Dickson grabs ‘lucky last lot’ on final day of the Magic Millions Perth sale
Fireworks ensued in the final stages of Book 2 of the Magic Millions Perth Yearling Sale on Friday after a colt by Maschino (Encosta De Lago), the final lot through the ring, became the day’s top-seller when he sold to local trainer Summer Dickson for $185,000.
Consigned by Ruby Racing and Breeding, Lot 350 proved “the lucky last” for Dickson, who swooped in between two bidders that had been going toe-to-toe for the colt up to $180,000, before she raised her hand for the winning bid.
“I was on the phone to a very new client and he asked me multiple times, ‘Do you really like it?’ And I said, ‘I’m telling you it’s the only horse I wanted in the sale,’” Dickson told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“We came in on Wednesday and I had a good look at the horse, we got him out multiple times and I really liked him.
“He called me when we were at the $120,000 mark and all of a sudden he said: ‘Put your arm up for $185,000,’ and I was like ‘are you serious?’ and that was it.
“I had a good feeling about it so we held on to that horse, it’s the lucky last horse in the sale, so I’m really thankful to have someone [an owner] like that in the stable – he just fully went by my opinion on the horse, so very, very thankful to someone that trusts me that much. I’m just so excited to bring him home.”
The bay colt is the first foal out of winning War Chant (Danzig) mare Burning Magic, whose dam Flaming Magic (Brief Truce) is a half-sister to three Group race winners.
Alwyn Park Stud’s Maschino is the sire of eight individual stakes winners, headed by Ted Van Heemst Stakes (Gr 2, 2100m) victor Marocchino, and although circling him as her stand-out in the catalogue, Dickson said she hadn’t anticipated the colt would sell for as much as he did.
“Initially I thought the horse was going to go for about $50,000,” the Group 3-winning trainer said.
“Being a Maschino, not too many people love them. Obviously on the second day of the sale the price has been very up and down, so I didn’t really know what to expect. But, when it was in the hundreds, I thought I was well and truly out, so I got the right phone call at the right time.
“There’s not many horses in this sale that have a good back end as well as a good front end on them, so there wasn’t much not to like about the horse. He’s really strong and robust and has a really big airway. He’s got a good walk and walks really strong from behind. Everything that I was looking for in a horse was with this one.”
Earlier in the day Dickson secured another colt by Maschino, parting with $24,000 for Lot 332 out of winning So Secret (Danetime) mare Agent Kensington, who was consigned by Rangeview Stud.
“We got another Maschino earlier on, and we’ll have a look at a couple of other horses that have been passed in today as well, but we came here and we got the horse that we wanted,” Dickson said.
Ruby Racing and Breeding’s Dan O’Bree said the Kojarena-based nursery was thrilled to see their colt realise the highest price on the day.
“We are absolutely ecstatic, Jason Cheetham is a great client. It’s an absolute thrill selling a Maschino colt for $185,000. It’s amazing, I am lost for words,” he told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“We understood that he was a very nice colt, he went from zero to 100 during his preparation and I think everybody saw it. He’s a very nice, established colt and is just ready to go.”
Ruby Racing and Breeding had ten lots go through the ring during Book 2, with six of them selling for an aggregate of $301,000 and an average of $50,167.
“Its great to get validation,” O’Bree added. “It’s been an interesting sale, it hasn’t been easygoing in some parts but it has been very rewarding in others. To get a result like that and have people hang around for a horse who probably didn’t have much on the page, but was a beautiful type all round. It means a lot to have people supporting us and supporting the breeders, it’s great.”
Proving popular on the day, Maschino was also responsible for the second top lot, a filly who sold to local trainers Grant and Alana Williams and Suman Hedge for $170,000.
Maschino, whose Smooth Chino took out the Magic Millions WA 3YO Trophy (RL, 1200m) last Saturday, is rated as a sire by the powerhouse Perth training duo.
“He looks a high quality horse and Grant and Alana have got a couple [Machinos] in the system that are showing quite good promise, so he’s a stallion that we had identified here that we’d have a really close look at,” Hedge told ANZ Bloodstock News of Maschino.
The filly, consigned by Mungrup Thoroughbreds as Lot 324, is out of Group 3-winning Choisir (Danehill Dancer) mare Wowee, who has produced three winners from five foals to race.
“This filly is out of a very well performed mare who is a Group 3 winner so there’s a little bit of depth to her pedigree as well,” Hedge added. “She was a pretty high priority for us.”
Williams Racing and Suman Hedge got their names on the sheet earlier in the day when they bagged Lot 229, a striking colt by Admire Mars (Daiwa Major) out of unraced Pariah (Redoute’s Choice) mare Hidden, for $150,000.
Hidden is herself a half-sister to the stakes-winning Detective (Snitzel), with the pair being out of Railway Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) heroine Covertly (Metal Storm), who is also the granddam of Singapore stakes winner Big Hearted (Hallowed Crown).
“He was just a beautiful, beautiful colt. I’d honestly rate him the best of the Admire Mars’ I’ve seen,” Hedge said. “We’ve seen them last year and this year, and have got a pretty good handle on the stallion.
“He was just so athletic and so strong, he walks with such purpose and he’s a colt that’s got a depth of pedigree, out of a daughter of a Group 1 winner [in] Covertley, [who] was a very smart horse.
“There was black print throughout the second and third generation, and even one of her other unraced daughters has produced a stakes winner. So she’s leaving a legacy and we just felt that he had everything that we were looking for.
“I think he’s going to be quite a precocious type. [He will] probably come a bit earlier than a lot of the horses that we buy for Grant and Alana. But he’s also got enough scope to continue to improve and develop at three on the beyond.”
