Hong Kong’s Leung to the fore at the top-end of Sydney’s two-year-old market
Capitalist colt shines for Ryan as Singapore effect becomes evident at Inglis Ready2Race Sale
Hong Kong buyers were responsible for at least 15 of the top 25 most expensive horses sold at yesterday’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale, but the stark reality of an Australasian market without a major secondary Asian buying bench came to fruition in a major wake-up call for the industry.
A colt by Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m)–winning sire Capitalist (Written Tycoon) topped Inglis’ one-day two-year-old sale at $400,000, bought by influential Hong Kong agent Willie Leung of Magus Equine, while sons of I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) and Justify (Scat Daddy) also sold for $370,000.
Colts by Showtime (Snitzel) and Zoustar (Northern Meteor) also made $350,000 each and another colt by Justify fetched $300,000, in a hit-and-miss market where the clearance rate climbed to 51 per cent late in the day.
Leung, who also had a hand in buying the Cheltenham Stables-consigned I Am Invincible for $370,000, said the Capitalist colt could be forward enough to be racing in Hong Kong’s Griffin races.
“He looks really athletic and he moved really well in the breeze-up,’’ Leung said.
“He didn’t breeze in the fastest time, but he looks like a racehorse, that’s why I want to bring him to Hong Kong straight away and hopefully he can run next April in a Griffin race.
“This year, the [Inglis] Ready2Race Sale looked a very good sale with a lot of quality two-year-olds that would suit Hong Kong, so I wanted to be quite active at the sale.
“The quality on offer was very strong, I had five Hong Kong trainers come to the sale and they’re all very happy, they got what they wanted.’’
It was the third time the Capitalist colt has been traded, making $50,000 as a weanling on the Gold Coast before being re-sold to Richardson Racing for $70,000 at this year’s Classic sale.
He is the second foal out of Ghalia’s Dream (Smart Missile), a half-sister to Skyline Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m)-winning stallion Santos (I Am Invincible).
“He made double the reserve price, it’s a fantastic result for the client and hopefully goes to Hong Kong and becomes a very successful racehorse,” Ryan said.
“I’ve liked him all the way along. He’s got a great brain and he’s got more leg and scope than a lot of the breed because of the dam side.”
On the I Am Invincible colt Magus Equine helped select, Leung added: “The horse will stay here for further education before he comes to Hong Kong, he may take a little more time this one but he’s a very good mover, powerful and strong.’’
Justify colt joins Neasham stable
Hong Kong-based Leung also played his part in a successful trade, having purchased Ryan’s $370,000 Justify colt as a yearling for $110,000 from the Classic sale.
He breezed up at Hawkesbury in 10.7 seconds in a manner his new trainer hopes will see him get to the racecourse in the near future.
Annabel Neasham, who trains last year’s dual Group 3-winning Ready2Race graduate Libertad (Russian Revolution) as well as high-class Justify filly Learning To Fly, teamed up with Pato Leung to buy the colt from second crop of the Coolmore’s US Triple Crown-winning shuttle sire.
“I know Blake Ryan pretty well and he came and cornered me at the trials [on Monday] and he was pretty adamant I came and had a look at him. I watched his breeze, that’s the advantage of buying two-year-olds, you can actually see how they gallop and he’s got a beautiful, big action,” Neasham said.
“We’re a big fan of Justify, we’ve bought quite a few yearlings by him this year on the back of Learning To Fly. We had an order by a client and he was also a fan of Justify, so it all just matched.”
Ryan was far from surprised that both the Capitalist and Justify colts were one-two in his draft.
“To be honest, they were the top two from the day they came into the stable. They did everything right and that’s what you need them to do to be successful at things, so I came here with a lot of confidence,” Ryan said.
“I thought it was the best draft of horses we’ve presented and it’s great to get the results for the clients.”
Blake Ryan Racing finished the day as the sale’s leading vendor by aggregate, having sold 14 lots for an aggregate of $1,960,500 at an average of $140,036.
Field’s breeze-up homework to pay off
Newgate Farm’s Henry Field is better known for buying and selling high-priced yearlings than at two-year-old sales, but on Tuesday he made his presence felt, signing for a Showtime (Snitzel) colt at $350,000 and a son of Justify for $300,000.
Buying on behalf of a Newgate client, Field didn’t even have the slick son of Showtime on his list until he spotted him parading at Riverside Stables. He breezed up for vendor Tal Nolen in 10.14 seconds, the quickest time recorded by any two-year-old at the sale.
“The Showtime is a spectacular horse. I didn’t actually have him marked to look at, but I was here doing some inspections and I saw the horse and he was one of the best physical individuals I’ve seen at a sale all year, so I looked at the breeze-up and he went like dynamite in almost ten seconds flat,” Field said.
“Tal Nolen, who is a master of this industry and is a great judge and I have a lot of time for his integrity, thought he was something very special. When you’ve got a horse who looks exceptionally fast, galloped exceptionally fast and the vendor who is a very good judge and extremely bullish on him, he ticked the boxes for us.”
An $80,000 Inglis Premier yearling, Nolen believes he could have run faster in his breeze-up had he been let go earlier in the day.
“He’s a nice horse. He just looked like a breeze-up horse. He has a great attitude and hopefully he’ll make it because of that,” Nolen said.
“His breeze was on in the afternoon run downs, so if he was in the morning he might’ve gone even quicker.”
Nolen sold nine of his draft of 12 for an aggregate of $1.21 million and he admitted to being “petrified” earlier in the day given the lack of buyer activity in the first hour.
