Ellis opens shoulders for $850,000 sister to Fastnet Rock’s Group 1 winner Unforgotten
Te Akau takes home day two’s highest-priced lot among 26 buys at the New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale
David Ellis has bought some of the best horses to race by champion Australian stallion Fastnet Rock (Danehill), none more so than nine-time Group 1-winning mare Avantage, but yesterday the Te Akau boss labelled an $850,000 daughter by Coolmore’s flagbearer as possibly the best filly he had laid eyes on at Karaka.
The youngster to give cause to Ellis’ effusive praise on day two of the New Zealand Bloodstock Yearling Sale was the sister to Australian Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Unforgotten and such was his admiration for the filly that he was prepared to take her home “at any cost”.
The session’s top lot at $850,000, second only to the Savabeel (Zabeel) brother to dual Group 1-winning entire Mo’unga who made $1 million on day one, the Fastnet Rock filly helped this year’s Karaka sale maintain its improved year-on-year trade.
As of last night, 281 horses had been sold for a combined $41,142,500, up 19 per cent year-on-year, while the average was also up by 17 per cent to $146,415. Day one’s clearance rate increased four per cent to 74 per cent from its day one figure and, as a result, it brought down the day one average and median.
The median was $100,000 after two days, the same mark which was achieved at the same stage of the 2021 sale.
“The two important statistics for us today are the clearance rising and an additional $6 million being added to the aggregate year-on-year, so those two things have been very, very pleasing for us,” NZB director of sales Danny Rolston said last night.
“Of course, the average is good, but seeing that aggregate going up and the clearance rising means that everyone is getting their fair share.
“If you look at the top ten lots today, they were from ten different vendors, so the funds are getting spread around.”
Day two belonged to Te Akau’s Ellis, who came away with two of the three highest-priced yearlings of the second session, and Unforgotten’s sister, a filly who is by a stallion he knows so well, was always going to be on the radar.
Not only has Ellis been associated with Avantage, he has also bought top-class Fastnet Rock progeny such as Group 1 winners Rock ‘N’ Pop, Heroic Valour, Age Of Fire and European Group 1-performed Torcedor, and the Te Akau chief is confident his latest purchase by the stallion can live up to his expectations.
“I have been coming and buying yearlings here since 1988 and definitely in the last five to ten years I haven’t seen a filly of more quality or athleticism and we were just determined to buy her at any cost,” Ellis said last night.
“This is a stallion that leaves serious horses and this is one of the nicest fillies I have seen at Karaka in a long time.
“It is interesting that there are a lot of pedigree updates that are about to come on the page and we’re just so excited to have her in our Four Fillies syndicate.”
Bred by Coolmore and consigned by Curraghmore’s Gordon Cunningham, just as Unforgotten was at the 2016 sale when bought by Guy Mulcaster and Chris Waller for $360,000, the Fastnet Rock filly will join Te Akau Racing under the tutelage of trainer Mark Walker later this year.
She is the seventh foal out of the Galileo (Sadler’s Wells) mare Memories Of You who also produced the stakes-placed Special Memories (Fastnet Rock) and the promising Chris Waller-trained gelding Yiyi (No Nay Never). She was catalogued as Lot 410.
The Fastnet Rock-Galileo cross has produced nine of the rising 21-year-old stallion’s 42 individual Group 1 winners and the cross has an excellent 20 per cent stakes winners-to-runners strike rate.
“No one does a better job than Gordon Cunningham. He is a big supporter of Te Akau Racing and he is just a champion guy. His son, Liam, is a senior part of our stable and works in the colt barn looking after horses like Dynastic,” Ellis said.
“We have had a great association with Coolmore. They bought Avantage for $4.1 million last year once she retired from racing with nine Group 1 wins. They are very good friends of mine and great supporters of Te Akau Racing.”
Curraghmore’s Cunningham said: “The filly is equally as nice as Unforgotten. She has lots of similarities but a little bit more mature at the same stage.
