Parnham Racing secures Zoustar colt
The sole Zoustar offering in the catalogue proved popular with Neville Parnham stretching to $400,000 to secure the colt after the trainer snapped up a son of Playing God for $300,000 earlier in the session.
Catalogued as Lot 73, the Zoustar colt is out of the three-time winner Leitfaden (Choisir), making him a half-brother to Listed scorer Saintorio (Oratorio), while further afield this is the same family as the Group 1-winning pair Special Harmony (Spinning World) and Fangirl (Sebring).
The youngster was bred by Parnham’s biggest owners, Santo Guagliardo, and the trainer said he would retain a share in the colt.
“I’ve trained a few Zoustars and I’ve had a bit of luck with them,” he said. “Santo, one of my biggest owners bred him, and he was pretty keen to stay involved in him, so I’ll sell all the rest of him to stable clients.
“Really happy with what I saw, he’s just a beautiful loose walking colt. I guess he wasn’t really typical of a lot of Zoustars but he was a really nice horse and I just felt that he was a good buy. If he was on the east coast, he probably makes more than that judging on what’s going on on the east coast with the Zoustars this year.”
Having trained Playing God throughout his career and plenty of his stock including his Railway Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m)-winning son Bustler, Parnham knows a good yearling by the sire when he sees one and he said that while the Playing God out of five-time winner High Aims (Southern Image) wasn’t exactly like the stallion, he reminded him of his sire.
“I thought that particular colt was not quite a replica of his sire, but he was a very likable likeness to him. When I buy a Playing God, that’s what I generally look for, something that replicates the stallion in some way, it might be the head, might be their shape,” he said.
“He’s a beautiful horse. I thought that was reasonable money for the horse, and I was not going to come home without him.
“I had three or four in the top of my list as far as Playing Gods went and I was the underbidder on the Super Stardom [Lot 141], which I really loved. But more than happy to have come home with that one. He is a beautiful horse, he was 100 per cent on x-rays, 100 per cent on the scope so it was just a no brainer really to buy him – I’m really happy.”
Being out of High Aims, the colt is a half-brother to Listed winner Queen Alina (Mahuta) and was one of six lots sold by Lynward Park Stud, who finished the day with an aggregate of $755,000.