McNulty ready to party after terrific Inglis triumph
Expat Irishman Eamon McNulty of Victorian farm Erin Park Lodge is gearing up for a party.
His youngest daughter Mary-Claire will be married this weekend. And yesterday, with impeccable timing, he completed a stunning bit of business at the Inglis Easter sale.
Having bought the New Zealand mare Royal Raine (Thorn Park) with a Shamus Award (Snitzel) filly foal on her 18 months ago for just $37,500, the now-yearling filly was sold yesterday for $440,000. Adding still more Irish flavour, she went to Shamus’s former trainer, Danny O’Brien.
“It’s come along at a great time – It’ll pay for my daughter’s wedding,” McNulty told ANZ. “It’s just as well, because there’s no such thing as a small Irish wedding. This might go for five days.”
McNulty, a 71-year-old retired property developer still blessed with a thick County Down accent despite 50 years in Australia, had wanted to buy a Shamus Award colt.
“I backed him the day he won the Cox Plate. I was at Moonee Valley that day, so I always liked him. And as a sire, around 2020, he was just starting to hit his straps,” he said of the father of Incentivise, Duais and more.
Inglis bloodstock consultant Will Stott knew McNulty was on the lookout for a colt. But when Royal Raine – who raced only twice for a win and a second – was entered along with her foal for the company’s digital sale in November 2020, he tipped the Traralgon-based breeder in.
A deal was done, remarkably cheaply as it’s transpired: Royal Raine’s first living foal debuted two months later, and is now the triple stakes-placed Maher-Eustace three-year-old filly Decent Raine (Dissident).
“She was a nice enough little filly at first, but then she just kept improving and improving. So I owe Will a big thanks for alerting me,” said McNulty, reporting Royal Raine was now in foal to surging sire Toronado (High Chaparral).
“I had been thinking of taking her to Melbourne Premier so to get her into Easter, and get that price for her, we’re over the moon.”
After the filly sold through Tyreel Stud’s draft, O’Brien was similarly pleased to own one of the more impressive yearlings by his former Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) winner, whose progeny are perhaps more renowned for engines than aesthetics.
“We obviously had a lot to do with Shamus, having trained him and a lot of his stock, and I thought she was one of the more attractive yearlings he’s had at a sale,” O’Brien said. “He’s probably not a horse who gets the big shiny yearlings, but he’s a horse who gets the really good racehorses, which is probably what you’d prefer from a stallion.
“His yearlings are a bit immature, and don’t really grow into themselves until they’re late two-year-olds or three-year-olds, so when they’re yearlings they’re still a bit backward to look at. But this was a very attractive filly.
“The mare’s already produced a stakes horse. She’s a young mare, and hopefully she’s got a few more nice ones to come, and this filly will be one of them.”
Meanwhile, B2B Thoroughbreds sold their first and last progeny of million-dollar mare Savanna Amour (Love Conquers All) when a filly by Fastnet Rock (Danehill) was knocked down to New Zealand’s Cambridge Stud for $600,000.
A five-time stakes winner, Savanna Amour was sold – again in foal to Fastnet Rock – to Coolmore Stud last year for $1.25 million. She’s subsequently had a colt foal and is now in foal to I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit).
“She’s always been a stand-out filly from this crop. She’s progressed really well, she had a lot of strength and presence, and she just prepped up beautifully,” said B2B’s operations manager Kelly Stevenson. “We’re very pleased she’s going to a good home in Cambridge.”