“She was very popular from when inspections began in January and always presented like a top filly, much like her sister.
“I hope she will go on to be as successful and congratulations to Te Akau for securing a filly of the future.”
Unforgotten was sold for $2.75 million to Yulong at the conclusion of her racing career as the winner of six races and $1.56 million in prize-money and since joining Yuesheng Zhang’s enviable broodmare band in 2020, she has produced an I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) weanling filly and she was covered by Yulong’s first–season sire Lucky Vega (Lope De Vega) last year.
“I think this filly is a Sires’ Produce filly, she will come a bit earlier,” Ellis suggested of his high-priced addition.
“But she is a real 1,000 Guineas-Oaks filly, just an absolute crackerjack.”
Ellis earlier bought a Zoustar (Northern Meteor) filly possessing a pedigree littered with stakes winners to add to New Zealand’s runaway leading stable in Te Akau.
The Te Akau principal and his team of incoming trainer Walker and the Hong Kong-bound Jamie Richards, as well as Joe Walls and Marcus Corban, bought the Pencarrow Stud-bred filly for $475,000 as Lot 375.
Residual value gets cited often when a filly is sold, but it’s hard to argue that the daughter of Widden Stud’s Zoustar, the third foal out of the four-time winner and dual Group-placed mare Irion (Danroad), won’t carry considerable currency as a broodmare when her racing career is over.
The filly’s dam Irion is a half-sister to the stakes-placed Octapussy (Octagonal), herself the mother of stakes winners Pussy Willow (O’Reilly), Pussy O’Reilly (O’Reilly) and Inside Agent (Stravinsky), as well as Our Riesling (Last Tycoon), the dam of Group 3 winner and three-time stakes producer Valpolicella (Red Ransom), and Elusive Dreams (Elusive City) and Pineau (Carnegie), who each have also produced stakes winners.
Ellis has so far purchased 26 yearlings for a total spend of $6,365,000 at an average of $244,808, maintaining his position at the top of the leading buyer by aggregate table for a 17th straight year, while syndicator Go Racing has bought ten yearlings for a total of $1,625,000.
Kelt backs Perry’s judgment with $675,000 Almanzor colt
New Zealand Derby (Gr 1, 2400m)-winning owner Sam Kelt has reaffirmed his love for racing and is reinvesting heavily in the sport more than a decade after the banker was brought to his knees following the collapse of his financial business.
Kelt celebrated Group 1 success with his three-year-old Asterix (Tavistock) at Ellerslie on Saturday and yesterday, under the owner’s instruction, agent Bruce Perry purchased a colt by exciting young stallion Almanzor (Wootton Bassett) for $675,000.
“He is just a lovely athletic horse, a good pedigree with a bit of speed and he has a beautiful temperament,” said Perry, who also selected $450,000 purchase Asterix at the 2020 NZB Ready to Run Sale for Kelt.
“We’re pretty exposed to the Almanzors and we’re very happy with where we are at, so we were confident to go again, and we thought he was one of the nicest horses, one of the top two or three colts in the sale.”
Kelt was not at Karaka when the colt went through the ring, but he had given Perry his tick of approval.
“This is the horse I said he should have a look at and he fell in love with him,” the agent said.
Offered as Lot 333 by Cambridge Stud, where Almanzor shuttles, the colt is the second foal out of the twice-winning Its Our Showtime (Showcasing), herself a half-sister to Western Australian owner Bob Peters’ Group 1-winning mare Inspirational Girl (Reliable Man), the winner of last Saturday’s Blamey Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m) at Flemington.
As well as having a number of Almanzor two-year-olds under management, Perry was also familiar with the colt’s dam side, having bought Its Our Showtime for $150,000 at the 2019 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale.
“I actually bought the dam for David Redvers to go to Roaring Lion, then Brendan and Jo bought half, and with the unfortunate passing of Roaring Lion, David sold out to Brendan and Jo,” Perry revealed.
