Patient Peters snaps up weanlings for racing team
Western Australian owner and breeder Bob Peters and his grandson Liam Peters also made an early impression, buying two weanling colts – a $280,000 filly by So You Think (High Chaparral) and a $260,000 son of Toronado (High Chaparral) – to add to the familiar cerise and white silks’ racing division either in Perth or on the east coast.
The daughter of So You Think is a half-sister to Listed winner Lady Of Honour (No Nay Never) and the stakes-placed Our Couver (Vancouver) and she was sold through Mike O’Donnell’s Fairhill Farm, while the Toronado colt was bred and sold by Ryan Arnel’s Stonehouse Thoroughbreds.
Peters and his wife Sandra have enjoyed success in the past with the progeny of Coolmore’s So You Think with Midnight Blue having won the 2022 Perth Cup (Gr 2, 2400m) and Pure Devotion, four times stakes placed in Western Australia.
“She’s [So You Think, filly] a beautiful mover, a nice type with a great head and she had a great attitude the whole week, even when I wasn’t looking at her personally I saw her out for other people and she took it all in her stride,” Byerley Bloodstock’s Liam Peters said.
“We went one or two bids further than we thought but we’re really happy to have secured her.”
The Toronado colt is the fourth foal out of Justice Glory (Fastnet Rock), a sister to Peters’ Western Australian Derby (Gr 2, 2400m)-winning filly Tuscan Queen.
Victorian breeder Arnel paid $220,000 for juvenile-winning Justice Glory at the 2022 Chairman’s Sale to specifically send to Swettenham Stud’s Toronado and the resulting colt proved a solid return on that investment.
“It’s good to see that it’s paid off. It probably happened earlier than we thought it would as he was always going to go to the yearling sales but as he was going through his foal development he was getting better and better,” Arnel said.
“So, we said, let’s put him in front of the market at this sale that we’ve supported for the last few years.
“When I bought the mare from Chairman’s one of the major reasons behind it was that I absolutely loved Tuscan Queen as a horse and she was going to Toronado, so I wanted to buy her to go to Toronado as well and, two years later, Bob Peters ends up buying him. So, it’s a full circle.”
The Peters’ have retained Tuscan Queen to breed with, but she slipped to Toronado in her first season at stud and returned to the Victorian stallion last year.
Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch said an element of how the catalogue fell in terms of quality weanlings contributed to Monday’s strong trade, but he believes the buying bench responded to greater depth on offer this year.
“Reassuringly for us, and the weanling market is primarily a pinhook-driven market, but there was good end-user participation throughout the day and that’s obviously been a massive factor in driving the results to where they are,” Hutch said.
“There are a huge number of people here wanting to trade stock who haven’t been able to land a blow at all as yet, so that bodes well for [the market on Tuesday].
“There’s plenty of horses for people to buy and, look, I think it’s been the best day foal selling the company’s ever had statistically in terms of gross and successful results through a particular day’s selling, so it’s very pleasing.”
Day two will start at 10am.