CLASSIC QUALITY
Inglis release 805-lot catalogue for the 2025 edition of the sale at Riverside
North England (Farnan), Within The Law (Lucky Vega) and Gobi Desert (Too Darn Hot) have two things in common: They’re all winners of some of the most important races among the handful of two-year-old events so far this season.
And they all came out of the Inglis Classic sale last February.
Classic’s reputation as a consistent producer of reliable and quality bloodstock is shining again this spring and Inglis has announced its 805-lot catalogue for the 2025 edition of the sale at Riverside from February 9-11.
The timing couldn’t be better. Yulong’s Kris Lees-trained filly Gobi Desert, this year’s Classic sale topper when bought from the North Bloodstock draft for $600,000, debuted on Saturday with an impressive victory in Newcastle’s prestigious Max Lees Classic (900m).
A week earlier, Tulloch Lodge’s North England followed a debut third in the Breeders’ Plate (Gr 3, 1000m) by winning Rosehill’s Golden Gift (1100m) which, while non-black type, is one of the more coveted juvenile events of the spring for its $1 million prize-money.
And on the same day at Flemington, Bjorn Baker’s Within The Law (Lucky Vega) took out Flemington’s Inglis Banner (RL, 1000m) on debut.
North England was a $280,000 Classic buy from Valiant Stud’s draft for the China Horse Club, Newgate, Go Bloodstock and Trilogy collective.
Within The Law was sold from Yulong’s Classic draft to Darby Racing for just $30,000 – almost as little as the $20,000 they paid at the same sale in 2016 for She Will Reign (Manhattan), who went on to win the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m), the headline act among her two Group 1s and more than $3.2 million prize-money.
It’s very pleasing to see that bearing fruit on the racecourse in the early stages of the season
“Gobi Desert won the Max Lees, Within The Law the Inglis Banner, and North England won the Golden Gift – ultimately Australia’s most consequential two-year-old race of the spring,” Inglis’s CEO of bloodstock sales Sebastian Hutch told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“The early signs are Classic 2024 was a sale that’s going to produce plenty of nice horses. We thought that was the case at the time, but it’s very pleasing to see that bearing fruit on the racecourse in the early stages of the season.”
North are looking to repeat the magic in 2025, offering Gobi Desert’s half-sister by Astern (Medaglia D’Oro), as Lot 284.
Promoted by Inglis as the best value yearling sale in the southern hemisphere, Classic has a fact sheet that makes impressive reading.
The sale has produced 21 Group 1 winners since 2018 – 12 of whom cost $100,000 or less, among a total of 82 Australian stakes winners bought from Classic for that amount or less.
In recent years, Classic has yielded winners of races including The Everest (Gr 1, 1200m), the Queen Elizabeth Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) the Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) and the Slipper.
The sale has also produced 168 individual winners of 423 races in Hong Kong since 2018, including the winners of all three legs of the prestigious Hong Kong 4YO Series in 2023 and 2024, plus Group 1 winners Voyage Bubble (Deep Field) and Beauty Eternal (Starspangledbanner).
Classic’s honour roll runs deep, and includes stars of the turf – and the breeding world – such as Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit), Choisir (Danehill Dancer), Brazen Beau (I Am Invincible), Castelvecchio (Dundeel), Vow And Declare (Declaration Of War), Classique Legend (Not A Single Doubt) and many more.
Inglis is confident it has assembled another catalogue bristling with quality for the auction known as “a trainers’ sale” for its reputation of producing talent at value prices.
“Ultimately, pedigree is a huge driver of value, and certainly of premium,” Hutch said. “There are only so many good pedigrees in Australia, and plenty of those go to Inglis Easter and to the Magic Millions Gold Coast.
“Classic is a sale where you can offer lots of good looking horses, athletic horses – trainers’ horses, to use a traditional term – that make their own pedigrees.
“You look at the pedigrees of some of the horses that have gone on from Classic to build good records. Those pedigrees look radically different today than when those horses went through the sale ring. These are horses that make their own pedigree.
“[Trainer] Mick Price put it perfectly when he said it’s a sale where you’ll find a well-grown, well-developed horse off a good farm, that you can be confident that if you manage it properly it will go and win races for you, and if you get lucky, win Group races.”
Classic 2025 contains the progeny of 106 stallions, offered by 73 vendors, including the stock of 18 first-season sires.
Much excitement surrounds the first crop of Coolmore’s Home Affairs (I Am Invincible) (pictured below), who has 13 yearlings entered, while Newgate’s Golden Slipper winner Stay Inside (Extreme Choice) has 23.
Coolmore’s other first-season sires represented are Acrobat (Fastnet Rock), with 14 lots, and St Mark’s Basilica (Siyouni), with ten.
Darley will have high hopes for the first offerings of their shuttlers Pinatubo (Shamardal), the $55,000 (inc GST) sire who has 12 lots entered, Palace Pier (Kingman) with seven, and Victor Ludorum (Shamardal), who has one.
Newgate’s other debutant sires on show are Profiteer (Capitalist) with ten lots, Tiger Of Malay (Extreme Choice) with 12, and Wild Ruler (Snitzel) with 22.
