‘This year it feels like something of a perfect storm’
Widden Stud flagbearer Zoustar (Northern Meteor) roared into action with two of the top three lots of the day – capped by a $2.6 million filly bought by American John Stewart – as a wildly successful, record-breaking Inglis Easter Yearling Sale concluded at Riverside on Monday.
Bidding over the phone from Kentucky, Stewart of Resolute Racing beat heavyweight rival Coolmore for Monday’s top yearling, and third–highest of the sale, a filly bred and sold by Zoustar’s home stud Widden.
The supremely built filly is the second foal of Listed winner The Actuary (Sebring), herself a half-sister to star mare Zougotcha (Zoustar), who Widden bred and co-raced through a career yielding three Group 1s. She’s expected to be trained by Ciaron Maher.
Zoustar – who also sired three of Monday’s top six yearlings – had the session’s third-top seller when Little Avondale Stud’s colt out of Group 3 winner Belluci Babe (Per Incanto) sold for $1.7 million to Hong Kong trainer Douglas Whyte and owner Sam Wright.
Between them was I Am Invincible’s (Invincible Spirit) most expensive lot at the sale, a colt out of a half-sister to Winx (Street Cry), sold by the great mare’s breeder John Camilleri through Segenhoe Stud’s draft, and bought by Coolmore’s Tom Magnier for $1.8 million. The colt will be prepared by Winx’s trainer Chris Waller.
It came as Australasia’s elite sale closed with a range of eye-popping numbers – including a record Easter average – emphatically defying not only fears at the start of the year of a downturn, but more recent economic tremors sparked by stock market slumps in the wake of US president Donald Trump’s new tariffs.
Soon after Monday’s close of bidding, the average was $451,913 – smashing last year’s record of $426,447.
The gross stood at $150 million, only down $1.8 million on 2024 despite only 332 lots being sold – 24 fewer than last year – and the fact last year’s sale was drastically inflated by the sale of Winx’s daughter for $10 million.
With a smaller catalogue – 421 compared with 500 – helping drive up demand, the clearance rate was an extremely robust 86 per cent, up from a final figure of 80 per cent 12 months ago.
And the median of $360,000 represented a huge increase on last year’s $300,000.
A total of 25 million-dollar lots were sold – up from 18 last year and the third–highest in Easter history – to 17 different entities. While that fell short of the record of 28 in 2008, it was slightly higher as a percentage of lots moved – 7.5 per cent compared to 7.4.
Inglis bloodstock CEO Sebastian Hutch said the bumper results were due to a range of reasons, but one in particular.
“We worked bloody hard at it,” he said. “It’s very much a case of reward for effort on a variety of levels.
“Through the spring, we worked hard to encourage people to support the sale with quality stock. Australasian vendors have a huge variety of options as to where they sell quality yearlings. We promote this sale as the best sale at which to sell quality stock and ultimately there’s an onus on us to back that up.
“This year in particular, we wanted to demonstrate to the market definitively that this is the best sale at which to sell quality stock, and I think we’ve done that emphatically.”
He added: “It’s incomprehensible how much better this sale has been than any other sale this year.
“Premier was the only other sale whose metrics are up for the year, and outside of [Easter and Premier], Classic is the best performing sale of the year. They’re three Inglis sales. They’re a reflection of the fact that we’re working harder, we’re more invested in our clients’ outcomes, and hopefully that gives people confidence to do business with us.”
Hutch said the Easter sale’s allure had also been enhanced by timely recent performances of star graduates in three-year-olds Lady Shenandoah (Snitzel), Autumn Glow (The Autumn Sun) and Switzerland (Snitzel), and older topliners including Overpass (Vancouver) and Joliestar (Zoustar).
“This year it feels like something of a perfect storm where graduates have performed to an exceptionally high standard,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve changed any approach. It’s just that it’s worked out particularly well for us.”
Hutch wasn’t inclined to believe a catalogue as small as this year’s was necessarily the right recipe for the future, saying the “urgency of demand” caused its streamlined size but that results could have been sustained with some 30 more horses in the book.
Arrowfield’s remarkable 22-year-old Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) emerged with leading stallion honours by his average of $718,387 and aggregate of $22.27 million, through 31 lots sold, ahead of Zoustar ($644,138 / $18.68m / 29) and I Am Invincible ($598,600 / $14.96m / 25).
Magnier’s purchases made Coolmore the sale’s leading buyer, with $10.4 million spent on seven lots, ahead of Dean Hawthorne Bloodstock ($7.1m on nine lots), Chris Waller/Mulcaster Bloodstock ($6.2m on nine lots), and Waterhouse-Bott-Kestrel Thoroughbreds ($5.8m on eight lots).
Arrowfield ended as leading vendor by aggregate, selling 39 horses for a gross of $22.1 million, ahead of Coolmore, whose 33 sold lots grossed $17.8 million, and Widden (18 sold for $13.2m).
Widden topped the charts by average (for three or more lots sold), at $734,167, ahead of Tyreel Stud (three sold at $713,333), New Zealand’s Trelawney Stud (three sold at $625,000), and Yulong (six at $600,000).
It was Zoustar who stole the show on day two, particularly with Stewart’s Lot 217, who’ll likely join his handful of horses in the Maher stable.
Widden owner Antony Thompson was delighted with the sale, and the Easter returns overall for Zoustar, who’s closing in on top spot on the Australian general sires’ table as he pursues his first champion sire title, and may have earned a service fee bump from last year’s $275,000.
