‘Special’ $3 million colt delivers Home Affairs an Easter result to savour
Gai Waterhouse believes she has another Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) contender after Home Affairs’ (I Am Invincible) ballistic start to stud life continued when big-buying Tulloch Lodge made one of his sons top lot on a powerhouse first day at Inglis Easter.
In January, Home Affairs achieved the remarkable feat for a first season sire of providing the highest priced yearling at the Magic Millions Gold Coast sale, when the filly first foal out of Sunlight (Zoustar) fetched $3.2 million.
Three months later he was at it again, when the first foal of Waterhouse and Adrian Bott’s former star mare Shout The Bar (Not A Single Doubt) was snapped up by the stable for $3 million.
Waterhouse and Bott had narrowly missed three hours earlier when acting as underbidders on a brother to Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Switzerland (Snitzel), who fell to that farm’s Tom Magnier for $2.7 million, the day’s second-top lot.
But they were fiercely determined to snare their Home Affairs colt – offered by the young stallion’s home stud Coolmore – and did so following an intense bidding battle, beating out UK-based bloodstock agent Jamie McCalmont.
They had help from their friends, with Bruce Slade’s Kestrel Thoroughbreds also on the buying ticket, and their flamboyant long-time collaborator John Singleton among those weighing in to take a share.
Coolmore had made dual Group 1 winner Shout The Bar a record breaker when buying her for $2.7 million at the Inglis Chairman’s sale of 2022.
Having sent her to their much vaunted new sire in his first season, the stud will now be cheering even more loudly for the phenomenal reception Home Affairs has had at the start of his career.
Depending on results in Monday’s closing Easter session, he may end his first sale season with the two highest priced yearlings sold in the southern hemisphere this year.
“He’s a magical horse,” Waterhouse said of her new colt, who was catalogued as Lot 158. “We knew we had to be bullish to get him, and we did.
“I saw him at the farm, I saw him many times here, and I’ve seen most horses on the complex, and he just really stood out. He stood out as a horse I really do believe could be a Golden Slipper horse.
“That’s what you’re trying to achieve – for them to win those creme de la creme two-year-old races, and hopefully step up and win three-year-old races like the Coolmore, which his father did.”
Waterhouse, Bott and Kestrel emerged as the day’s biggest buyers, spending $5,435,000 on seven yearlings, buying the chart-topper and co-signing for the equal third-highest lot.
Bott was just as overjoyed as his training partner – which was saying something considering he reported she was “doing cartwheels” in their private suite after the colt was secured with what Bott said was their last bid.
Waterhouse, 70, would not confirm the cartwheel rumour, but said the purchase was deeply significant.
“We trained the mother, so the association with the family continues,” she told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“It’s joyous, because some of the owners who raced her have come back in. It’s a lovely group of people. Singo’s [Singleton] there, and you couldn’t have a more appropriate owner of a horse out of Shout The Bar, which he did at Rosehill when he won the Slipper with Belle Du Jour (in 2000).”
The colt topped a booming day one which by far outstripped even Inglis’s greatest expectations, and which was a huge vote of confidence for this year’s smaller catalogue of 421 compared to last year’s 500. After withdrawals, 388 horses are on offer, down from last year’s 445.
At the close of Sunday trade, 129 lots had been sold out of 163 to go through the ring, with the average $488,798, the median $375,000, and the gross $63,055,000. The clearance was 79 per cent, and certain to comfortably clear the standard 80 per cent target.
This compared to last year’s overall sale figures – inflated by the $10 million Winx (Street Cry) filly – when the average was $426,447 and the median $300,000.
The comparison to day one last year – without day two’s Winx filly – is even more glowing, with the average then only $373,415 and the median $300,000, through 183 lots sold.
Especially in light of fears for this year’s sale season following some worrying signs at the Gold Coast and Karaka, a 15 per cent increase in the average over last year’s completed sale, and a 31 per cent rise over last year’s day one figure, had Inglis Bloodstock CEO Sebastian Hutch ebullient.
