Osbornes’ Extreme Choice colt sets Riverside alight with $825,000 price
Mane Lodge’s Inglis Classic record-setting yearling a stunning result that comes four decades in the making
At an auction nothing is fait accompli, but for at least a week it appeared almost certain that a colt by Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt) would top the Inglis Classic Yearling Sale, it was just a matter of which one would have the honour of setting the record.
And so it proved on day two of the Riverside Stables sale when the Newgate Farm, China Horse Club and Trilogy Racing colts partnership went to $825,000 for a Mane Lodge-bred son of the champion first season sire, a producer of six stakes winners from just 33 runners and last year’s Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Stay Inside.
The result eclipsed the price paid for Sunday’s opening day pacesetter, a pinhooked Extreme Choice colt sold by Bell River Thoroughbreds for $775,000, a figure that smashed the previous record of $625,000, only for it to be surpassed by Neil and Denise Osborne’s yearling less than 24 hours later.
Field was underbidder on Sunday’s session-topping colt, losing out to agent James Harron, but yesterday’s purchase added to the partnership’s growing collection of Extreme Choice’s sons, having paid $650,000 for a weanling by him at last year’s Magic Millions National Sale. Both will form part of the group’s division of two-year-olds next season.
“They are two outstanding colts by Extreme Choice. So, those horses were always going to break the record from the day they walked onto the sales complex a week ago,” the Newgate Farm principal said yesterday.
Field suggested that the $825,000 colt and the recently retired Stay Inside, a first-crop colt by Extreme Choice who will stand his maiden season at Newgate Farm in 2022, shared many similar traits beyond just their shared paternal genetics.
“We have obviously got his sire Extreme Choice on the farm and we’ve got his best son in Golden Slipper winner Stay Inside back at the farm now, too, and I have been looking at father and son a lot,” Field said yesterday.
“When I saw this colt I couldn’t believe the parallels between him and Stay Inside. They are absolute models of each other. I am very confident he will be a runner and, without question, he was my number one Extreme Choice who has gone to the market this year.
“I was very fond of the (Sunday’s session-topper) colt as well – they were two very good horses.”
Osborne’s confidence in his Extreme Choice colt only grew as inspection numbers ramped up throughout the week at Riverside Stables.
“Henry had six or seven looks and I honestly thought he was equal to the colt (sold on Sunday), so his price didn’t really surprise me,” Neil Osborne said.
“I would love to see him standing alongside Extreme Choice (at Newgate Farm in a few years’ time).”
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Osborne and his wife Denise thought they were “going pretty well” selling horses for a couple of grand. Four decades later, and a mainstay of the Inglis sales scene and the industry in general, the couple’s Mane Lodge at Sutton, near Canberra, now lays claim to having bred and sold the highest-priced horse ever presented at a Classic sale.
“It’s just sensational and it’s great to be here at Inglis with the new record as he is a lovely colt,” said Osborne, soon after being embraced by a throng of Canberra trainers such as Barbara Joseph, Nick Olive and Luke Pepper.
“I think ’79 was my first sale, the old Christmas sale, and I have a lot of friends here, there’s a lot of good people around in the industry, so it’s great to be able to enjoy it with friends.”
Bred by the Osbornes in conjunction with friend Dean Crowe, the Lot 313-catalogued colt is the fifth foal out of To Dubawi Go (Dubawi), who Neil trained to win six races and $120,000 in prize-money from 2010 to 2015.
“Neil Osborne is a top bloke, a good breeder and horseman and he has a very good family (behind him). I have been to their farm and they raise them well, so I had great confidence in buying from them,” Field said.
“I looked at this horse and I thought, ‘well, he’s by the best stallion statistically in the southern hemisphere in Extreme Choice, out of a mare by the best stallion in the northern hemisphere, being Dubawi’. Those two mixed together in a horse who is outstanding … (made him) the one that we wanted.
