Motree Thoroughbreds delivered champagne result at Inglis Premier
Motree Thoroughbreds’ Mandy Gunn will be taking some French champagne back to her north-east Tasmanian farm, where in one regard she leads a relatively isolated life.
Having long bred cattle and sheep, she decided to try her hand at horses around 16 years ago.
Away from the state’s traditional equine hotbed, she thus found herself having the only thoroughbred farm for many miles around, a vast distance by the island state’s standards, not too far from the place which gives Sydney to Hobart yacht race competitors a welcome kick for home.
“We’re right up near the north-east tip of Tassie,” she explained. “We’ve got a lot of sand, and we get a lot of wind.
“So I’m always happy when it’s a windy day at the races, because I know my horses won’t care.”
Gunn, however, won’t have been short of company after day one at Inglis Premier – and it wasn’t just because she was brandishing bubbles.
Reaping $300,000 for Lot 45, a chestnut colt by Harry Angel (Dark Angel), she smashed her previous sale best of $100,000 – for a Tassort (Brazen Beau) colt from book 2 at the same sale last year.
And thus she was off to the foreign section of the bottle shop on leaving Oaklands Junction.
“I said to the team if the horse got $80,000 we’d get champagne – but if it got to $120,000 we’d get French champagne,” she said.
“To get $300,000 was the stuff dreams are made of. So it’ll be French champagne and some nice cheese tonight. Our farm is a team operation, so we’ll celebrate together.”
The colt has been a surprise in one respect.
“I love bays,” Gunn said. “But I put a bay mare to a bay stallion and got a chestnut.”
But it was no shock that he turned many heads, even if the price – paid by Hong Kong trainer Ricky Yiu – came as a happy surprise.
The fourth foal out of the city-winning Arkiboum (Exceed And Excel), the colt was described by Gunn as a “lovely boy from day one”.
“He’s been a delight to deal with. He’s got a great temperament, and he’s paraded heaps here and he just came out the same horse every time,” said Gunn, an avowed fan of Darley’s Harry Angel.
“Arkiboum had been to the same stallion [Alpine Eagle] three times and I decided to change it up. When I planned the mating it seemed Exceed And Excel mares were working well with Harry Angel, and we’ve certainly been delighted with how the mating has worked out in this case.”
Motree started with one mare, bought as a yearling filly in 2007, called White Yard (Partners Choice), whose name was also the stuff of dreams.
“My sister bought a chestnut filly and she overspent, so I helped out and bought half of her for $3,000,” she said.
“I told a friend about it and he said, ‘I’ve been dreaming about a chestnut for 30 years’. In the dream, this trainer says ‘It’s got three white feet, there’s three feet in a yard, so we’ll call it White Yard’.
“I then rang my sister and said that’s what we’d have to name her.”
The mare won four races and ran second in the Launceston Cup (Gr 3, 2400m) of 2011, then launched the breeding operation at Motree, which takes its name from another of its handy performers.
“Off the back of White Yard I spent $2,000 on a horse at the Tasmanian sale and called him Banca Mo, since a road beside our farm is Banca Road, and he ended up winning the Warrnambool Cup, the Pakenham Cup and the Mornington Cup,” Gunn said.
“He then sadly died in his preparation for the Caulfield Cup, and I wanted to honour him somehow. My old cattle and sheep farm was called Peppertree, so I named our horse farm Motree.”
The operation has now grown to have more than 40 mares, producing some 30 foals a year.
Given Sunday’s result, there might be a few more mares heading to a windy corner of Tasmania pretty soon.