“It’s fair to say it’s a far more fulfilling day than any of us would’ve envisaged at any stage in the last 11 months and 28 days,” Hutch said.
“We had a fantastic sale here last year. We genuinely felt it would be something difficult to live up to do.
“So for today to have gone the way it’s gone, even allowing for the fact that sentiment in advance of the sale felt very positive, is really quite extraordinary.
“In the context of the year this was a fantastic day.
“The growth in the metrics has been really mind-blowing. It’s a reflection of the tremendous support we’ve had from our vendors, and the work our team has put in to make sure no stone was left unturned to achieve a good result for our members.”
With foot traffic up this year, and fewer horses to choose from, predictions that intense competition at the top end would also lift the middle-to-lower bracket came to fruition. At one stage the average breached $500,000, with the middle market seeming anywhere from that figure to $800,000.
“There just seemed extraordinary strength in the middle part of the market. It felt really strong at all levels throughout the day,” Hutch said
Hutch said whether the Easter catalogue would remain its current size in the years ahead was “something we’ll evaluate at the end of day two”, but added there were “certainly reasons to be enthusiastic about the way the sale is structured at the moment”.
Coolmore’s bloodstock and racing manager John Kennedy said Sunday’s top lot for Home Affairs – coupled with his Gold Coast sale topper – was more vindication for the faith the stud showed in the stallion, who was bought at the 2020 edition of the Easter sale by Magnier for $875,000 from Torryburn Stud.
“We knew he was a special horse when he was on the racetrack, and we supported him with some very well-bred mares in his first crop in the hope that we’d give him an ideal start,” Kennedy said.
“This is the first stage of the journey for him. We’re very confident he’ll do it in the next part of the journey – on the racetrack – but he’s certainly off to a very strong start and we’re thrilled for him.”
Home Affairs had nine lots sell on Sunday for an average of $529,000, ranking fifth for stallions with three or more yearlings sold.
Kennedy said the Shout The Bar colt was “a great representation of what we feel the Home Affairs yearlings are like”, but Coolmore had not expected him to reach $3 million.
“We said coming here that he was one of the nicer colts we’d ever brought to this sale in my time at Coolmore, and he certainly exceeded expectations,” he said. “We’re delighted for his group of owners, including Julia Ritchie, who raced the mare and stayed in the journey with us.
“Shout The Bar probably looks like a cheap purchase now. When you give a price like that for a broodmare you always hope to get a first foal like this fella.”
Bott said the colt was a “beautifully balanced, well proportioned horse, with a lot of maturity and strength about him”.
“We’ll be testing him early in his career. He looks like he’s got all the attributes to handle that,” said Bott, adding the gavel had fallen just in time.
“It probably had us right at our end. We knew we’d have to be strong.”
The day’s second top lot lived up to his billing from breeders Arrowfield for being better developed at the same stage than his full brother Switzerland, who’ll be going to stud at Coolmore this spring.
Magnier paid $1.5m for Switzerland in 2023, and had to almost double that on Sunday to secure the third foal of Ms Bad Behavior (Blame), a dual stakes winner in the US.
“He’s very much like his brother. He’s got a lot of quality, and hopefully if he can win a couple of races he’ll be a very exciting horse,” said Magnier, confirming the colt would, like Switzerland, be trained by Chris Waller.
“He’s a lovely type. Chris and all the team really like the horse. He was one of the stand-outs of the sale.
“Everybody’s saying to me this is the best Easter catalogue they’ve seen in years. There’s some very good horses here.”
Meanwhile, Magnier said no decision had been made on whether Switzerland had run his last race, saying some thought may be given to a Royal Ascot mission. The three-year-old has missed a place in all three runs this campaign, capped by his seventh in Saturday’s TJ Smith Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at Randwick.
“We’re obviously really excited that Switzerland will be going to stud this year,” he said. “A lot of people are enquiring about him.”
