No sweat for pinhookers Carey and Hedge
Experienced pair confident in their batch of Magic Millions yearlings
It’s been a sweltering start to the Australian summer in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, with the hot weather testing the patience of stud staff, the horses and the agents and trainers inspecting them.
For pinhookers such as agent Suman Hedge and Newgate Farm’s Jim Carey, who between them have 12 weanling buys set to go under the hammer at next month’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, there is an argument to suggest they could also be sweating for a different reason, given the volume of money on the line.
Not so, however, for the long-term pinhookers like Carey, whose confidence in his next crop of yearlings has him optimistic about not only their immediate future, but also what could lay ahead for their new owners on the racetrack come mid-January.
After all, Newgate stud manager Carey also pinhooked Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Stay Inside (Extreme Choice), the twice Group 1-placed Elliptical (Dundeel) and, more recently, the stakes-placed filly Broadcaster (Written Tycoon).
The next Gold Coast-bound Carey-owned pinhooks features colts by Zoustar (Northern Meteor), Blue Point (Shamardal), King’s Legacy (Redoute’s Choice), Pierro (Lonhro), All Too Hard (Casino Prince) and Farnan (Not A Single Doubt), as well as a filly by the Golden Slipper winner and another by Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice).
The dispersal sales of Strawberry Hill Stud and Edinburgh Park Stud provided some unique pinhooking opportunities while Carey also signed for a $550,000 Zoustar colt, who is the first foal out of Group 3 winner Embrace Me (Shamexpress), the product of a strategy to “go hard” in the weanling sales ring in 2023.
“My biggest goal and our biggest goal at Newgate is to buy athletes who are going to be racehorses first and foremost. If you start producing good racehorses, then people are going to come to buy them and profits follow after that,” Carey said of his pinhooking philosophy.
“I think we’ve seen the market, and even more so in Australia, that there’s so much statistical information and history on produce coming from farms and what horses people are producing and whether they’re producing good, sound horses.
“We’ve had some expensive pinhooks this year who will go through the ring, but they’re not in cotton wool, they’re out and in the same system as our homebreds to produce racehorses.”
Henry Field, who recruited Carey from Coolmore to be Newgate Farm’s stud manager in 2019, described the Irishman as possessing a unique ability to identify quality in a young horse.
“I’ve been around for a long time in this game and I would say that Jim’s got the best eye for a foal of anyone I’ve ever worked with and he’s a great horseman to go with it,” Field said.
“Fairly or unfairly, the market prefers to buy horses that were homebreds in preference to the pinhooks, so I think you’ve got to excel with racetrack results with pinhooks and that is what I think Jim has done so well.
“His record of buying top horses that are pinhooks is unbelievable.”
Meanwhile, the buyer of Elliptical as a yearling, the Melbourne-based Hedge, has no qualms in both selling and buying pinhooks, with the son of Dundeel (High Chaparral) providing his connections with a great thrill on the racetrack as well as a seven-figure sale return when he was sold to Hong Kong.
Also a noted pinhooker, Hedge has an association with four yearlings with three different vendors to be offered for sale on the Gold Coast and it is perhaps a smaller number than he’s had in the past, but there’s a reason for that.
Hedge suggested finding value at the weanling sales had become more difficult in recent years as the dynamic of the buying bench has changed.
“In the last two years especially it’s become very difficult to pinhook … and I don’t know if it’s because the yearling sales have been so strong that trainers are looking at different avenues to acquire talent,” Hedge said.
“Apart from the tried horses from overseas, I think looking at weanlings and end users are getting more involved, so that’s really affected the market, particularly when we are trying to buy the more developed types of horses.
“That’s pushed the market and made it a lot more challenging for us.”
He added: “Pinhookers also have had some really good results over the past couple of years and it’s brought a lot of new people into that sector and that’s increased competition.
“The market’s stayed the same size but you’ve got more competition, so it all makes it very challenging.”
The three highest-priced weanlings sold in Australia in 2023 – for $925,000, $825,000 and $725,000 and all by Frankel (Galileo) – have been retained to race, adding weight to Hedge’s synopsis of the current market.
Hedge will have a vested interest in two of the eight Redwall Bloodstock pinhooking syndicate’s yearlings being offered by Widden Stud – a colt by Zoustar (Lot 573) and a filly by Deep Field (Northern Meteor) (Lot 415) – as well as a Toronado (High Chaparral) colt (Lot 351) being consigned by Three Bridges Thoroughbreds.
The Zoustar colt, a $310,000 weanling purchase, is the first foal out of European Group 3 winner and Australian Group-placed mare Delectation Girl (Delegator), a mare Hedge bought for his client Sheriff Iskander for $245,000 in 2021 to support the Widden Stud-based stallion.
When Redwall’s David Redvers and Hannah Wall and agent James Harron both liked the colt, Hedge and Iskander stayed in, and they also combined with the Redwall pair on an Alan Bell-bred Deep Field filly who is out of the stakes-performed half-sister to Listed winner Alart (Excellent Art).
“Delectation Girl was a really good running mare and that’s what attracted me to her, because I remember she was offered and there wasn’t a lot of interest in her because she’s not perfect physically, she’s a little bit of a plain mare, but she could really run, not only in Europe but when she came out to Australia,” Hedge said.
“We were so happy with that foal all the way through and some really good judges liked him, so we were happy to stay part of him. He’s grown into a beautiful animal and I think he’ll be very popular.”
The Toronado colt, who was sold by Three Bridges to Hedge for $200,000 at the Magic Millions Weanling Sale, returned to Toby Liston’s Victorian farm to grow out and be prepared for a return to the Gold Coast.
The colt is a half-brother to the Macau stakes winner Desi Prince (I Am Invincible).
“When he was being offered as a weanling, I had a really good chat to Toby and I’ve got the utmost respect for him,” Hedge said.
“We liked the horse at the sale, but Toby just felt that he had a lot of improvement in him and he has and I think he’ll be popular with trainers. He looks like a real trainer’s horse. He’s a very athletic type.”
Rosemont Stud’s ‘staff horse’, a $14,000 Encryption (Lonhro) colt (Lot 1238), will be offered in Book 2 on the Gold Coast. Encryption sired his second Group winner in his first crop, when Encoder won the Grand Prix Stakes (Gr 3, 2100m) at Eagle Farm on Saturday.
Predicting how the market will play out can be as reliable as weather forecasts, but Hedge believes the majority of his pinhooks are aimed at buyers above the sale average.
“In the last three years, at the start of the year, they have predicted that the market will be down every time and it just hasn’t happened,” Hedge said.
“Again, this year everyone you talk to, they say it’ll be down and maybe this year there’s a little bit more substance to it, just with interest rates and inflation, the cost of living and things like that.
“Perhaps we will see a change, but the challenge [for pinhookers] is to be in parts of the market where it’s not as affected and hopefully you do well there.”
Carey acknowledged Newgate Farm’s staff, who are preparing 100 yearlings simultaneously for the Magic Millions and Inglis Classic sales, as well as the important workers across the thoroughbred industry.
“It hasn’t been straightforward, we’ve had an average of 40 degrees for two weeks straight and it’s very intense, a busy time with the farms just finished or still foaling mares,” he said.
“We’re still breeding mares and it’s a busy time, so the staff at the farm are doing a fantastic job.”
He then added of his pinhook draft: “A week’s a long time in this business, but all together, they’re a fantastic bunch and we’ve got a great cross-section of proven stallions and first–season stallions. They’re athletes, which is the most important thing.”