Depth and value to the fore as Inglis Classic gets underway
The 2026 Inglis Classic Yearling Sale gets underway at Riverside Stables on Sunday, with 715 (800 less 85 withdrawals) yearlings to be offered across three days in Sydney.
The catalogue features progeny by 113 individual sires, ranging from established commercial stallions to a strong cohort of first-season sires.
Proven names represented include Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit), Zoustar (Northern Meteor) and Written Tycoon (Iglesia), while the produce of 14 freshman stallions will be offered, among them Anamoe (Street Boss), Artorius (Flying Artie), Hitotsu (Maurice), In The Congo (Snitzel), Jacquinot (Rubick), Profondo (Deep Impact) and State Of Rest (Starspangled Banner).
A total of 74 vendors are represented, with the majority of yearlings eligible for Australian incentive schemes including BOBS, VOBIS Silver, QTIS, Racing Rewards SA and Westspeed.
The Classic sale has been influential from a stallion-making perspective, producing sires such as Extreme Choice, I Am Invincible, Choisir (Danehill Dancer), Hellbent (I Am Invincible), Castelvecchio (Dundeel), Brazen Beau (I Am Invincible) and Cosmic Force (Deep Field).
Conditions have been ideal throughout the inspection period at Riverside and Inglis chief executive officer Sebastian Hutch said buyer engagement has been encouraging ahead of the opening session.
“It’s interesting because you can sit and watch the first two sales of the year on the Gold Coast and in New Zealand, so I feel like we have a fairly extended build-up to this,” he told ANZ News. “We put a huge amount of work in through the year cultivating people to buy at sales. This is our first sale of the year and people seem motivated to participate.
“There is good footfall, good international representation here, good interstate, good local stuff. No auction house will ever say, ‘I have enough buyers.’ You always want more buyers, but I’m happy where we sit at the moment.”
Hutch also pointed to the sale’s strong record of producing high-end performers and value graduates, including Pride Of Jenni (Pride Of Dubai), Sepals (Calyx), Private Harry (Harry Angel), Skybird (Exosphere) and Hong Kong champion Voyage Bubble (Deep Field). Since 2018, Classic graduates have produced 41 individual millionaires, with recent seasons also delivering elite performers such as Veight (Grunt), Celestial Legend (Dundeel), Beauty Eternal (Starspangledbanner) and Coco Sun (The Autumn Sun).
“The sale has had a good run in terms of graduate success,” Hutch said. “Just little things like having the winner of the Golden Gift two years in a row, the winner of each of the first two runnings of the Sunlight, things like that remind people what you come here to buy. You could have bought Grafterburners for $70,000, Revengeance for $100,000, and between them they won a $3 million race and a $1 million race in the space of six weeks.
“Pride Of Jenni has been a great flagbearer for the sale, so has Voyage Bubble. These are all the important features of keeping the sale in the forefront of people’s minds. We’ve talked about this over the last number of years, but I think there’s genuine respect for the sale in the market now. I think that’s a feature in helping consolidate a good buying bench.”
Value remains a defining feature of the Classic sale, with Hutch highlighting the sale’s long-standing ability to produce top-level performers at accessible price points.
“People want to buy the best horse they can for as little money as they can,” he said.
“Expensive horses garner the headlines, but ultimately the mandate of the buyer and the mandate of the vendor, they’re juxtaposed. A vendor wants to get as much money as they can, and a buyer wants to spend as little as they can.
“This sale has produced more Australian stakes winners for $100,000 or less than any other over a period of time, which is a fantastic way of illustrating the value that can be found here.
“You look through the graduates and 14 of the Group 1-winning graduates since 2018 could have been bought for $100,000 or less. The profile of the sale started to build on the likes of She Will Reign, who cost $20,000, and Yankee Rose, who cost $10,000, and they were important parts of building the profile of the sale.
“As years have gone on, Brazen Beau cost $70,000 out of the sale, Hellbent $95,000, Castelvecchio $150,000, and even a horse like Extreme Choice – the most influential stallion in the country – he cost $100,000 out of the sale here. They’re important parts of building the profile of the sale and it has just kept growing and growing.
“It excites people about coming to the sale. People want to know that they can come here and buy a nice horse for not a lot of money. And vendors come here knowing that there’s going to be a huge consolidation of people here, and it gives them their best chance to sell a horse. That’s why they keep coming back year after year with better horses every year.”
International participation is again a key feature of the Classic sale, with Hutch outlining the extensive work undertaken by Inglis to nurture offshore buying benches.
“Cultivation of international buyers is hard,” he said. “We work really hard at it. We have a series of markets that are positively disposed to Australia – in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, New Zealand – they’re foreign jurisdictions that speak a different language and have a different form of racing.
“Nicky Wong would go to different parts of Asia six or seven times a year, James Price goes two or three times a year, as do I. We work really hard trying to cultivate those relationships with a view to having good representation here at the sales. I feel we do that better than any other auction house.
“I think it’s borne out in the figures. We’re constantly having good international representation at Classic, Premier and Easter, but certainly at this sale. It’s a real target sale for people from Hong Kong and China, and we are going to have Korean representation at this sale for the first time. Hopefully they can find horses to buy.
“New Zealand will be significant participants here, particularly in terms of the traders. It’s not a sale where we see Europeans or people from the US, although Arthur Hoyeau is down here from France helping Chris Munce, and we look to try and engage a few other international clients and northern hemisphere clients.
“You are battling against a lot of factors, and we were really pleased with how it worked out in 2025 in terms of how those people engaged, and we’re looking to try and do a bit better again in 2026.”
Following the record-breaking Inglis Ready2Race Sale earlier this year, Hutch believes Classic provides an important foundation for traders and participants looking ahead to later sales in the series.
“Our ready to race sale broke through $20 million for the first time. It was a big deal. It was a sale that six or seven years ago was turning over six or seven million dollars, and to have it grow three times over is a big deal.
“We want to try and progress that sale format further. There’s another Group 1 winner out of the sale this season, ironically a Classic graduate and a two-year-old sale graduate, in Libertad, a really likeable horse, an entire that wins stakes races or Group races in four consecutive seasons.
“It is a hugely enchanting sale format. The level of horsemanship involved in doing that is a step up. It’s challenging presenting weanlings and yearlings for sale, but taking two-year-olds to a sale is another level again, and those people are very brave. There’s a lot of work involved in that. So when they get a good payday, I think they deserve it. They’ve worked hard to get it.
“We’ve been very supportive of two-year-old conditioners over a number of years and it’s helped us grow that sale. That sale is an important part of supporting a market like what we have at Classic.”
With Magic Millions and Karaka delivering improved clearance rates and averages, Hutch is hopeful that momentum will carry through to Classic and beyond.
“It’s a new year. At this stage, last year is irrelevant, even though we take confidence from the success of the year. I feel like we’ve prepared at least as well, if not better, than what we did last year, and I suppose you take some confidence from that.
“This year, we go into the sale with Magic Millions down about $5 million and New Zealand up $9.6 million, with different profiles of catalogue. But auction houses work off turnover – they’re the figures that are important.
“So you would say, on the basis of that, that there’s a little bit more confidence in the market than there was 12 months ago. Whether that will manifest itself for ourselves, I don’t know. I feel like there are plenty of nice horses here. The vendors know what they have. We have a vendor bench that is motivated to meet the market.
“Hopefully the desires of purchasers and vendors can be satisfied, they meet in the middle somewhere, we clear well, and people go home happy.”