“I certainly have. I was petrified at the start of the show,” Nolen said. “The horses they like are selling but the others, they’re really struggling.”
Earlier, Field signed for Leanach Lodge’s Justify colt, a $100,000 Inglis Classic purchase by CH Bloodstock, who breezed at Cambridge in 10.91 seconds for vendor Ross Mackay.
“He is a beautifully put together horse with a great action and he is by Justify, who is doing very well and he’s out of a High Chaparral mare,” Field said. “He is a beautifully engineered horse physically. He might be super early but I’d be confident that he’ll be a good horse
“They were our two picks of the sale and we have managed to buy them both.”
Field added: “I have never really worked the two-year-old sales that hard, but I put a huge amount of effort into this sale.
“I saw breeze-ups at Hawkesbury and I had people on the ground at other racetracks who looked at them for me as well.”
It is yet to be decided who will train the pair.
Small win for Singapore’s Fitzsimmons
The impact of the announced closure of the Singapore industry was evident well before Tuesday’s auction, with the session-opening colt, a son of Capitalist (Written Tycoon), initially destined for the Asian jurisdiction, but with the recent news, he was instead re-sold by champion Kranji trainer Tim Fitzsimmons.
Educated and sold through the draft of rookie southern NSW vendor Darrell Burnet of DSB Thoroughbreds, who also sold a $25,000 yearling by Brutal (O’Reilly) for $140,000 later in the day, the Capitalist colt proved to be a strong pinhook result for the Singapore connections after fetching $200,000, even if it wasn’t the initial goal for him.
He was purchased by Arlington Park’s Brett Bradley, who is set to race the two-year-old with a syndicate which includes prominent owner Neil Werrett.
Vinery Stud’s Adam White inspected and bid on the colt, who breezed up at Seymour in 10.54 seconds, on behalf of the juvenile’s new owners.
“It’s not so much the time that matters, it’s the way they do it really. He had a good action, he was well prepared for the sale and he breezed up really well,” White said.
“Brett rang me this morning to say, ‘can you go and have a look at him? We have a bit of info on the horse and we quite like the horse’, so I went and looked at him.
“He’s a very attractive horse, good looking, so he ticked that box with flying colours.”
Fitzsimmons and Wattle Bloodstock’s Peter Twomey bought the youngster at the Premier sale for $90,000.
Singapore buyers purchased 32 lots at last year’s Ready2Race Sale, accounting for 13 per cent of the total spend or $2,175,500, while Macau buyers bought four two-year-olds for a combined $130,000.
Twelve months later, their collective absence was widely felt by the vendors with just Macau registering on the buyers’ sheet with one two-year-old purchased for $70,000, while Simon Dunderdale, a Kuala Lumpur-based trainer with a stable at Selangor, bought five two-year-olds, spending $128,000 in total.
“It’s a bit of shame with what’s happening in Singapore, you’ve got to feel for the trainers and the owners with what’s happening and how it’s unfolding. If that didn’t happen, he wouldn’t have been here,” White said.
“I’m not really sure where he’s going yet, but with that ownership group, they manage things well and he’ll be given every opportunity here in Australia.”
Agent Bevan Smith, who acted regularly to recently departed Kranji trainer Michael Clements, also reflected on the demise of Singapore racing.
“I bought a handful of horses for Singapore here last year and they sold horses here this year, so it’s a big change,” Smith said.
“It is very sad what’s happened up there. Its effect on the Singapore trainers has been horrific and it flows down to the industry in Australia.
“It’s definitely been felt at this sale.”
Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch did not want to blame the absence of Singaporeans for the waning demand at the 2023 sale, admitting that ‘we’re probably a little bit disappointed that there wasn’t the sort of domestic participation that we might have liked’.
“Yes, there was good domestic participation but our hope was that there would be opportunities for people to acquire horses in the value part of the market,” Hutch said.
“Where it felt like there wasn’t the necessary demand was in the $50,000 to $150,000 bracket and that was the Singapore bracket, but I don’t think that fully explains the challenges we’ve had in the market today,” he said.
“In the case of some instances, it’s the case of a supply and demand issue. We had ample supply and insufficient demand to satisfy it.”
Hutch said a clearance rate of 65 per cent was the global average for breeze-up sales and the Inglis team would assess what occurred at the sale in an effort to improve the outcomes in 2024.
“[But] we take positives out of the day where nice horses who breezed well sold well,” he said.
“We’re committed to continuing to be involved in a sale format like this and take the necessary steps in the yearling sales next year and work towards having another successful sale next year.”
Sydney-based Smith helped Sam Wright Bloodstock and Hong Kong trainer Douglas Whyte purchase the Prima Park-sold Zoustar colt for $350,000 late in the day.
The horse, a $190,000 Inglis Easter graduate, breezed-up in 10.32 seconds at Cambridge.
“He breezed up in the quickest time over in New Zealand and he presented well here at the sale,” Smith said.
“He’s an extremely athletic individual with plenty of size and scope, a great walk on him, and he’s got a very good pedigree being out of a stakes-placed mare [Strata Lady].”
Prima Park’s Kelly Van Dyk was the sale’s leading vendor by average (with three or more lots sold), having sold three two-year-olds for an average of $230,000
Sale statistics
2023 2022 2021
Catalogued 226 289 185 Offered 179 221 126 Sold 92 (51%) 145 (66%) 102 (81%) Aggregate $10,477,500 (-33%) $15,646,500 $11,696,500
Average $113,886 (+6%) $107,907 $114,672
Median $92,500 (+16%) $80,000 $85,000
Top Lot $400,000 $750,000 $400,000