Opportunities in abundance at the Inglis HBTA Sale
The next Rocketing By (So You Think) or Monegal (Lope De Vega) is waiting to be unearthed amid more than 200 lots at tomorrow’s Inglis HBTA Yearling Sale at Riverside.
Formerly the Scone sale, HTBA has built a strong reputation over many years for hatching well performed racehorses at bargain prices, with last year’s average just $20,550, a slight drop from $25,033 the year before.
A total of 224 lots have been catalogued for the sale, which starts at 10am, by stallions including Dundeel (High Chaparral), Maurice (Screen Hero), So You Think (High Chaparral), Russian Revolution (Snitzel), Street Boss (Street Cry), Tassort (Brazen Beau), Written By (Written Tycoon) and first season sires King’s Legacy (Redoute’s Choice) and Bivouac (Exceed And Excel).
The sale’s recent star graduates have included Rocketing By, bought at the 2019 edition for $22,000 before earning more than $2.7 million in prize-money so far, Group 3 scorer Monegal, purchased for just $3,000 before a ten-win career where she netted $687,000, and Tintookie (Winning Rupert), a Group 3 winner of $494,500 who cost $30,000.
Graduates are eligible for the $12.55 million Inglis Race Series which includes Randwick’s $2 million Inglis Millennium (RL, 1100m), Flemington’s $1 million Inglis Sprint (1200m), the $5 million Inglis Xtra Bonus and the lucrative female ownership incentive, the $1 million Inglis Pink Bonus.
HTBA is also among a select series of sales from which graduates are eligible for the $200,000 Inglis Challenge (1100m) for two-year-olds on Scone Cup Day.
In 2020 the race was won by The Bopper (Nicconi), the $30,000 HTBA buy who’s won a little over $540,000 so far. This year, the market looks set to be dominated by the Mark Minervini-trained Shall Be (Shalaa), an $8,000 HBTA purchase who won his second start at Newcastle on Wednesday.
Inglis’s CEO of bloodstock sales Sebastian Hutch said hopes were high for a robust HTBA sale, particular after last Sunday’s similarly-ranking Inglis Gold sale in Melbourne, where the average of $19,141 and median of $14,000 through 64 sold lots were significantly up from $14,681 and $8,000 in 2023, through 133 yearlings sold.
“This sale provides an important opportunity for vendors to bring their stock to market, and comes hot on the heels of the Gold sale, which posted results far better than pre-sale expectations,” Hutch told ANZ Bloodstock News. “Any time you can shift a median price as happened at Gold, it’s a good sign.
“That’s not to say that the Gold results would distort any perspective going into a sale like this, but it was encouraging to see the nature of the demand that was at that level.
“This is a significantly bigger catalogue than the Gold sale, but at this juncture interest in the sale seems solid, although the expectation is that people will continue to be very selective in their choices, and buyers will need to be of an inclination to meet the market.
“Year after year, HTBA produces not just good racing results but trading results, with people buying from here having consistently good results at our Ready2Race sale in October.
“If people walk away from this sale able to purchase another horse like Rocketing By, they’d be delighted.”