Group 1 winner Amarelinha joins Cambridge Stud broodmare band
Almanzor singled out as maiden mating for Oaks heroine after selling for NZ$1.1 million
New Zealand Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Amarelinha will join the broodmare band of Cambridge Stud after Brendan and Jo Lindsay outlaid NZ$1.1 million through a Gavelhouse auction for the daughter of champion sire Savabeel (Zabeel), bringing an end to the exodus of the country’s best mares to Australia.
After missing out on another Te Akau-raced Group 1-winning mare Entriviere (Tavistock) earlier this month to Victoria’s Yulong Stud, the Lindsays were determined to access the potent Waikato Stud pedigree that Amarelinha possesses.
Trained by Jamie Richards to win the New Zealand Oaks following three stakes wins earlier in her three-year-old season, Amarelinha also ran fourth behind Hungry Heart (Frankel) in the Australian Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) in April last year.
She raced twice this spring for returned Te Akau Racing trainer Mark Walker, finishing down the track on both occasions, prompting the decision to retire the elite mare.
“Obviously those signature mares – we had a crack at Entreviere and we missed out – have really strong New Zealand families and Amarelinha is actually from one of Waikato Stud’s better families, there’s some lovely females in there working hard for that family, and most of those mares are quite young, too, so we hope there’d be a bit of upside,” Cambridge Stud chief executive Henry Plumptre told ANZ Bloodstock News last night.
“I thought she was probably unlucky in Australia. Going to Wellington probably cost her the Australian Oaks, that’s my view. At Randwick that day, she still ran fourth, coming from well back.
“She was very talented and when you put her with the group of mares that we’re putting together, such as [champion mare] Probabeel, it’s great for the broodmare brand and it’s good for the [Cambridge Stud)] brand.”
Amarelinha will be covered by Cambridge Stud’s exciting young shuttle stallion Almanzor (Wootton Bassett), whose oldest southern hemisphere-breds are three-year-olds, a crop which includes Karaka Million (RL, 1200m) winner and Group 1-placed colt Dynastic and the stakes-placed pair Andalus and Virtuous Circle.
“We’ve really thrown most of our big guns at him because we’ve got a lot of faith in him,” Plumptre said of Almanzor who is on the Cambridge Stud roster alongside fellow shuttler Hello Youmzain (Kodiac), Embellish (Savabeel) and Sword Of State (Snitzel).
“He’s got some lovely horses stepping out this year and I think we’d be crazy not to do it [continuing our support].
“We had to give Australia a really good run for its money a couple of years ago [2019] because we had that terrible year when we lost three stallions [Roaring Lion, Tavistock and Burgundy] and we really heavily supported the Australian stallions.
“But having got Hello Youmzain on board and looking at Almanzor’s first and second crop, we’ve got to back our own stallions with these good mares and she’ll be a good fit for him.
“She’s got no Danehill in the pedigree, which is fantastic, and that means she can go to Hello Youmzain next year. I think she’ll fit very well with our broodmare band.”
Te Akau Racing principal David Ellis, who purchased Amarelinha for NZ$300,000 from the 2019 New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale, was pleased that the mare had been bought by the Lindsays.
“It is just fantastic that she’s staying in New Zealand and that makes me very proud and it’s just terrific that she’s going to go to Almanzor as well,” Ellis told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“Almanzor had three winners last week and he’s a stallion really going places. We’ve got a lot in the stable by him and we just love them all.”
While it is believed Yulong bid on the five-year-old mare to a level, Cambridge Stud had to outlast an agent acting for Australian interests to ensure Amarelinha remained in New Zealand.
Cambridge Stud was one of two Kiwi investors attempting to buy her above her NZ$900,000 reserve and three Australian parties also showed their hand once she was on the market.
“When I was at Godolphin we used to ship some of our better Australian families over to England and America and they performed very well, so I think those signature Group 1 mares who have won Group 1 races in Australia and New Zealand, they have currency wherever they are, but it is very important for the New Zealand industry, which is emerging from a pretty tough time, to try and keep as many of these signature mares in the country as we can,” Plumptre said.
“That’s not denying Yulong [or other Australian interests] a mare of her quality or that we want to beat them every time as we want them to be successful as much as we want Cambridge to be successful.
“Investors like [Yulong’s] Mr Zhang are critically important to our industry and he’s been a massive investor this year, but it’s been good to be able to step into the market and win every now and again.”
A winner of five of her 16 starts and NZ$627,535 in prize-money, Amarelinha is out of the unraced Hopscotch (O’Reilly), herself a sister to the dam of Sydney Group 3 winner Missybeel (Savabeel) and a three-quarter sister to Up In Lights, the dam of Newgate Farm’s Group 3-winning stallion North Pacific (Brazen Beau).
The Savabeel-O’Reilly cross has produced 133 winners from 182 runners, 23 of them at stakes level including Group 1 winner Mo’unga, an entire who will stand at Newhaven Park in NSW next season.
Savabeel, who claimed his eighth consecutive New Zealand champion sire title last season, recently turned 21. As a broodmare sire, Savabeel has produced 17 stakes winners, notably Group 1-winning sprinter Savatoxl (Kuroshio) and last year’s ATC Flight Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Never Been Kissed (Tivaci).
“She is one of the best types of Savabeels that I’ve ever seen at the yearling sales. I went back through my catalogue notes and she was one we had to buy,” Ellis said.
“She was an absolutely stunning yearling and one of the nicest types of racehorses we’ve ever had in the stable and her race record tells you that.
“She’s won from 1300 metres to 2400 metres, she has the famous cross, Savabeel out of an O’Reilly mare, and so we are just over the moon [with the result].”
Another Te Akau mare Avantage (Fastnet Rock) sold to Coolmore for an online world record NZ$4.1 million through Gavelhouse last year while Yulong paid NZ$1.75 for Baggy Green (Galileo) through the New Zealand Bloodstock online sales platform earlier this year.
Fourteen-time Group 1 winner Melody Belle (Commands), who was trained by Te Akau, was also sold to Yulong at the 2021 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale for $2.6 million.
“We have had a huge result with Gavelhouse, starting with Avantage who made $4.1 million, a world-record price, and I take my hat off to everybody at New Zealand Bloodstock, they’ve just done an incredible job promoting this mare as well,” Ellis said.