With ten million dollar yearlings sold on Sunday, and the top four all colts, third rank was shared by a pair at $1.7 million.
The action began early when that mark was reached by Lot 16, Segenhoe Stud’s son of Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) and Group 3-winning sprinter La Mexicana (I Am Invincible). He was bought by colts buyers James Harron and Tony Fung, in conjunction with Waterhouse-Bott.
A few hours later, B2B Thoroughbreds matched that figure in buying Lot 155, a son of Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), whose soaring reputation was franked when he emerged as the day’s top sire by average with three or more lots sold. His trio averaged $1.1 million.
This colt inherited the grey colouring of his unraced dam Shadow (Medaglia d’Oro), who carried it on from her dual Group 1-winning second dam Virage de Fortune (Anabaa) and Champion fourth dam Emancipation (Bletchingly).
“I’m speechless,” said the colt’s breeder Kate Nivison, who sold him through Coolmore’s draft.
A woman with a fine pedigree in breeding herself, Nivison had bought a breeding right in Extreme Choice before he launched as a sensational – if sub-fertile – sire for Henry Field’s Newgate Farm.
“I asked Henry and his team, ‘What does Extreme Choice like?’, because we all know he’s a little bit sub-fertile, and they said: ‘A grey’,” she said.
“So I went and bought the best grey mare I could find, and luckily for me it was my favourite horse growing up – Emancipation – through Virage De Fortune.”
Equal fifth rank was shared by the day’s two top fillies, at $1.4 million.
Lot 156, an Arrowfield yearling by their Japanese shuttler Maurice (Screen Hero) out of Champion 3YO Filly Shoals (Fastnet Rock) was knocked down to Dean Hawthorne Bloodstock.
And Lot 108, Cressfield’s daughter of I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) and dual Group 1 winner Pippie (Written Tycoon) went to Japanese operation Champions Farm and Satomi Oka Bloodstock.
The sale brought compensation for a horror run of luck for Cressfield’s owner Bruce Neill, who endured the deaths of three Group 1-winning mares in as many months late last year.
Mid Summer Music (Oamaru Force) – dam of Saturday’s Doncaster Mile (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Stefi Magnetica (All Too Hard) – died in September aged 19, two months before nine-year-old Pippie, while 12-year-old Secret Agenda (Not A Single Doubt) was lost in December.
“I’m happy but also a little disappointed because I loved Pippie,” Neill said. “I’ve got mixed feelings, but it’s nice to get that sort of money for her filly. She deserved that sort of money.”
Neill also bred and sold 2020 VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m) winner Personal (Fastnet Rock). He thus had an indirect role in another bumper result when Personal’s filly first foal by So You Think (High Chaparral) was sold by Coolmore to Glentree Thoroughbreds and Badgers Bloodstock for $1.15 million.
Also selling for that figure were Gilgai Farm’s Extreme Choice colt out of Listed winner Ocean Jewel (Ocean Park), bought by Yulong, and Widden Stud’s colt by their sire Zoustar (Northern Meteor) out of the Group 1-placed Lady Lupino (Sebring), purchased by Lucky Owners P.L.
Rounding out the seven-figure lots was Yarraman Park’s filly by I Am Invincible out of Missile Mantra (Smart Missile), who was bought by Waller and Guy Mulcaster for $1.2 million.
After Extreme Choice, Snitzel ranked second among sires by average, at $825,000 through 12 lots sold, ahead of I Am Invincible ($739,000, nine lots), and Zoustar ($570,000, 11 lots).
The day’s second-largest buyer was Hawthorne, purchasing four yearlings for $3.75 million, ahead of B2B with three bought for $2.8 million.
Leading vendor by average was Coolmore, with 13 lots averaging $713,846, ahead of Vinery Stud (seven at $657,143) and Arrowfield (16 at $655,000). Arrowfield had the top aggregate at $10.5 million, ahead of Coolmore’s $9.3 million.