‘Extraordinary’ Magic Millions National Weanling Sale closes on a high
Record two days of trade, but is the changing market dynamic here to stay?
In the immediate aftermath of an extraordinary Magic Millions National Weanling Sale stakeholders remain divided about whether the frenzied competition for young stock would permanently change the dynamic of the Australian foal market.
Vendors, buyers and the auction house itself had differing views about whether this week’s record sale, in which a million-dollar colt was sold for just the second time in the southern hemisphere and the average was more than $100,000 for the first time, would spur more investors on both sides of the fence to have a bigger presence in the weanling market.
Nine of the top ten foals sold on the Gold Coast this week were purchased with the intention of retaining them to race rather than attempting to on-sell them at next year’s yearling sales.
The most expensive foal sold at the recent Inglis Australian Weanling Sale, a $400,000 colt by Capitalist (Written Tycoon), was also expected to be held back as a racing prospect.
“The market is in a great place at the moment and we were delighted with the horses we had to offer. But even as confident as we were, this has far exceeded our expectations. To average well over $100,000, have a clearance rate of 88 per cent, which is really good for this market and to gross over $31.5 million is extraordinary,” Magic Millions managing director Barry Bowditch said last night.
“It’s a new dimension to the sale, and I think going forward you will see a lot more of it, I think, with end users now at the sale and here supporting the high and middle end.
“It will give vendors the impetus to keep bringing the better horses to the sale and they can come here with confidence that the result they can achieve here can be extraordinary.”
This year’s National Weanling Sale, in comparison to 2019 – last year’s disrupted sale was held in late July due to Covid-19 – the auction gross of $31,724,500 was up 14 per cent, the average of $105,048 was up 66 per cent and the median of $52,250 was up from $36,000 two years ago.
Excluding the 20-lot Shadwell dispersal, which saw the unreserved draft of weanlings sell for $5.435 million at an average $271,750 on Thursday, this year’s sale still averaged $93,944.
Bowditch cited the graduate success of the Magic Millions’ weanling sale, specifically pointing to Group 1-winning colts Stay Inside (Extreme Choice), Pierro (Lonhro) and Zoustar (Northern Meteor) as evidence, had become too compelling for the end-user buyers to ignore.
“We want to continue to grow our weanling market. We think it’s always been a strong market for Magic Millions, but this year it has gone to a whole new level,” he said.
“We could have sold plenty more horses than we had catalogued here and there was a lot of demand.
“There are a lot of frustrated pinhookers out there that weren’t getting in and buying the horses they need to.
When you have frustrated buyers, it means that you have delighted vendors and with that, you would expect they would continue to support this sale with gusto going forward.”
I Am Invincible colt makes $625,000 on day two
The most expensive lot sold on the second day was a $625,000 I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) colt who, like the majority of top lots sold at the weanling sale, will be retained to race.
He was the highest-priced of three colts bought at the sale by Tony Fung Investments after they also paid $550,000 for an Exceed And Excel (Danehill) colt and $210,000 for a son of Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt) on day one.
Warwick Farm-based Annabel Neasham is expected to train the trio.
“He’s a lovely colt, he is obviously by a serious sire in I Am Invincible. Being a first foal, we really liked him, he had plenty of size and scope,” Fung’s bloodstock representative Shane McGrath said.
“She was a very good racemare herself. She probably could have won the William Reid and been a Group 1 winner.
“He’s got size, substance and comes off a great farm. We have had a lot of luck buying horses off Kitchwin.
“They do a great job and he was well presented. He made his money, but he was a proper colt.”
The sale of the day’s top lot, the first foal out of Group 3 winner and Group 1-placed mare Ellicazoom (Testa Rossa), continues the success Kitchwin Hills’ have enjoyed with the former Perth-trained mare, who joined the Hunter Valley nursery’s team midway through her racing career.
