In the lead up to the 2026 Magic Millions Yearling Sale we’re going back to the beginning of one of the great stories of bloodstock and how a bargain yearling changed the face of the Australasian racing and breeding industry forever.
Read Part 1 Snippets – In The Beginning
Read Part 2 Snippets – The Very First Magic Millions Champion
Read Part 3 Snippets- The Lasting Legacy
It was 2001 when Snippets' Lass visited Arrowfield's exciting young sire Redoute’s Choice, who was a second season sire standing at a fee of $33,000.
The resulting colt was born at Yarraman Park and offered in their Magic Millions draft in 2004 where he was purchased for $260,000 by astute trainer Gerald Ryan.
Snitzel! It was a funny name that caught people’s attention.
But soon it was the colt himself that seized the passing attention and turned it into a spotlight that would never wane.
John Messara remembered when Snitzel first crossed his radar, back in the 2004/05 season.
As a Spring 2YO, Snitzel had won three races and had blown them away in the Listed Breeders Plate
“I believed at the time that he was a G1 winner in waiting, and I had faith in his trainer Gerald Ryan,” said the Arrowfield boss
Physically, Snitzel perhaps bore the stamp of his damsire Snippets more than the size and scope of his imposing sire.
While beautifully formed and muscular, he wasn’t a big colt, but - as with another small stallion by Redoute’s from a daughter of Blue Hen Easy Date named Not A Single Doubt - very big things can come in small packages!
Messara wasn’t too worried. The astute judge bought into Snitzel before the colt’s autumn juvenile.campaign.
“I liked him, and I liked his natural speed. I was slightly concerned about his height, but I looked at him as an individual.
“While he didn’t have the imposing size of Redoute’s Choice, he was a most athletic type. He developed into a lovely, beautifully balanced stallion.
“Having Snippets, who had stood at Arrowfield, as his damsire was another bonus for me, and you can see that influence in him too.”
At three Snitzel returned to the track with two facile stakes wins in Sydney before travelling to Melbourne for the defining moment of his turf career - a barnstorming 2006 G1 Oakleigh Plate triumph over two genuine champions in Takeover Target and the flying grey Virage De Fortune.
The colt had nothing left to prove and could retire with full honours to Arrowfield with 7 wins and 4 placings from 15 starts, which had earned him over $1 million - it was still a magic number back then!
An amazing stat about Snitzel - one of many that accrued as the seasons went by - is that he was the broodmare sire of a Golden Slipper winner four years before he sired his first winner of the race. We expect to see it work the other way round!
That winner was Mossfun in 2014, by Mossman out of the first crop Snitzel filly Eye For Fun.
When freakish filly Marhoona became Snitzel’s third Golden Slipper winner in 2025 and his 23rd G1 winner overall, nobody suspected that the rising 23 year old stallion, who seemed to be in good health, would very soon after be lost to the industry.
In winning the Slipper, Marhoona became Snitzel’s 60th juvenile stakes winner (that's up to 62 at time of writing) and 8th juvenile G1 winner.
She followed Estijaab in 2018 and the colt Shinzo in 2023 as winners of the world’s richest 2YO race for her sire.
Just after the 2025 Slipper, John Messara said proudly:
“He’s a perennial super stallion - that’s all I can say….he continues to throw high class animals week after week.
“Three of the past eight Slipper winners; it’s very good. He’s an amazing stallion, a wonderful stallion.
“He’s as good today as he was 15 years ago. I only wish he was half his age.”
Snitzel had become such a fixture, such a perennial presence and reliable fountainhead of Australian thoroughbred excellence it was almost shocking - despite his years - to realize that the four time Australian Champion Sire was gone.
Snitzel is gone -but with a big contingent of his final runners still to hit the track, many of them from the best bred mares he saw in his entire career - his numbers are still going north and will for some time.
This fact from Arrowfield's moving tribute to their beloved champion on the Stud's website is particularly stunning:
Snitzel sons and daughters have won a stakes race, on average, every 19 days for the past 16 years.
Sixteen years! It's commercial consistency that is completely off the charts.
Snitzel died at the age of 22, on 11 June 2025.
Neither his fertility or his prowess as a sire declined with age.
We can bet our sweet patooties that many a G1 winner, decades from now, will have Snitzel in its pedigree through a son or daughter - some will very probably have both, for it's almost inconceivable that a stallion so fine would not be a successful linebreeding / inbreeding subject.
While his star juveniles are naturally at the forefront in tributes to his stud achievements, his three year old Cox Plate /Australian Guineas hero and very successful sire Shamus Award was one of Snitzel's most impressive demonstrations of genetic potency.
One of so very many luminaries… two time Everest winner Redzel, Champion 3YO Colt Trapeze Artist, four time G1 winner Lady Shenandoah and G1 Coolmore Stud Stakes winner Switzerland, to name but a few.
The top priced Snitzel ever sold at Magic Millions Gold Coast - or MM anywhere - was the $2.8 million colt out of Humma Humma (Denman) purchased by Ciaron Maher on behalf of British businessman Phil Cunningham in 2025.
Two more Snitzels made more than $1,5m at the sale this year, and 27 Snitzels sold in all for an average price of $756,556.
Impressive, but business as usual for Snitzel who notched up more than 70 million plus yearlings during his lifetime - and it's not difficult to foresee new jaw-dropping prices being set for some of the second last crop of Snitzel yearlings offered in 2026!
The great stallion steadily builds on an imposing record as a broodmare sire - and with top class entires from Snitzel daughters like Celestial Legend (Dundeel), Growing Empire (Zoustar) and Private Life (Written Tycoon) all commencing their high profile stud careers, we will soon begin to see his influence - and that of Snippets - begin to expand even further.
Snippets was the horse that gave the Magic Millions dream a foundation on which to build and grow and without him, it might have remained a very big vision that failed to launch.
Instead it has become a world renowned source of many champions including the best of them all, Winx.
Members of the buying bench back in 1986 were chasing one golden pay day hidden within 200 lots and these days there are year-long incentives to buy from Magic Millions with more than $20 million and 28 rich races now making up the Magic Millions Race Series for all ages over varied distances.
Carl Waugh would think all of this was about right - but no bigger than his home state deserved.
And it all rode, in the beginning, on the back of one amazing colt!
Snippets covered mares from the spring of 1988 to his death in January 2002 aged 17 years old and was laid to rest at Arrowfield.
David Chester has been on the carnivalesque Magic Millions ride since day one, and he summed it up beautifully.
“Magic Millions wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for that first Sale and the success of Snippets. I’ve always said we should erect a monument to this horse….because he’s more important than anyone.”