“He’s an October foal with scope, he’ll be better in three months’ time as he keeps developing all the time. The sireline is very close to our heart and we feel he is one out of the box and we’re delighted to get him.”
While many breeders may have to chosen to avoid the added risk of sending a mare to a then unproven sire and sub-fertile stallion in Extreme Choice in 2019, Osborne took the punt with his well-performed mare To Dubawi Go, a half-sister to the stakes-placed Nisos (Excellent Art).
“I loved his sire, Not A Single Doubt, who I actually bid on at the Magic Millions (in 2003) when he was passed in as a yearling and it is just a family I’ve always loved,” Osborne revealed.
“I loved Extreme Choice when he went to stud as well. I have tried to get a few more foals by him, and I haven’t got a lot of them, but I do have another filly for next year’s sales (out of Green Mirage).”
Mane Lodge sold To Dubawi Go’s fourth foal, a colt by Smart Missile (Fastnet Rock), to trainer Greg Hickman at last year’s Classic sale for $90,000. Named Smartawi, he made his debut at Newcastle in November.
Valiant’s The Autumn Sun gamble not in vain after $550,000 payday
In a sale of milestones, the 2022 Classic also provided an important stepping stone for Irishman Fergal Connolly’s investment in his Hunter Valley farm Valiant Stud.
In 2019, Connolly stumped up the not insignificant sum of $77,000 to send Talimena (Lonhro), the three-quarter sister to Group 1 winner Denman, and the half-sister to Golden Slipper winner Kiamichi (Sidestep), to Arrowfield’s prized first-season sire The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice).
The resulting foal, a striking August-born filly, sold for $550,000 yesterday to Willow Park Stud’s Glenn Burrows who identified the yearling on behalf of his long-time New Zealand client Gary Harding, known for having raced Group 1 winners Bounding (Lonhro) and Bonham (Per Incanto), among others.
She is the highest-priced horse Valiant Stud has sold, surpassing a Savabeel (Zabeel) filly Connolly sold for $525,000 last year.
“We were delighted to offer a Savabeel filly at the Magic Millions last year, but to sell The Autumn Sun filly today at the Inglis Classic sale and realise such a great price (is fantastic),” Connolly said.
“After putting our necks on the line and breeding to an expensive stallion, I am delighted with the outcome and I couldn’t be happier with how the filly coped with the sale all week.
“She has been in and out of the box non-stop and she’s dealt with it all so well and the staff have looked after her brilliantly.”
Burrows, signing under his bloodstock banner after holding off the challenge from Astute Bloodstock’s Louis Le Metayer who was under bidder, declared the filly to be a standout daughter of five-time Group 1 winner The Autumn Sun.
“To my eye, she was the filly of the sale. She’s been bought for a very good client in New Zealand,’’ Burrows said.
“She’ll go to New Zealand and prove herself over there hopefully at two, and then she’ll come across to Australia to a very good trainer here and hopefully further her career as a three-year-old in Australia.
“I’m a big fan of The Autumn Sun, I think he’s a great chance. It’s a lovely old Woodlands family, being out of a Lonhro mare, with Bounding being by Lonhro, that ticked the box for Gary, but above everything else, regardless of pedigree, she’s just one of the fillies of the sale.’’
Burrows and Harding, who presently has Meg (Sebring) in training with Matt Dale at Canberra, bought a Zoustar (Northern Meteor) filly for $280,000 from Milburn Creek at last month’s Magic Millions sale.
“He only buys particular sorts, so we were particularly careful as to what we suggested for him and hopefully he’ll be happy with her when she gets to New Zealand,” said Burrows.
“We’re not looking at her being an early two-year-old stakes winner. We’ll just bide our time with her in New Zealand, hopefully she’s a back-end two-year-old, then we’ll be looking at races like the Thousand Guineas and things like that, hopefully.’’
Bates takes shine to Harry Angel colt
A young sire receiving recognition from buyers so far this southern hemisphere sales season is Darley shuttler Harry Angel (Dark Angel) and yesterday a colt by the world’s highest-ranked sprinter of 2017 sold for $460,000 to Roughwood Park’s Vic Bates.