Kitchwin Hills’ Mick Malone went to $420,000 to buy Ellicazoom at the 2018 Magic Millions Perth Winter Mixed Sale. She was sent to Victoria to be trained by Lindsay Park, under whose guidance she won the Cockram Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) and was placed in the William Reid Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) under new ownership before Kitchwin resold her for $800,000 at the 2019 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale.
Malone negotiated a deal to retain 50 per cent ownership of the mare and the partnership mated her with I Am Invincible.
“You come to these weanling sales and he was a horse that was probably going to end up at a racing stable, not so much a pinhook,” Malone said.
“He was such a lovely, lovely colt. She’s a beautiful mare and has done such a terrific job. We had a video of the colt as a young foal galloping through the paddock. It was unbelievable.
“He had this amazing presence from the day he was born. He really just stood out on the farm.”
Ellicazoom is in foal to Exceed And Excel (Danehill).
Kitchwin Hills sold 12 weanlings at the sale for a total of $1.683 million.
“It’s such an amazing place to be, Australia at the moment, isn’t it? A lot of parts of the world are crippled by Covid and here we are buying horses like we would by houses,” Malone said.
“We brought a couple of Capitalists here and they have sold really well and we brought the I Am Invincible colt as well.
“I felt the market was going to be a bit like this off the back of the yearling sales, they often want to tip into these weanling sales.
“He was always such a proper weanling and forward enough to be here. Sometimes you do those things and they come back and bite you, but you have to be prepared to cop that. When people get good results, they will come back and buy another one off you.”
Arguably spurred, in part, by the Shadwell Stud Australasia dispersal sale on Thursday and Gilgai Farm presenting a sought-after draft of foals, led by the sale-topping $1 million I Am Invincible colt, some vendors are considering bringing more of their stock to the weanling market.
But Malone stopped short of adopting that approach on a permanent basis.
“One thing I have learned about this industry is try not to learn things from what happened the year before,” he said.
“If the market is running one way I tend to look the other way. I think you just tackle each year as it comes.
“We have still got a lot of babies at home, so it’s not like we are tipping in any more than we would.”
Not A Single Doubt attraction to $560,000 Zoustar colt for Maher
Trainer Ciaron Maher has been one of the key players behind the market shift at this week’s sale, paying $1 million for the sale-topping I Am Invincible colt on Thursday and adding a son of Zoustar (Northern Meteor) for $560,000 yesterday.
The high-priced Zoustar colt is the first foal out of the former Lindsay Park-trained Listed winner Fundamentalist (Not A Single Doubt) who won twice at two and would be placed at Group 1 level five times.
The Lot 362-catalogued colt was consigned by Segenhoe Stud on behalf of Aquis Farm, the majority owner of Fundamentalist alongside co-breeders Wes and Tanya Heritage.
“He is a beautiful animal. He is actually all Not A Single Doubt. He looked like a Not A Single Doubt. He isn’t a big horse, but he has a big action, plenty of quality, a big hip and he looks a real racehorse,” Segenhoe general manager Peter O’Brien said.
“For pinhooking, he looks like an ideal Magic Millions horse, but Ciaron’s obviously bought him to race.
“Ciaron’s a terrific judge, as we know, and the things he loves is a big action and nice width between his hind legs when he walks and this horse had everything.
“I think James Harron was the under bidder, which says everything.”
Auctioneer Clint Donovan called a $50,000 opening bid “to let everyone in” before one player went straight to $400,000 in the hope of knocking out their competition, but it failed to deter the interested parties.
A flurry of bids flowed from there, before Maher and his bloodstock manager Will Bourne landed the knockout blow at $560,000.
“He is out of a really tough racemare in Fundamentalist. She was a sparring partner for The Autumn Sun, having nabbed her in the J J Atkins and then again in the Randwick Guineas,” Maher said.
“She’s a daughter of Not A Single Doubt, who is a stallion that I love, and I have had a lot of success with.
