‘If you present quality to a market like this, more often than not you’re going to get well paid for it’

Buyers’ appetite to reinvest in a bloodstock market despite trepidation about what the wider picture may look like over the next 12 months helped push the Inglis Australian Weanling Sale to a record turnover.

After a strong opening session Monday, in which the five highest-priced weanlings were sold, led by a A$575,000 (£303,000/€353,000) I Am Invincible filly, day two’s smaller offering saw sustained demand for high-quality foals for pinhooking and end-user purposes. 

The sale’s aggregate was up 25 per cent year-on-year, closing on Tuesday at a record A$16,164,000, while the average was up five per cent at A$55,167 with a healthy clearance rate of 79 per cent.

A day after a colt by Swettenham Stud’s leading sire Toronado sold for A$260,000, another colt by the now permanent Victoria-based stallion sold for A$320,000 on day two, the second session’s most expensive weanling.

The Lustre Lodge-consigned colt, the second foal out of Deep Field mare Atomic Pulse, screams “Asia” being by the same sire as Hong Kong Jockey Club Century Sprint Cup winner Victor The Winner, dual Sha Tin Group 3 winner and dual Group 1-placed Senor Toba and Hong Kong Classic Mile winner Helios Express.

The progeny of the now pensioned Deep Field are also highly sought after by Hong Kong buyers, being the sire of Group 1 winners Sky Field and Voyage Bubble, so his appearance as the broodmare sire would no doubt be part of the consideration for the Toronado colt’s buyer.

Lustre Lodge’s Paige Churcher was delighted with the result, which well and truly exceeded the vendor’s expectations.

Churcher said: “What an unreal result. He’s a colt we brought here thinking we could get A$100,000, maybe A$120,000 for, because he’s a beautiful moving colt by a sire that’s really on fire so we’re absolutely rapt.

“Honestly, I was just hoping I could get reserve back on him, so we’re just ecstatic. He’s gone ahead in leaps and bounds and hopefully the end users get a great result as well.”

The colt is out of the placed Atomic Pulse, a filly whose racecourse career was brought to a premature end.

“We raced the mare, Kris Lees trained her and thought she had a lot of ability, but she had a tendon injury, so we added her to the broodmare band and now we’re here,” said Churcher.

“He was very well found here all week, he did over 200 inspections and he just handled it all like a true professional.” 

Swettenham Stud last week announced that Toronado’s 2024 service fee would remain unchanged at A$88,000 (inc GST).

Meanwhile, Fernrigg Farm’s Padraig Kelly’s early introduction to Coolmore’s much-vaunted first-season sire Home Affairs left a positive impression and he and wife Rae-Louise were keen to up their exposure to the first-crop weanlings by the dual Group 1-winning sprinter.

Home Affairs: first weanlings by the dual Group 1 winner have impressedCredit: Edward Whitaker

With two Home Affairs fillies growing out on their new Denman property, the Kellys paid A$260,000 for a colt by the impressive stallion at Riverside Stables on Tuesday.

The fifth foal out the stakes-placed four-time winner Extra Olives and a great grandson of champion three-year-old filly Alinghi, the Home Affairs colt’s price tag also ensures that the highly touted stallion has the honour of having the highest-priced weanling sold this week by a first-season sire.

Padraig Kelly said: “Home Affairs, being a first-season sire, is the one they’re all looking at. We’ve got a couple of nice fillies at home [by the stallion], so hopefully he’ll complement them when we present them at a yearling sale next year.

“We’ve got our new farm now, so we’ll get him home and see how he flourishes over the winter months and make a decision in September about where to send him.

“He has such great size, strength and a nice head on him with a lovely hip and shoulder. He is also a beautiful mover.”

Coolmore Australia’s bloodstock and racing manager John Kennedy was “absolutely thrilled” with the way the Home Affairs colt was received by the market.

Kennedy said: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I gather he is the leading price for a first-season sire this sale. He’s a very nice colt, was on all the lists this week, all the right people were on him and he’s gone to a great home with Padraig and Rae-Louise.

“[Home Affairs] has been full every season since he’s been to stud, we’ve heavily supported him with some of our best mares . . . and we have very high aspirations for him. He really looks like he’s well on his way to reaching those heights.”

Kelly has also been impressed by the line of horses thrown by Home Affairs so far.

The Fernrigg principal and veterinarian said: “He has put real quality into them, like his sire I Am Invincible. He’s really stamped them and I think he upgrades your mare.”

Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch felt the scheduling of the sale four weeks after the Australian Easter Yearling Sale, instead of three, had proved beneficial.

“It felt like there’s been really good trade for nice horses, but there’s no disguising the fact that there’s a significant disparity between the ‘wants’ and the ‘do-not-wants’ and those horses that find themselves out of favour, so to speak, can be bought at a significant discount on probably what they’ve cost breeders to produce,” said Hutch.

“Like we said after the Gold sale and the HTBA yearling sale, there are probably some breeders with tough decisions to make with how they manage their breeding portfolio, but what I think the past few days has illustrated is that if you present quality to a market like this, more often than not you’re going to get well paid for it.”

Hutch said indications were that there was still demand for weanlings from buyers heading into rival Magic Millions’ foal sale and Inglis’ Great Southern Sale. 

Sebastian Hutch: "The market in 2024 has had its challenges but it’s been a good market"

“The volume of people who are going home from here with orders unfilled or horses not bought is almost disappointing from our point of view because we had so many people looking to shop but not being able to shop [because of the competition],” he said. 

“There are plenty of reasons for people to be positive about the market on the basis of what’s happened here over the past two days.”

Hutch, as he did in the lead-up to the Sydney sale, reiterated that this year’s decline in the yearling market was not insurmountable for breeders and traders alike.

He said: “There’s an element of bravery in what any pinhooker does. It’s speculative and we’ve seen significant variances in the market from year to year.

“The market in 2024 has had its challenges but it’s been a good market, just not as good as 2022 and 2023.

“I think people are taking the view that if the market holds to 2024 then there’s enough [margin] for them to work within that and certainly we’ll be working hard with them to facilitate the best market we can in 2025.”

The Chairman’s Sale of 88 high-end breeding stock will go under the hammer at Riverside Stables on Thursday from 5pm local time. 

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