Inglis Premier Yearling Sale
Gilgai lead the way as Premier Sale surpasses all expectations
Trevor Marshallsea
ANZ News
The rare and unorthodox breeding wizardry of Ric Jamieson earned emphatic financial validation as his Gilgai Farm dominated another powerful day’s trading in the closing session of Book 1 at the Inglis Premier sale.
Concentrating solely on their local sale this year, Gilgai sold the day’s first, second, fifth and sixth highest-priced yearlings to finish as leading Book 1 vendor by aggregate, with 13 lots realising $3,740,000. They ranked second by average, with their $288,000 mark shaded by Bell River Thoroughbreds, who sold four at an average of $301,000.
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Gilgai’s Monday trading was highlighted by Lot 499 - the colt bought by Malaysian trainer and investor Cheng Han Yong after a spirited bidding duel for $750,000, with Ciaron Maher the underbidder.
While that colt is by a fiercely in-demand stallion in Darley’s Too Darn Hot (Dubawi), Jamieson’s punt on less commercial sires reaped rewards in the sales of two exceptionally built fillies. In heady scenes at Oaklands, they were bought back-to-back by Astute Thoroughbreds’ Louis Le Metayer.
He paid $625,000 for Lot 419, a daughter of another Darley sire in Kermadec (Teofilo), who stood for $16,500 (inc GST) at time of conception. Moments earlier, Le Metayer paid $450,000 for Lot 418, a filly by Widden Stud’s Written By (Written Tycoon), whose service fee in 2023 was $27,500 (inc GST).
Rounding out Gilgai’s leading quartet was a filly by a more commercial stallion - one of Jamieson’s many breeding triumphs in Ole Kirk (Written Tycoon), the exciting young Vinery Stud sire in whom he remains a major shareholder. Lot 329, went to Bennett Racing for $430,000.
Gilgai’s heavyweight day two foursome realised $2,255,000 at an average of $563,750, and highlighted another strong session of trading which surpassed even the highest hopes of Inglis.
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On Monday evening, with Book 2 to come on Tuesday, the sale had grossed $60.71 million. That was not only well up on the same stage last year ($52.55m) - albeit with 37 more lots sold - but it had also already surpassed the overall gross for Books 1 and 2 in 2025 ($53.84m).
The average was $146,990 compared with $139,759 at the same stage last year, with the median up $20,000, to $120,000. The clearance rate was running at 79 per cent, up from 76 per cent.
“At the end of day two, for the gross to have exceeded last year’s gross for the end of day three already, was really pleasing,” said Inglis Bloodstock CEO Sebastian Hutch.
“The gross is up $8 million year on year. I feel that’s a good testament to the quality of horse the vendors gave us to sell.
“We were confident of running a good sale and I think it’s fair to say it’s played out even better than we had expected.”
Hutch said various reasons lay behind a more attractive catalogue this year. While there were no seven-figure lots in Book 1, after two were sold last year, the great strength through the middle market in the $300,000-$400,000 range drove metrics up.
“I think it’s a combination of factors. If you take Gilgai as an example, they’re supporting this sale exclusively this year. Last year they also had a draft at Easter,” Hutch said.
“We’d like more local vendors to see the value in the opportunity that presents.
“At the same time, a strong cohort of interstate vendors participated in the sale, and they’ve had good sales. That’s been good for the sale also.”
Still, Hutch cautioned that “there are parts of the market that are hard” and Inglis was aware of “challenges breeders and vendors face”.
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“Whilst we can reflect on lots of positive things, a certain amount of our focus will be on - how do we make the parts of the market that didn’t go so well, better,” he said.
Gilgai was celebrating another resounding Premier sale after leading the averages last year, for more than three lots sold, with their 2025 draft including a colt by Toronado (High Chaparral) who equal-topped the sale at $1,000,000.
Jamieson, a highly successful businessman who’s happy in his own company and has become somewhat reclusive in recent years, has made an artform of breeding along a path less taken. Even his most successful product Black Caviar (Bel Esprit) was by a sire who was no runaway success with only two Group 1 winners, even if one was a phenomenon.
The bold Jamieson method paid strong dividends, in the sales ring for now, when his eye-catching Kermadec and Written By fillies turned the combined $44,000 in service fees it took to create them into $1,075,000 through the bidding of Le Metayer, who’ll send them to Maher.
And while Too Darn Hot is in keen demand now, and stood for $275,000 (inc GST) last spring, Jamieson was eager to patronise him from his first Australian season at $44,000, though a far greater buzz surrounded his fellow Darley shuttler Blue Point (Shamardal).
Leading Book 1 vendors by aggregate
Jamieson’s right hand man Kelly Skillicorn recalled: “I told him, ‘You’re mad, mate - he’s done nothing this horse. And everyone else was all on Blue Point. I said ‘We’ve got to send to Blue Point’.
“But his quote to me always is, ‘You just feed ‘em and I’ll breed ‘em’.”
Contrasting their rivalry in Europe, Too Darn Hot has famously gone on to outshine Blue Point in Australia, winning the first-and second-season sires’ titles, and building a 9.72 per cent stakes-winners-to-runners ratio in this country.
In addition, Jamieson’s decision to send Turaath (Oasis Dream) - a dual stakes-winning mare he bought for $1 million - to a $16,500 stallion in Kermadec, to create Monday’s Lot 419, now looks a distinctly inspired choice. So too is his sending the unraced Tune Doubt (Not A Single Doubt) to Written By to breed Lot 418.
“They’re just nice horses, and they look like they can gallop,” Skillicorn told the media of the duo, while Jamieson was elsewhere.