“Zoustar is also flying at the moment and I was prepared to go a little bit longer on him, so I was rapt to get him.”
Maher’s success with the progeny of the pensioned Arrowfield Stud stallion Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice) includes Group-winning sprinters Anders and Dubious.
“I’ve bought a lot of horses out of Not A Single Doubt mares. Amish Boy (by Star Witness), who is racing at the moment and was third in the Newmarket Handicap, is out of a Not A Single Doubt mare.
“I’ve also had colts like Anders, by Not A Single Doubt, who is now set to go to stud himself.”
Maher, who also paid $200,000 for a Choisir (Danehill Dancer) colt from Gilgai Farm yesterday, reasoned that buying at the top end of the weanling market to secure racing prospects made sense, in that it gave him more time to manage the all-important education process.
“You can grow them out and don’t have to worry about the yearling preparation. You can concentrate solely on being a racehorse,” he said.
“You can break them in early, get them in the system … so I’ll be back here again. What anybody else may do, I can’t speak for them.
“But I feel the two horses we have got, even if we have had to stump up a bit, looking at the yearling market, they are pretty good value.”
O’Brien backed the trainers and owners’ decisions to play at an earlier market given the strength of the yearling sales this year.
“The yearling sales are through the roof and a lot of people missed out on high-priced horses and they’ve come in and picked the best of the best here and in their mind got value,” he said.
“The horse Ciaron bought could have easily been a seven-figure yearling. He’s by a champion stallion out of a terrific racemare with looks to match, so I assume in Ciaron’s eyes he’s got the horse at value, which I honestly think he has as an end user.”
‘You get what you pay for’: Frankel filly makes $530,000
Octogenarian Bruce Mackenzie, 83 next month, compared his latest high-priced investment in a young filly to a game of two-up on Anzac Day, but he has no qualms about his $530,000 spend on a daughter of Juddmonte’s champion sire Frankel (Galileo).
The former Port Stephens mayor, who races the ‘Oakfield’-named horses around NSW, bought the Coolmore-consigned filly, who is the first foal out of the European stakes-placed winning mare Iiex Excelsa (Excelebration), a half-sister to South African Grade 2 winner Gibraltar Blue (Rock Of Gibraltar), Group 3 winner Scream Blue Murder (Oratorio) and the stakes-placed Blue Cabochon (Holy Roman Emperor). She was catalogued as Lot 387.
Mackenzie’s acquisition comes three months after he bought a Zoustar filly for $450,000 at the Inglis Classic Yearling Sale.
“You get what you pay for. I didn’t pay $15,000 for her like some of them do. She has residual value and all she’s gotta do is win one race in Sydney and she’s worth double that, especially if it’s a stakes race,” Mackenzie said from the back of the Gold Coast sales ring soon after signing for the filly alongside his adviser Darren Smith.
“You only have to look at her – and she has the page. She was one of the nicest fillies here, I thought.
“She’s the same as that Zoustar filly I bought in Sydney. I liked that one and she’s at home getting broken in as we speak and she’s a magnificent animal.
“You’ve got a chance if you buy those types. I like to pay that for the good stuff and play two-up on Anzac Day because that’s what it’s like: heads or tails.”
The filly was last night on her way to Mackenzie’s farm where she will be allowed to grow out. Despite the filly’s tag, Mackenzie will maintain his patient approach in educating her.
“She won’t get broken in until this time next year. She will be handled and looked after. When I take her home tonight she will munch in the paddock, have two weeks in the stable, go on the walker and back out again,” he said.
“My horses, when you see them at the barriers, they never ever not go into the barriers because I teach them to go in from the time they are foals.”
Coolmore backs its popular sire So You Think
A “standout colt” with a deep international pedigree by So You Think (High Chaparral) was always going to be high on the radar of Coolmore and, so it proved, when its international sales manager Mick Flanagan signed for the $475,000 weanling by the stud’s ten-time Group 1 winner.
