Star mare Prowess on offer on Gavelhouse Plus
Breeders will be afforded a rare opportunity when high-class dual Group 1 winner Prowess (Proisir) goes up for auction at a special standalone sale on Gavelhouse Plus. Bidding for the mare is set to open on August 2 and close on August 8.
Trained by Roger James and Robert Wellwood for a family syndicate headed by Dean Skipper, Prowess won eight of her 12 starts including five consecutive black-type victories during her three-year-old year season.
By Rich Hill’s champion sire Proisir (Choisir), the mare was a $230,000 yearling purchase at the New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale 2021 from the draft of breeders Hallmark Stud, and she turned that into more than NZ$1.65 million in prize-money in her career.
Skipper described the decision to sell the mare as ‘bittersweet’.
“She’s taken us on an amazing ride and it’s definitely a shame that it’s coming to an end,” Skipper said. “We have some mixed emotions about putting her up for sale.
“But the way we look at it is that we were just so fortunate to have had one as good as her, and now she’s ready to go on to the next stage of her career.
“She’s bright and well and a happy horse. She could probably even have made it back to the racetrack if we wanted to wait a bit longer. But she’s at a premium stage of her life to start her breeding career now, and we always set it up so that we would sell her at around this time and have her in the best possible condition for that.”
Prowess kicked off the remarkable stakes sequence in the Auckland Guineas (Gr 2, 1600m), then produced a scintillating turn of foot to stun a star-studded field in the Karaka Million 3YO Classic (RL, 1600m), before delivering a five-length romp in the David & Karyn Ellis Fillies’ Classic (Gr 2, 2000m).
Pitted against the older horses for her next start, Prowess showed her star quality when adding a first elie-level win to her record in the New Zealand Stakes (Gr 1, 2050m), after which she was sent across the Tasman, producing a dominant performance to land the Vinery Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) at Rosehill.
In an injury-curtailed four-year-old campaign, Prowess won the Crystal Mile (Gr 2, 1600m) in Melbourne and placed in the Taranaki Breeders’ Stakes (Gr 3, 1400m).
“We knew from quite early on that we might have something a bit special on our hands,” Skipper said. “Robert Wellwood texted me after the trial, telling me to watch the replay and then give him a call. I figured she must have done something, and I was blown away when I watched it.
“Then we were on course at Wanganui for her debut, and we were a bit overwhelmed when she won it the way she did. We didn’t even really celebrate – we were just awestruck.
“We started to realise just how good she was when she won the Auckland Guineas, and it was a picket fence from there and she just kept raising the bar.
“Roger James has been training for a long time and has had some great horses in his stable, so when he started saying she was up there with the best he’d ever trained, it was incredibly exciting.
“One thing about her career that was very special was that we managed to capture the attention of a few people who weren’t previously into racing. They got behind her and were opening up TAB accounts so that they could bet on her. That was another part of the experience that we really enjoyed.
“It was just so much fun and we can’t thank everyone enough – the vets, spelling farms, the farriers and all the team at Kingsclere Stables. They’re the ones getting up at 3am and putting in all that hard work. We just paid the bills and got to enjoy the end result.
“She gave us some incredible memories, and now we’re looking forward to seeing what she can do in the broodmare paddock.”
Prowess’ reputation as a high-class performer stretched beyond the racetrack and back into the sale ring where it all began, with her sister topping Book 1 of this year’s New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale, when she sold to Victorian-based trainer Peter Moody for $1.6 million.
“It was unbelievable to see the full-sister sell for such a big price at Karaka earlier in the year,” Skipper said. “It shows how highly the family is regarded now, and it’s a great reward for the hard work that Mark Baker and the Hallmark team have put in.
“Based on that, I guess we could say that we got Prowess quite cheaply in hindsight. But it was still quite a heady price to pay at the time.”