“They (Almanzors) are taking time, as we expected, but we’ve got a lovely horse in (the Stephen Marsh-trained) Andalus who has had a Group 2 and a Group 3 placing in two starts, and he will make a lovely older horse.”
Its Our Showtime’s first foal, a filly by So You Think (High Chaparral), was bought by Trent Busuttin, Natalie Young and agent Jim Clarke at last year’s Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale for $220,000.
“Bruce (Perry) has really thrown his weight behind the stallion (Almanzor) and has promoted him almost as strongly as we have,” Cambridge Stud’s Henry Plumptre said.
“He must have bought eight or ten over the last couple of years, and I must say, it is really great to see Sam Kelt back in the industry.
“That is a good sign as we need more Kiwis to back the industry.”
While Lance O’Sullivan and Andrew Scott train Asterix for Kelt, no decision has been made about who will prepare the son of Almanzor for the owner.
Perry said the market had been “reasonably strong” and admitted to being out bid on four or five horses early in yesterday’s session.
“They’re just focusing on those top lots, as they do, but when you are reflecting back you think, ‘gee, that was a cheap horse’,” the agent said.
“The depth is there to an extent, but you’d love to see more Australians here. However, that’s no one’s fault.”
U S Navy Flag flies high for O’Sullivan
Demand for first season sire U S Navy Flag (War Front) also continued yesterday with Wexford Stables paying $340,000 for a colt by the Coolmore-owned shuttler from the Valachi Downs draft and the horse’s future may be in Hong Kong.
He is the first foal out of Honfleur (Fastnet Rock), a placed half-sister to champion three-year-old filly Shamrocker (O’Reilly), Auckland Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) winner Rock Diva (Lucky Unicorn), Group 2 winner Bohemian Lily (O’Reilly) and Group 3 winner Vernanme (O’Reilly). He was catalogued as Lot 303.
Despite the appeal of the pedigree, Wexford Stables’ Lance O’Sullivan said it was the colt’s physique which attracted him to the horse, who was bought on behalf of a Hong Kong client.
“He was just a very athletic type of colt and everything you look for in a horse,” O’Sullivan said.
“He is well balanced, a good walker, good head and he was hard not to like. The family to us is a bonus as when we look to buy, we look at them purely on type and it doesn’t matter who’s their mum or their dad.
“We’ve got to be attracted to the horse first and, to be honest, I hadn’t looked at the family until I had looked at the individual.”
The colt came on the radar during on-farm inspections at Kevin Hickman’s Valachi Downs and O’Sullivan’s opinion of him was solidified at Karaka.
“We saw him on the farm, just a quick look and he was one of a half a dozen we earmarked from the stud,” he said.
“When we got here, we looked a little more in depth and I liked him a lot more here, he certainly grew on us and his attitude was very good.
“You like to see them stand there and not move when you are inspecting them and you generally find they turn out to be your good horses, as they have the right temperament and a good brain.”
Valachi Downs’ Gareth Downey agreed with O’Sullivan’s assessment of the colt.
“Physically, he is very strong and well balanced and he has handled the sales environment brilliantly. He was as sensible on day eight as he was on day one,” he said.
“He is a great advertisement for U S Navy Flag who stood at Valachi. We have a strong connection to the stallion and continue to support him.”
U S Navy Flag relocated from Valachi Downs to The Oaks Stud last year.
Meanwhile, Waikato Stud heads the leading vendor table, so far selling 27 yearlings for a total of $4,785,000, with Cambridge Stud in second, parting with 24 yearlings for an aggregate of $4,045,000.
Milan Park leads the vendor by average table, selling seven yearlings for an average of $230,714, while Trelawney Stud has also sold seven yearlings for an average of $222,143.
The final session of the Book 1 Karaka sale starts at 11am (NZ time) today.