“The Actuary filly has been a star from day one,” Thompson said. “This week, she’s hardly seen her box. She’s had 260 parades, vets have been all over her from all parts of the world. She had that x-factor and international appeal.
“We were thrilled to see John Stewart buy her. He’s been a major investor globally and for him in his model to try to pick the finest bloodstock in the world, to buy this filly off us is a real thrill and something we’re really proud of.”
Zoustar’s second-top seller – Lot 297, the $1.7 million colt out of Belluci Babe – brought an emotional moment for New Zealand breeder Sam Williams of Little Avondale Stud.
The colt’s eighth dam was Haggada (Rabbi) – a 1933 throw who was the first yearling sold by Williams’ grandmother Nancy Williams, Little Avondale’s founder.
Williams, who runs the Masterton stud with wife Catriona, teared up when recounting that and some other family history.
His father Buzz Williams sold the southern hemisphere’s first $100,000 yearling, TJ Smith Stakes winner Gold Pulse (Oncidium) in 1974. Also, Bart Cummings named his stables Leilani Lodge after the great mare he bought from Little Avondale two years earlier.
“The fact this colt goes back to my grandmother’s first ever yearling that she sold, means this is very satisfying,” Williams said.
“My father sold the first ever $100,000 yearling in Australasia, and now for us to sell a million-dollar yearling is just everything.”
Williams bred Belluci Babe, by his stud’s flagbearer Per Incanto (Street Cry), and raced her with partners out of the stables of Bjorn Baker, a furlong or two from Riverside.
“She won at her first start, then Bjorn was locking up for the night and heard a large bang,” he said. “He checked it out and here’s poor Belluci upside down with her leg stuck through the bars. It could have been all over there. Fortunately they were able to cut her out and the rest is history.
“She was a great horse on the track, then we decided to keep her here and go to Zoustar. It’s always been a stud policy to send maiden mares to a proven stallion. You go to one of the best ones you can afford, and Zoustar was that boy, and the result has been just magnificent.”
The colt will be prepared by Liam Howley, but will likely be bound for Hong Kong.
Paying tribute to his team at Widden, Thompson was also thrilled by Zoustar’s third-highest sale of the auction.
Lot 198, a full-brother out of Group 2 winner Summer Sham (Not A Single Doubt) to last month’s William Reid Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) hero Schwarz, fell to colts speculators James Harron and Tony Fung for $1.4 million. In a phrase not often seen these days, the underbidders were Yulong.
“He’s a stunning Zoustar colt,” Thompson said. “To see James Harron and Tony Fung team up and fight really hard to beat Yulong was also a massive thrill. For him to make $1.4 million really vindicates everything Zoustar’s doing and what we’re doing.”
It was Harron and Fung’s second million-dollar baby in two days, after on Sunday teaming with Waterhouse-Bott to buy Segenhoe’s colt by Snitzel out of La Mexicana (I Am Invincible) for $1.7 million.
“He was a horse we all loved as a team right from the beginning when he walked out of his box at the complex,” Harron said.
“He looks like a forward type of Zoustar – good brain, very good middle, just a real muscular horse. Everything about him was quite racy and fast-twitchy. It’s a very exciting, happening family.”
Monday’s second top yearling – Segenhoe’s I Am Invincible colt from Winx’s maiden-winning half-sister Covent Garden (Exceed And Excel) – will go to Waller after Coolmore paid $1.8 million to secure him.
Lot 333 became the second major seller for Segenhoe Stud – following that Snitzel-La Mexicana colt. This time, Harron was the underbidder.
“He was a colt who was always a stand-out from day one,” said Segenhoe’s Brian Clarke.
“The day he was born he was a beautiful horse. He has that real I Am Invincible quality, a beautiful head, great colour, and physically very impressive. We hoped he’d be a million-dollar horse. To make $1.8 million exceeded all expectations.”
Two Snitzel colts were the equal-fourth top lots of the day – both bought for $1.5 million by Magnier. Lot 374 was Tyreel Stud’s son of the Listed-placed five-time winner Festival Miss (Bernardini), while Lot 195 was an Arrowfield colt whose second dam was a three-quarter sister to the great racehorse and sire Dubawi (Dubai Millennium).
Equal-sixth on $1.4 million, along with the Zoustar-Summer Sham colt, was a colt from Yarraman Park’s draft by Coolmore’s Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj), also bought by Magnier. He’ll also go to Waller.
“Coolmore, Chris Waller – tick, tick, tick,” said Yarraman’s Harry Mitchell.
“Coolmore are great for the game. They send a lot of mares to [Yarraman’s] I Am Invincible, they’re great supporters of ours, we’re delighted they’ve got the colt and Chris Waller is one of the great trainers.
“He was always a lovely scopey Wootton Bassett with a big international pedigree. We thought Easter was his spot and we’re delighted with the sale.”
Mitchell observed the Easter sale had appeared impervious to severe stock market downturns in recent days in response to US president Donald Trump’s tariff-a-thon.
“There’s a bit of a stock market dip at the moment,” he said. “The horse market is incredibly resilient. It’s strong, and there’s lots of people here who want to invest in good bloodstock. Markets are like everything. It’ll go back up again.”
Asked how Trump’s tariffs might affect Australian bloodstock, Mitchell said Europe would be far worse affected.
“There’s not a huge trade from here to America, so it probably doesn’t have the same effect on us that it would in Europe,” he said. “I imagine that in Britain and Ireland they’d be a bit concerned.”