Bred by Erinvale Thoroughbreds’ John Kenneally, the colt is the fourth live foal out of US-bred mare Bobine (Giant’s Causeway) who is already the dam of three winning foals led by Sydney Group 2 winner Reelem In Ruby (Pierro).
By Australia’s most popular sire of 2020 when covering 261 mares, the So You Think colt is also from a strong US family, with his dam’s half-sister the champion turf filly Possibly Perfect (Northern Baby), herself the dam of Grade 3-winning sire Promontory Gold (Gone West). He was catalogued as Lot 285.
“He’s been a standout since we got here (and saw him). He’s a good moving horse, obviously by a very, very good stallion who is going to get better as the years go by,” said Flanagan, who revealed the colt could be reoffered as a yearling.
“He has good size, good strength and he has great depth and a great action. Conformationally, he is very straight forward. He’s going to be an easy horse to mind we hope.
“He came highly recommended by John Kenneally, who we get on well with, and have done a lot of business with over the years. He’s just a horse that we just had to have.”
Flanagan outlasted Tony Fung Racing bloodstock consultant Shane McGrath to buy the colt.
“From the time he was born he was a fantastic looking animal and I always thought we’d target this sale with him,” vendor John Kenneally of Erinvale Thoroughbreds said.
“We try to bring the best foals here and he sold accordingly. He made a bit more than what I thought (he would), but he was extremely popular all week. He’s the busiest horse I’ve ever had at a sale – everyone loved him.
“All the big players were on him.”
Kenneally paid just US$20,000 for the twice raced Bobine at the 2011 Keeneland November Breeding Sale and, ten years later, received his biggest return from his overseas venture.
“I bought the mare in Kentucky in 2011 for US$20,000 and what it doesn’t say in the book is that her half-sister Possibly Perfect won seven Grade 1s,” he said.
“She was an out-and-out champion, her half-sister, and we know how good Giant’s Causeway is as a broodmare sire.
“I was lucky I was there when the market was a bit soft in Kentucky in 2010, 2011, and I bought half a dozen mares over those two years and they have been very good for us. They’ve been successful.”
Irishman Flanagan was in awe of what the Australian bloodstock market had achieved so far this year.
“There’s loads of people here and it’s holding up quite well and so it should. It bodes well for the season ahead,” he said.
“Our own nominations department up at Jerrys Plains are very, very busy, especially with the new horse King’s Legacy, people are absolutely loving him.
“Confidence is good here and people are happy to participate and continue to re-invest. It’s very positive.”
Rosemont strikes again
Rosemont Stud was also back in action on the buying front yesterday, adding a Written Tycoon (Iglesia) colt for $510,000 and an Exceed And Excel (Danehill) filly for $310,000 to the Victorian farm’s growing bloodstock portfolio.
On Thursday, Rosemont Stud bought colts by Zoustar ($700,000) and Fastnet Rock (Danehill) ($600,000) with agent Justin Bahen and a Pride Of Dubai (Street Cry) colt for $40,000 with Redwall Management’s Hannah Wall, who undertook two weeks of hotel quarantine to attend the Gold Coast sale.
The Written Tycoon colt is the second foal out of Listed winner Hell Or Highwater (Not A Single Doubt) and was one of 18 foals Woodside Park Stud parted with for a combined $2.845 million.
Rosemont Stud principal Anthony Mithen said: “He was a very nice colt. We ranked him almost the best physical colt in the place.
“He’s got such strength, he’s got a hindquarter like a bus on him. He was a beautiful colt. We are pretty excited by him.”
Sale results – Book 1 overall
2021 2019
Catalogued 417 686
Offered 340 565
Sold 302 (89%) 439 (78%)
Aggregate $31,724,500 (+14%) $27,876,000
Average $105,048 (+66%) $63,499
Median $52,250 (+44%) $36,000
Top Lot $1 million $480,000