Miss Roseiano set for Justify after Coolmore go to $1.275 million
Magnier snaps up Group 3-winning two-year-old on Inglis Digital in support of returning champion first season sire elect
The 2023 book of mares for Coolmore’s returning US Triple Crown champion Justify (Scat Daddy) has been bolstered by the $1.275 million acquisition of Group 3-winning two-year-old Miss Roseiano (Exceed And Excel).
Coolmore Australia principal Tom Magnier late yesterday secured the Blue Diamond Preview (F) (Gr 3, 1000m)-winning mare – a descendent of the potent Eight Carat (Pieces Of Eight) family – to support Justify, Australia’s leading first season sire, through a bespoke Inglis Digital auction.
The countdown started at 4pm with bids going back-and-forth for 56 minutes, a drawn-out auction reminiscent of two years ago when Group 1-winning mare Funstar (Adelaide) – the most expensive horse sold through Inglis Digital – made $2.7 million in a process that took almost one and three-quarter hours.
Magnier, who this year has paid $3.6 million for Nimalee (So You Think) at the Inglis Chairman’s Sale and $3 million for Coolangatta’s (Written Tycoon) dam Piping Hot (More Than Ready) at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale, signed for Miss Roseiano after warding off the online competition.
“She’s been bought to go to Justify, the team and I think she’s an ideal match for him both physically and on pedigree,’’ Magnier said.
“She’s from a great family, she was an exciting race filly and Justify could not be going any better, having both the highest rated two-year-old colt and two-year-old filly in Europe in addition to some hugely exciting horses here, including [Inglis Millennium winner] Learning To Fly, who we know well.
“It was a pretty intense bidding scenario, as it can be on Inglis Digital, who always do a great job with this platform, but we were delighted to get her.
“In quite a coincidence, literally as the bidding clock ended, Justify was landing in Australia to cover another hugely exciting book of mares, which now includes Miss Roseiano, so hopefully there is a positive omen there.’’
An imposing chestnut stallion, Justify is returning to Coolmore Australia this year after being rested last season on the back of siring three stakes winners and eight overall winners to date from 19 runners in 2022-23. Justify also has 12 stakes winners from two crops of racing age in the northern hemisphere, including promising juvenile City Of Troy, who has been installed as the favourite for next year’s English 2,000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1m) after his emphatic Group 2 win at Newmarket on Saturday.
Rising four-year-old Miss Roseiano is the second million-dollar mare sold through Inglis Digital in seven days, her purchase coming after the twice Group 1-placed mare Another Award (Shamus Award) made $1.2 million last Wednesday when purchased by Yulong.
Coolmore’s new mare burst onto the scene in January last year by winning the Blue Diamond Preview before finishing runner-up in the fillies Blue Diamond Prelude (Gr 2, 1100m). She was unplaced in the Blue Diamond (Gr 1, 1200m), which was won by Daumier (Epaulette).
She earned $214,350 in prize-money for connections in her 12-start career with trainer Peter Gelagotis who bought her with his brother Manny, agent James Bester, also a confidant of the Magnier family, and the Osher Group for $300,000 from the 2021 Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale.
Manny Gelagotis, the Victorian stable’s general manager and assistant trainer, yesterday recalled how the precocious Miss Roseiano delivered on the racecourse much earlier than he expected her to.
Exceed And Excel (Danehill) records his 192nd stakes winner as Miss Roseiano (2 f ex Special Lover by Pins) wins the Blue Diamond Preview F (Listed, 1000m) at Caulfield @DarleyAus
She was a $300,000 @inglis_sales purchase from @NoorilimPark to @gelagotisracing @JamesBester4 pic.twitter.com/yTKg1Bs88H
— ANZ Bloodstock (@anz_news) January 26, 2022
“I just went and looked at my (yearling sale) comments and I said, ‘she’s a Thousand Guineas filly and if she matures she could be a really nice broodmare for the future with a pedigree like that’,” Gelagotis told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“Anyway, we didn’t get it all right, but she really matured up (after the Premier sale). The unfortunate part of it all was that she didn’t quite live up to the early promise she showed, but that doesn’t mean anything, because at the time she was high-class and clearly the best two-year-old filly in Melbourne and the rest is history.”
Miss Roseiano raced nine times as a three-year-old, filling two placings before the decision was made to spell her and put her up for auction.
“From a training perspective, everything she does on the track is of a Group-horse standard,” Gelagotis said.
“The damage was done early, you can’t take the black type off them and she was well and truly a black type horse from day one, that’s for sure.”
The Osher Group’s Wade Burridge yesterday reflected on the brief but euphoric ride the filly provided his group of owners.
“That was probably the greatest thing, to win a Group 3 on debut at Caulfield, she exceeded everyone’s expectations and then to be beaten half a head in a Group 2 at her second start (was exciting),” Burridge said.
“She started in the market in the Blue Diamond and we had 60 or 70 people there. She never really turned up in her next couple of campaigns, and who knows why, but she did beat Giga Kick on the [training] track, so I think she’s a pretty cheap buy for Coolmore as she is going to be a good mare and her progeny will sell well, that’s for sure.”
Bred by Noorilim Park’s Peter and Glen Carrick, Miss Roseiano is out of Special Lover, a stakes-placed mare who Carrick Snr purchased for NZ$160,000 at the 2014 New Zealand Bloodstock National Yearling Sale and entrusted Robert Smerdon with to train, has also produced five-time winner Easy Single (Not A Single Doubt).
Special Lover’s latest foal, a rising two-year-old daughter of champion sire I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit), was bought at this year’s Premier sale by Tony Fung Investments for $1.1 million, the highest-priced lot of the 2023 Victorian auction.
The valuable filly was underbid by the Gelagotis’ and members of the Miss Roseiano syndicate.
Special Lover’s second dam is the unraced Special Diamond (Zabeel), a sister to Group 1 winner Don Eduardo and a three-quarter sister to Octagonal, Mouawad, Shower Of Roses and Tristalove (Sir Tristram), herself the dam of AJC Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 1800m) winner Viking Ruler (Danehill), Group 2 winners Lovetrista (Rock Of Gibraltar) and Kempinsky (Danehill) as well as the Listed winner Diamond Like (Danehill).
Rising 11-year-old Special Lover, who did not get in foal in 2021, is due to again foal to I Am Invincible in September.