Catalogue released for southern hemisphere’s biggest two-year-old sale
NZB auction features 322 lots by 83 different sires including champions Savabeel and Exceed And Excel
The catalogue for the 2021 New Zealand Bloodstock Ready to Run Sale will be released today as the company comes to terms with the fact that Australasia’s biggest two-year-old auction will again be unlikely to have international buyers in attendance.
But NZB bloodstock sales manager Danny Rolston does not see the probable travel restrictions as being the big impediment that it once would have been to the auction’s success due to the buying bench’s experience over the past 18 months in adapting to the obstacles and increasing vendor transparency.
Rolston revealed he had already fielded interest from international buyers about the Ready to Run Sale in a promising sign of a strong Australasian yearling market in 2022 continuing through to the breeze-up auctions.
“We have seen a lot of the horses either at the yearling sales or out and about at the track already. Every year this sale has quality lots in it and it’s no different this year,” Rolston told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“We have fielded pretty good interest from, particularly Australia at this early stage, which is giving us a little bit of an indication that maybe a few of the stables missed out in a fairly heated yearling market this year.
“We are expecting that we are going to get quite good interest, not only from Hong Kong and Singapore, but also Australia.”
This year’s NZB Ready to Run Sale, to be held at Karaka on November 17 and 18 and the third of the three Australasian juvenile auctions, promises a catalogue of 322 two-year-olds by 83 different stallions including horses by champion stallion Savabeel (Zabeel), Tavistock (Montjeu), Per Incanto (Street Cry) and Ocean Park (Thorn Park) as well as juveniles by Australian sires Exceed And Excel (Danehill), Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice), Pierro (Lonhro) and Sebring (More Than Ready).
First crop two-year-olds by shuttlers Almanzor (Wootton Bassett), Satono Aladdin (Deep Impact) and Time Test (Dubawi) have also been catalogued while juveniles by Frankel (Galileo) and American Pharoah (Pioneerof The Nile) will also feature.
New Zealand-breds won every Derby in Australia last season, highlighted by Explosive Jack (Jakkalberry) who won three of them, while the Ready to Run Sale will feature a half-brother to Queensland Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Kukeracha (Night Of Thunder) by Waikato Stud’s late sire Sacred Falls (O’Reilly).
“It has been a really good year for New Zealand-bred horses, particularly in the Derbies which has been amazing. It is really the young stallions coming onto the map at the moment – Sacred Falls, Ocean Park and now Tivaci coming up behind him which will just keep that Waikato Stud powerhouse rolling on,” Rolston said.
“Tivaci has had a pretty amazing start to the season (with his first crop three-year-olds). They have all come in pretty quick succession and in Australia, which is vital for a young stallion.”
NZB will again reach out to the tight cohort of New Zealand agents in order to service its domestic and international buyers as well as once again calling on its online bidding platform, an innovation which has become a staple for thoroughbred markets worldwide.
“We are pretty much in an identical position to what we were 12 months ago (with no travel) and I guess at least we know all our technology is robust, our customer base has been through a full sales cycle with the remote buying and it seems to have worked out well and held up remarkably,” Rolston continued.
“We are never complacent but we are feeling a lot more confident about our system than perhaps we were 12 months ago.”
He added: “All those remote buyers who didn’t have someone on the ground this time last year certainly do now, so the local agents are a vital key to the success of our sales in New Zealand in this current environment.”
October 11 and 12 have been set aside for the breeze-ups to take place at Te Rapa. As it did last year, NZB will provide extra footage of the horses prior to and after their breezes to enable buyers to gain as much information as possible digitally.
The Inglis Ready2Race Sale begins the Australasian two-year-old series with an October 12 auction at Riverside Stables in Sydney followed by the Magic Millions offering on November 8 and 9.
Magic Millions is yet to release its catalogue.