Smorgasbord of divine pedigrees await Easter sale in 2024
Entree offering released by Inglis ahead of next year’s blue riband Riverside auction
Inglis has released a mouth-watering teaser of what it will have to offer at its 2024 Australian Easter Yearling Sale, promising an array of relations to some of Australasia’s best-performed horses, as well as a selection with an international flavour.
The “Mini Easter catalogue”, a forerunner to its two-day single book offering on April 7 and 8, is an entree to the complete line-up of yearlings at the Riverside Stables auction in Sydney, one that the company labels as a bringing together of “the best of the best”.
Among the confirmed crop of 2022-born foal yearlings for the bluechip Easter sale are the brother to star three-time Group 1-winning mare Sunlight (Zoustar); a Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) half-brother to brilliant two- and three-year-old colt Militarize (Dundeel); and a colt by The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) out of dual Group 1 winner Response (Charge Forward), making him a three-quarter brother to Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Estijaab (Snitzel).
There is also a Snitzel daughter of Hips Don’t Lie (Stravinsky) – the latter already the dam of stakes winners Lake Geneva (Fastnet Rock), Ennis Hill (Fastnet Rock) and Acrobat (Fastnet Rock) – a Pierata (Lonhro) half-brother to Slipper winner Fireburn (Rebel Dane); a Zoustar (Northern Meteor) half-sister to Farnan (Not A Single Doubt); and a brother to multiple Group 1-winning stallion Artorius (Flying Artie).
In September, amid much mainstream media fanfare, Inglis also announced that it would have the honour of selling at the Easter sale the Pierro (Lonhro) daughter of champion mare Winx (Street Cry), the phenomenal racehorse’s first foal.
Young mares early in their breeding careers earning a stint on the Easter runway include VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m) winner Aristia (Lonhro), who has a Zoustar (Northern Meteor) colt; Booker (Written Tycoon) has an I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) sister to this year’s $2.5 million Magic Millions colt by the same sire; and New Zealand Group 1 winner Media Sensation (I Am Invincible) has an Exceed And Excel (Danehill) colt heading to Riverside, while Yulong will offer yearlings out of Melody Belle (Commands) and Viddora (I Am Invincible), a filly and a colt respectively, by their champion sire Written Tycoon (Iglesia).
Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch has no doubt the Easter sale has earned its reputation over decades and that next year’s early sample is no exception.
“It’s an exciting time during the spring when we go to farms across Australia and New Zealand to inspect yearlings and a significant part of the process is working with the vendors to identify what are the most suitable horses for Easter,” Hutch told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“It’s our showpiece sale, our figurehead sale, each year and the support is always fantastic but the support for this time is particularly overwhelming.
“The pedigrees of the horses, as a rule, are fantastic and the quality of them physically is pretty extraordinary.
“I think that’s a feature of the sale that we can be really excited about.”
Competition between Inglis and Magic Millions to sell the most sought–after yearlings each season increases in intensity each year, but Hutch suggested the Sydney-based auction house “certainly felt like we won a lot of horses for Easter this year”.
To illustrate the diversity of the Easter catalogue, there is progeny of Frankel (Galileo), US sire sensation Gun Runner (Candy Ride), Amelia’s Jewel’s sire Siyouni (Pivotal), Lope De Vega (Shamardal) and Night Of Thunder (Dubawi), alongside Australia’s champions such as I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit), Snitzel and Zoustar, a significant drawcard of Inglis’s showpiece sale for domestic and international buyers.
Vendors such as Yulong, Gilgai Farm, Mill Park and Lib Petagna’s Elsdon Park will have select drafts at Riverside, joining Easter regulars such as Arrowfield, Coolmore, Segenhoe, Widden and Vinery Stud.
B2B Thoroughbreds’ investment in its breeding programme will also be borne out in the Easter catalogue, with the Ricky Surace-owned Southern Highlands farm presenting a draft of yearlings at the April sale.
Group 3-winning mare Scarlet Billows (Street Boss), who is already the dam of the stakes-placed Gleneagles (Capitalist), has an Exceed And Excel (Danehill) colt going to Easter through the B2B Thoroughbreds draft, as will a half-sister to Magic Millions 3YO Guineas (RL, 1400m) winner Aim (Star Witness) by the same Darley champion sire; as well as a Snitzel three-quarter sister to Skyline Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) winner Mamaragan (Wandjina).
B2B’s Ricky Surace Jnr saw the fact that his family’s breeding operation has a draft worthy of the Easter sale as an endorsement of what they are trying to achieve.
“As the farm’s progressed, our horses have progressed and having a horse in Easter is a good thing, but also it can be a challenging sale,” Surace Jnr told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“We had three or four Easter horses this year, but we said, ‘let’s not go with a draft of three or four, we’ll send them to Melbourne’ and for next year we have more quality stock and as a result we thought we’d have a nice draft for Easter.
“We are trying to breed a racehorse and the results are definitely coming on the racetrack now and as a result we will keep reinvesting in the industry and continue to breed and sell nice horses.”
Surace Jnr’s also believes the timing of the Easter sale, the last of the major southern hemisphere yearling auctions each year, as being a bonus for the B2B-bred horses.
“It’s a discussion I have with a lot of farms in the Hunter Valley. In the Hunter, I find horses reach maturity at least a couple of months before those [residing] in the Southern Highlands due to the temperature,” he said.
“As a result, it’s hard to get a lot of Magic Millions horses from the Southern Highlands and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve elected to go towards Easter with a lot of horses who were accepted into Magic Millions in order to just give them that extra time.
“Once they are stimulated in a racing stable, they all grow [and are at no disadvantage].”
Hutch is in the United Kingdom for this week’s Tattersalls December Sale and, in his early discussions with international thoroughbred investors, the interest in next year’s Easter sale is high.
“Walking around the complex at Tattersalls the past few days I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you in April’, which, again, is a great sign,” the Inglis Bloodstock chief executive said.
“There’s a number of people who haven’t attended the sale before, certainly in a buying capacity, who intend to do so in 2024, so when people see this preview catalogue and then the official catalogue early in the new year, they’re going to be even more excited.”
The catalogue for the 2024 Inglis Easter Yearling Sale will be finalised and announced in mid–January.