A three-time Grade 1 winner in Japan, including as a two-year-old in the Asahi Hai Futurity Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m), Admire Mars had his first crop hit the track last year and notched his first Graded win as a sire last week when Embroidery scored in the Daily Hai Queen Cup (Gr 3, 1600m) at Tokyo Racecourse.
“Admire Mars [is] obviously yet to get off the ground over here, but he’s had some great results in Japan already and I don’t think it’s surprising that we haven’t seen much here because we would expect his progeny to improve, and it is so early in February now,” Suman added.
“It wouldn’t surprise me to start seeing a run of them coming through and we’ve marked to stock quite well, even last year there was a number that made our short list, so he’s a stallion that we’ve got time for. But it was just a whole picture, with the strength and depth of the female line we were very confident to go and be quite strong on this horse.”
The Williams team and Suman Hedge were crowned Book 2s leading buyers, having spent $350,000 on three lots, adding to the $490,000 they parted with for three lots in Book 1 on Thursday.
Another highlight of the final day was Lot 290, who became the most expensive progeny by his sire Ducimus (Snitzel) when selling to the Pearce Racing Ladies Syndicate for $140,000.
Consigned by Willow Dale Farm on behalf of breeders Korilya Stud, the colt is out of winning Northern Meteor (Encosta De Lago) mare Sentfromthestars, the dam of three-time winner Don’t Wait For Luck (Nicconi).
“I was very pleased with the price and the Pearce brothers who bought him, he should get every chance and it’s exciting,” Korilya’s Ellie Giles told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“I can remember Ducimus as a yearling when he was at Neville Duncan’s Oakland Park Stud and he was an outstanding type, and then he went over and was the top price yearling of his year at the [Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale].
“I’ve always followed him a bit and I sent a mare to him in his first season at stud and that foal [Tawkin Jibberish] actually won in Perth last week. So we’ve supported Ducimus with a mare or two ever since.
“We thought we got a pretty nice result with this colt, he seemed to have a lovely confirmation and grew out nicely with no problems and we were hoping for a good result today and he went over the reserve and there was plenty of competition, so we were very pleased.”
A son of Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), Ducimus was based at Rivercrest Farm for his first five books but now stands at Ridgeport Farm and his fee in 2024 was set at $4,400 (inc GST) after he was acquired by the operation last year.
The leading buyer for Book 1 of the sale, Neville Parnham continued his spending spree at Book 2 and went home with five more yearlings headed by Lot 225 – a Gingerbread Man (Shamardal) colt out of Good Fortune (O’Reilly) – who he bought for $120,000.
The WA-based trainer prepared the winning O’Reilly (Last Tycoon) mare, and said the yearling is physically similar to his dam.
“He’s a big strong horse. She was a big filly by O’Reilly and we had a little bit of fun with her,” he told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“I just thought he was a really, really nice horse by Gingerbread Man and I think Gingerbread’s stock are getting a little bit better over the last couple of years, I’ve got a couple at home I think go quite nice. So, I was prepared to pay for him.”
The sire of seven stakes winners, Yarradale Stud’s Gingerbread Man stood last season for a modest fee of $5,500 (inc GST).
Parmham purchased ten yearlings during Book 1 for a total of $1.42 million, and rounded out the sale as the overall top buyer.
“It’s been a good sale, obviously day one was pretty busy,” he said.
“Prices were up a little bit more than what I had initially thought, but it sort of blended in after that and worked it all out, but it was a good sale. I’m happy with my purchases, they’re all nice horses that I actually want to train, so that’s the main thing.”
At the close of trade on Friday, Magic Millions reported that Book 2 finished with an aggregate $4,849,500, a 17 per cent drop on last year’s gross. The average and median fell 14 per cent to $40,079 and $30,000 respectively.
Overall, the Magic Millions Perth Yearling Sale finished with a gross of 18,536,000, a little over nine per cent below last year’s figure. The average dropped ten per cent to $66,676 and the median dropped to $50,000, having finished at $55,000 12 months ago.
David Houston, manager of Magic Millions’ Perth operation, admitted that Book 2 had been slightly tougher than Thursday’s Book 1 session, but was overall happy with the results, especially taking into the account the current economic climate.
“Today was a little bit tougher, certainly I thought there might be a good flow on from yesterday,” he said. “It probably didn’t quite happen, but in the end there were some horses that sold very well so we’ve got to be happy with that and we still moved a lot of horses under the circumstances, so we’ve got to be pretty pleased.”
“Under the circumstances, we’re down near enough to around about a couple of million overall but still, we’ve been setting records here for the last three or four years, so, if we can hold our own, which I think we have this sale, then that’s got to be good, I think.”
Meanwhile, Barry Bowditch, Magic Millions’ managing director said he was pleased with the two days of trade in Perth.
“We have built upon what was achieved yesterday with the marketplace,” he said.
“To have a clearance rate that is nearing 80 per cent, an average of $40,000 and a gross of nearly on $5 million is very acceptable for Book Two – and the clearance rate for Day 1 has now increased to 89 per cent!”
“There’s great thirst for horses here in the west. Obviously the local market again today was out in force. The quality of horses on offer continues to improve.”
“I would like to congratulate the vendors for creating a genuine market and giving the buyers a great opportunity to buy horses at a value price that will as a whole race for the very lucrative Westspeed bonuses.”
“I’d like to thank the team – David and Rebecca here in Perth as well as the rest of the interstate team. It’s been a big build up from Pinjarra to here today.”
“Obviously the investment here in the Swan Valley is something that has improved the product that we are selling in the state. The Swan Valley continues to provide a viable venue that created a very genuine market in the west.”
The bloodstock sales focus switches immediately to the Apple Isle with a quality line up of yearlings set to go under the hammer at the Tasmanian Yearling Sale on Monday.