Among Home Affairs’s more attractive offerings is Lot 474, a filly from Coolmore’s draft out of the outstanding Nechita (Fastnet Rock). The VRC Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) heroine has already thrown a stakes winner in each hemisphere in Forbearance (Galileo), a winner at Group 3 and Listed level in England, and Harpo Marx (Galileo), who was imported from Ireland and won the ATC Premier’s Cup (Gr 3, 2000m).
Coolmore also offers Lot 673, a Home Affairs colt who’s a half-brother to former Singapore Horse of the Year and Champion 2YO, and later dual Australian stakes winner, The Inferno (Holy Roman Emperor).
Lot 574 is a Home Affairs filly who’s one of 11 offerings from the stud who bred the stallion, Torryburn. The filly’s second dam was triple stakes-winner Crimson Reign (Red Ransom).
Home Affairs is really helping with strengthening up any areas that needed fixing. You can see them a mile away and tell who they are
“All the Home Affairs yearlings are big and strong and she’s no exception,” said Torryburn’s Mel Copelin.
“Ours is a quite early, jump-and-run type of filly, and probably one of the better foals of the four the mare’s had. Home Affairs is really helping with strengthening up any areas that needed fixing. You can see them a mile away and tell who they are.”
Torryburn also offers Lot 145, a grey filly who’s one of 18 lots at Classic by Vinery Stud’s Ole Kirk (Written Tycoon), who’s made a strong start in his first season of runners, with Breeders’ Plate winner King Kirk.
The filly is from Torryburn’s renowned string of grey mares including second dam De Chorus (Unbridled’s Song) – mother of former Hong Kong Champion Sprinter, the Group 1-winning Hot King Prawn (Denman) and dual Australian Group winner Siren’s Fury (Myboycharlie).
“Everyone says the Ole Kirk’s seem to have good temperaments. You have to imagine they’ll be better as they get older, but they’ve certainly hit the ground running, and it’ll be very exciting to see what they do as they get older,” said Copelin, who’s an avowed Classic fan.
“It’s a great sale. We’ve had good graduates out of it and it’s a good sale to find some really nice horses, where you can find value and quality.
“I think it’s a good sale for people who want to buy racehorses and don’t have to sift through multi-million dollar pedigrees. They should be able to find honest racehorses who they can have fun with.”
Among other yearlings of interest is Lot 404, a filly from Arrowfield Stud’s draft by Palace Pier from an illustrious family. She’s the third foal of Maid Of Heaven (Smart Missile), a Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) winner and half-sister – being out of the dual stakes-winning St. Therese (Dehere) – to Castelvecchio (Dundeel) and Group 3 winner Mirrasalo (Redoute’s Choice).
Just as Castelvecchio is taking off as a sire with progeny including Group 1 winner El Castello and dual Group winner Aeliana, Mirrasalo is the dam of two stakes winners in Mirra Vision (Lonhro) and Mirra View (More Than Ready). Arrowfield’s Castelvecchio, incidentally, has eight yearlings in the sale.
Lot 241 from North is a Stay Inside colt out of Gallant Tess (Galileo), a triple stakes winner and dam of stakes victor Rock Hero (Fastnet Rock).
Fairview Park has Lot 773, an Astern colt who’s a half-brother to Rob Heathcote’s exciting three-year-old Cosmo Centaurus (Cosmic Force), winner of the Sunshine Coast’s Inglis Super Maiden (1000m) on debut in August.
Coolmore offers Lot 220, a filly by St Mark’s Basilica (Siyouni) out of Fiorentina (Dubai Destination), dam of William Reid Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Silent Sedition (War Chant).
And Lot 443, from Ridgmont, is one of eight entries by Coolmore’s boom shuttler Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj), who’s the first foal out of Monegal (Lope De Vega), winner of ten races including a Group 3.
“We’ve tried to consolidate as broad a cross-section of stallion representation as we can, which is an important target for success at any sale,” Hutch said.
“We’ve got a very interesting group of first-season sires, with the likes of Home Affairs, Pinatubo and St Mark’s Basilica and others.
“There’s a lot for buyers to get their teeth into. The stallion marketplace is ever evolving, and we’re looking for the heirs to the best stallions in the country. There’s no immediately obvious heir to those stallions yet, but they could emerge from this crop of yearlings.
“Our representatives have been going around various jurisdictions through the current months canvassing buyers for our yearling sale series, and the consistent feedback is sales like Classic are sales that they want to take very seriously. We’ll be working hard to facilitate the best market we possibly can. What that is, we’ll find out in February.”
Of the catalogued lots, 669 are BOBS eligible (83 per cent) while others are VOBIS Silver and QTIS. All horses offered are eligible for the lucrative Inglis Race Series.
The most represented stallion in the catalogue is Yarraman Park’s Hellbent (I Am Invincible) with 30 lots, ahead of Kia Ora’s Farnan (Not A Single Doubt) with 29.
The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) and Capitalist (Written Tycoon) have 24 each, ahead of Stay Inside with 23, Wild Ruler and Exceedance (Exceed And Excel) with 22, and Russian Revolution (Snitzel) and Zousain (Zoustar) with 21 apiece.
