Graduate success means Inglis Ready2Race Sale is hard to forget
Hutch optimistic about competitive Riverside Stables marketplace ahead of today’s two-year-old auction
Inglis is banking on the racetrack deeds of past graduates of the Ready2Race Sale both in Australia and overseas to help garner domestic and international buyer support at this year’s auction, the first of three southern hemisphere companies to hold a two-year-old market over the next month.
Today’s Ready2Race Sale, comprising 126 horses to go under the hammer, has the benefit of last year’s graduates Gunstock (Tavistock) and Forgot You (Savabeel) being first and second favourite for Saturday’s Victoria Derby (Gr 1, 2500m).
Juvenile stakes winners Lightsaber (Zoustar) and See You In Spring (Siyouni) also emerged from last year’s sale which, like 2021, will be held with the now dissipating cloud of Covid-19 hanging overhead.
NSW agents, syndicators and trainers, as well as some of their Victorian peers, have been at Inglis’s Riverside Stables in Sydney over the past few days inspecting the horses, such as Bjorn Baker, James Harron, Grand Syndicates’ Sam Lyons, Darby Racing, Merrick Staunton, father-and-son Bill and James Mitchell and Peter Morgan.
Inglis general manager of bloodstock sales and marketing Sebastian Hutch was yesterday “pleased with the level of engagement” from the marketplace and remained “cautiously optimistic about the sale”.
“The sale 12 months ago had genuine momentum going into it on the back of the success of a number of graduates. Trumbull won the Sydney Stakes the weekend before the sale; Wishful Thinker won in Hong Kong; Nettoyer was a dual Group 1 winner,” Hutch told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“There was ever-growing confidence that you could source high-class horses out of this sale and I think that emboldened local investors to participate in the sale and certainly those who did were rewarded with plenty of nice horses to inspect and buy and there’s been good results out of it (in 2020) and I think it will be very much the same this year.”
Given a number of agents and trainers who normally would be at the complex have again been sidelined this year due to the closure of international and state border closures, the relationships established between vendors and buyers over a number of years will be called up.
JCS Thoroughbreds’ Shaun Nolen, who worked alongside his father Tal for about 15 years, has been operating under his own banner for the past three years and he has already been sounded out by buyers for his advice ahead of the sale.
“When you have been doing it for so long you build up trust with them; you know everyone and they come to you for advice on a horse here or there. I have a good rapport with the buyers,” said Nolen, the brother of top jockey, Luke.
Nolen’s JCS Thoroughbreds has a draft of 11 including a Denman (Lonhro) colt who breezed up in 10.45 seconds at Seymour, the fastest of his draft, and sons of Merchant Navy (Fastnet Rock), Sebring (More Than Ready) and Heroic Valour (Fastnet Rock), who has already sired three first-crop winners in Queensland in just three weeks.
Fellow vendor Matt Vella of Glenn Haven Thoroughbreds could have one of the sale’s banner horses among his draft, a Deep Field (Northern Meteor) colt out of Red Hot Chillies (Red Ransom), which breezed up in 10.34 seconds at Hawkesbury.
“There are a few I could single out but the Deep Field-Red Hot Chillies colt I feel is the best horse in the sale. He is just a lovely colt, he’s got a nice page and he breezed well with plenty in hand,” said Vella, who recently joined the Annabel Neasham stable following Sir Owen Glenn’s decision to sell his training facility at Hawkesbury.
Vella, acting for clients, sold eight juveniles last year, including a Capitalist (Written Tycoon) gelding to Hong Kong owner Bon Ho for $550,000, the second highest-priced lot of the Ready2Race Sale.
“Out of last year’s sale half of the draft have raced and they’re all winners. One went to Hong Kong who is about to have a trial over there, so I think people can expect quality when they look at the breezes and look at the horses.
“A big thing I learnt from last year was that if they didn’t have a page, look the part and have clean X-rays or breeze well, you just don’t bring them here.”
Inglis, as do counterparts Magic Millions and New Zealand Bloodstock, canvass the Hong Kong market heavily in order to encourage buyers from that wealthy jurisdiction and Hutch is confident they will be active today when bidding gets under way at 11am AEDT.
“Wishful Thinker (has been performing well) and Super Wealthy won a really good sprint a month ago and is on track for the International Sprint in December and this sale consistently produces winners and multiple winners in Hong Kong, so we have been at pains to stress that to the market,” Hutch said.
“Buyers, particularly from that part of the world, play their cards very close to their chest but there’s been good vetting activity in the repository from vets we traditionally associate with buyers from up there.”
It is no secret that fellow racing stronghold Singapore has been in decline and it also lost one of its biggest owners earlier this year when Krit Chittaseni, a regular attendee at the Australasian sales, died suddenly in May, while the importation of horses to China has also been in abeyance.
However, Hutch hopes to counteract the probable lack of interest from those countries by attracting buyers from other regions.
“Singapore, given the circumstances up there, is likely to be softer than usual, but our Chinese representative Jin Tian is based in Macau for the sale and that’s an advantage,” he said.
“There was strong participation last year and hopefully there will be again.
“The importation of horses to mainland China has really been a non-event for an extended period of time, which is going to suppress their involvement, but we are hopeful that we can have some interest from the Philippines or Malaysia, some of the smaller South East Asia jurisdictions.
“I think we’re pretty confident that there will be good international participation in the sale.”
Pinhook Bloodstock’s Dave Mee, who on Saturday enjoyed the success of yearling purchase Flying Mascot’s (Tavistock) Tesio Stakes (Gr 3, 1600m) victory at Moonee Valley, is a fan of the two-year-old sales market.
“I think it provides a wonderful opportunity because you can see their actions and their temperament,” Mee said.
“It’s hard to read the room but with the number of withdrawals and the number of people on the sales grounds and the types that I have seen, I think there’s some nice horses here and I will certainly be having a crack at a couple for different clients.”