes and he’s been proven spot-on, she’s a goodie alright,” says JML Bloodstock adviser Bruce Perry, who can recount the Ardrossan story virtually from day one.
It was on Perry’s advice that a group of New Zealand breeding interests headed by JML Bloodstock and Waikato Stud outlaid A$150,000 at auction in Melbourne in 2016 for the son of Redoute’s Choice that was to become Ardrossan.
“He was a good-looking colt by a renowned sire of sires from a very good family, so he fitted the bill as a young horse we could invest in.”
Put into training with Stephen Marsh, Ardrossan won both his autumn two-year-old starts, the second of them the Listed Waikato Equine Veterinary Stakes at Te Rapa. That inspired hopes of even better at three and he was transferred to Melbourne trainer Mick Price, only for his career to be derailed by heart strain.
Back with Marsh, Ardrossan won fresh-up as an early summer four-year-old and then added the Gr.3 Concorde Handicap at Ellerslie. The next goal to seal his stud career was a Group One victory in the BCD Sprint at Te Rapa, only to come up against two of the very best transtasman performers in Melody Belle and Bostonian and be beaten only a head and a nose into third.
Ardrossan was to have just one more start, finishing third in the Gr.3 Star Kingdom Stakes in Sydney, in which a leg injury forced his retirement to Waikato Stud.
“Fair to say we never saw the best of him on the track, but we always had huge faith in him and we were determined to support him at stud,” Perry said. “It wasn’t that easy attracting mares in his first two or three years, but once his foals arrived and began to develop everyone could see he was the real deal.
“His best attribute is the types he leaves, he really stamps them. He’s one of those stallions who if you send what you’d call a good mare to him, he’ll always leave a good type.”
Ardrossan’s popularity with broodmare owners is mirrored through his year-by-year service fee, from an introductory fee of $8,000 and 68 mares, to $3,000 in 2020 and 2021 for books of 70 and 65, $6,000 and 110 in 2022, $10,000 and 160 in 2023 and last year 136 mares at $20,000, the same as his current fee.
“His early numbers meant he didn’t have a lot of runners to begin with, which can be the problem with stallions standing at low fees – and even now he’s still had less 90 starters.
“The remarkable thing though is that he’s already had seven individual stakes winners and another five stakes-placed, and Lib has bred three this season alone – those two on Saturday plus Saltcoats in the Wyong Cup.
“We’ve got a two-year-old brother to Ardalio named Raymond that Stephen (Marsh) thinks a lot of; he’s a beautiful young horse. He’s had one quiet trial and will be back in training after a break on the farm, so he’s one to watch out for after Christmas.
“The Elsdon Park draft for Sydney Easter has a lovely Per Incanto half-brother to him and Ardalio, and for Karaka in January we’ve got around 27 yearlings in Book 1 including half a dozen good types by Ardrossan.
“The quality of mares going to Ardrossan has risen significantly in the past two or three years, so what we’re seeing now is really only the start.”
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