The Harry Angel colt was bred by Alan Osburg who raced champion stallion Exceed And Excel (Danehill) and Dixie Blossoms (Street Sense), the 2019 Coolmore Classic (Gr 1, 1500m) winner. Torryburn Stud also sold a Dundeel (High Chaparral) filly for $250,000 on Osburg’s behalf on day two. The filly, catalogued as Lot 368, was bought by Brae Sokolski’s Yes Bloodstock.
The Harry Angel colt, catalogued as Lot 459, is the second foal out of the Sydney-placed winner Chicquita (Commands), herself a daughter of Group 2 winner Prisoner Of Love (Canny Lad).
“We always knew he was a very nice horse and he could have gone to Magic Millions, and they really wanted him, but we highlighted him as a really standout type here at Classic and our game was to beat the top price at Magics ($400,000) and we have, so that’s really good,” Torryburn Stud’s Mel Copelin said.
“He has a beautiful attitude and I think we had 30 x-ray hits, everyone was on him.”
On the back of the eye-catching Harry Angel colt foaling at Torryburn Stud, clients have supported the champion European two-year-old by sending mares to him in his third season Down Under.
“She was just a young mare and her first foal by Deep Field was really nice and we needed to find another outcross stallion and he was a very fast horse, a good price, it was the perfect pick,” Copelin reasoned for the mating.
Harry Angel yearlings sold up to $400,000 at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale at an average of $169,444 and so far at Classic he has had 12 yearlings sell to date at an average of $132,667.
Bates yesterday also bought a Deep Field (Northern Meteor) filly for $360,000 (Lot 444) from the Yarraman Park Stud draft and shortly after an Invader (Snitzel) colt for $220,000 from Bell River Thoroughbreds (Lot 451).
Market maintains momentum
Yesterday’s trade maintained its record pace with the second session market hitting another new high for a single-day aggregate, bringing receipts of $28,388,000, taking the two-day total to $55,509,000.
The average was last night at $126,444 and the median at $100,000 while the clearance rate was 89 per cent.
“We’ve had another fantastic day. We were pretty confident that it was a nice spread of horses through the catalogue so there was going to be no obvious bias across the three days,” Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch said.
“Obviously there were a number of people who got disappointed trying to buy horses (on Sunday) that appear to have got involved in them going into today and there are a number of people who weren’t on the sheet yesterday who are on the sheet today.
“It’s been a very positive day for a lot of people and there’s no reason to think tomorrow won’t be an equally positive day.”
Newgate Farm’s Field, whose draft had realised $4,895,000 from 40 lots sold so far at an average of $122,375, said: “What I like about the market, from the top to bottom, is it has been terrific. We’ve sold horses in our draft for $20,000 and up to $550,000 … and the buying bench Inglis has put together has really ensured there’s been great depth.”
The final session, which encompasses Lots 541-660 in Book 1 and the Highway catalogue, starts at 10am.
Sale statistics – days one and two
2022 2021
Catalogued 540 540
Offered 482 477
Sold 439 (89%) 423 (89%)
Aggregate $28,388,000 $43,974,500
Average $126,444 $103,959
Median $100,000 $80,000
Top Lot $825,000 $625,000
Sale statistics – Book 1
2021 2020
Catalogued 620 613
Offered 548 563
Sold 501 (91%) 474 (84%)
Aggregate $51,273,000 (+23%) $41,690,500
Average $102,546 (+17%) $87,955
Median $80,000 (+7%) $75,000
Top Lot $625,000 $380,000
Sale statistics – Highway Session
2021 2020
Catalogued 183 195
Offered 159 176
Sold 140 (88%) 132 (75%)
Aggregate $6,823,000 (+35%) $5,039,500
Average $48,736 (+28%) $38,178
Median $37,500 (+25%) $30.000
Top Lot $220,000 $160,000