“He [Jamieson] is really honed in. He’s only breeding 25 horses a year, so it’s not like he’s covering all bases and taking a scattergun approach.
“And every other year there’s a Group 1 winner, and every year there’s stakes winners.
“I don’t know if Ric’s the best breeder in the country, but he certainly must be one of them.”
He added: “I don’t know why he breeds like that, but he’s worked for 30 years putting this program together that does his matings.
“It’s not a commercial decision. We bought Turaath for a million bucks, because he loved her. No one else is going to breed it to Kermadec, because they’re going to take some commerciality into it.
“But Ric’s not afraid to do it because it’s his hobby. He’s worth enough money. He’s a very successful businessman. He just does it for a hobby and he can breed to whoever he wants to, because he wants to breed racehorses.”
“I don’t know if Ric’s the best breeder in the country, but he certainly must be one of them
Gilgai’s day-topping Too Darn Hot colt - the number two overall after Sunday’s $850,000 filly by Zoustar (Northern Meteor) - is out of Baveno (Street Cry), who only won a Kembla Grange maiden. But second dam Neroli (Viscount) won four stakes races including Rosehill’s Queen Of The Turf Stakes (Gr 1, 1500m).
Cheng, who buys under his investment concern X Bloodstock, has not immediately made clear his plans for the colt.
The Selangor-based trainer made a splash at Premier, purchasing four colts for a combined $1.82 million to rank second among buyers. They include another from Gilgai in Lot 87 - a colt by another non-commercial stallion in Doubtland (Not A Single Doubt) who became his sire’s record sale at $320,000.
"It has been a long-term plan to attend Inglis Premier and I gave [Inglis’s Victorian bloodstock manager] James Price a specific brief of what we wanted, and that was to see the best colts in the sale,” an X Bloodstock spokesman said. “We have been able to buy four.
"Lot 499 was just an absolute athlete. He had scope, he had size and strength, he had an amazing temperament.”
Le Metayer brought his hardball game to a nerve-wracking five-minute period when he bought what to that point were the two most expensive lots of the day.
The $450,000 Lot 418, by Written By, is the fourth foal of an unraced Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice) mare whose dam Jestajune (Rory’s Jester) threw dual stakes winner Jukebox (Snitzel) and the dam of another current sire, Group 3 victor Bruckner (Snitzel).
Seconds later Le Metayer usurped himself, this time prevailing in a still more tense bidding duel - with trainer Nick Ryan - to land Lot 419 by Kermadec. She’s the first foal of Turaath, the British-bred winner of Flemington’s Let’s Elope Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m) and a Listed event. Second dam Fadhayyil (Tamayuz) and third dam Ziria (Danehill Dancer) also won stakes races, in Europe.
Kermadec and Written By might not leap into most judges’ lists of Australia’s top ten stallions, though the former at least has four elite victors including two Oaks winners in Willowy and Amokura, and his star performer Montefilia, another female.
But Le Metayer has great faith in Jamieson’s breeding, saying Gilgai was “an exceptional farm who have bred elite horses year in year out, often by obscure stallions”.
“Their mating strategy is exceptional and when you’re buying an elite horse from a farm like that, you know you’ve got a good chance,” he said, adding the Gilgai factor was worth around “ten per cent” in his considerations.
“We went to visit Gilgai a few times. Last year we took [Two Bays Farm’s] Ross Ferris there, whose intention is to be the next Gilgai. There’s not many farms like this in the world. I’ve travelled around, and there’s not many farms that can produce champions year in and year out, to the level of Black Caviar.
“So it’s a factor. But the horse has got to stack up - the horse and the pedigree and the mental and the demeanour.”
Le Metayer was confident his back-to-back buys met all of those requirements.
“I look at thousands of fillies each year, and I just thought she was the best athlete I’d seen all year,” he said of his Kermadec filly.
Sale statistics - Inglis Premier Yearling Sale 2026
2026 |
2025 |
|
|---|---|---|
Catalogued |
587 |
565 |
Offered |
525 |
495 |
Sold |
413 (79%) |
376 (75%) |
Aggregate |
$60,707,000 (+15%) |
$52,549,500 |
Average |
$146,990 (+5%) |
$139,759 |
Median |
$120,000 (+20%) |
$100,000 |
Top Lot |
$850,000 |
$1,000,000 |
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“I think she’s going to be an elite three-year-old. She has a phenomenal action, and obviously a very good pedigree. The dam is from a strong European family, and we all know the dominance of European bloodlines here in Australia, and Kermadec is a sire who can get you a really good filly.”
The day’s third-top priced yearling was Lot 484, Milburn Creek’s grey son of Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt) from the stakes-placed Ariaz (Charge Forward) who was bought for $540,000 by My Racehorse, trainer Michael Freedman and Belmont Bloodstock.
‘Extreme Choice is such a good stallion, and having the colt go to a trainer like MIchael Freedman, who’s had really good success for us with Apocalyptic, Ninja and a few others, it’s a marriage made in heaven,” said My Racehorse’s Ben Willis.
“He looks fast, looks like an early two-year-old, and hopefully he can do that on the track.”
Maher purchased the day’s fourth-top priced yearling in Lot 470, a $480,000 colt from the first crop of his dual Derby and Australian Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) hero - and now Arrowfield Stud sire - Hitotsu (Maurice).
The leading stallion from Book 1 was Swettenham Stud’s Toronado, who had 30 lots sold for $4,955,000. Best by average - with three or more lots sold - was Widden’s Zoustar, with six sellers at $362,500.
Book 1’s leading buyer was Lindsay Park and Dean Hawthorne Bloodstock, with nine yearlings costing a combined $2,330,000.
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