‘Street Boss is flying at the moment’
A combination of an exceptional crop of yearlings and a condensed catalogue has expectations high for a particularly strong Inglis Easter Yearling Sale, which kicks off on Sunday.
Only 388 yearlings will go under the hammer, following 33 withdrawals by late Friday off an original catalogue of 421. That’s significantly streamlined from last year, when 445 yearlings were offered – from an original catalogue of 500 – with 356 ultimately sold at a clearance rate of 80 per cent.
After some fears of a downturn this sale season, sparked by a degree of lower-end market softness early in the year, stronger results at Inglis’s Classic and Premier sales have left vendors in a more ebullient mood.
And with footfall high at Riverside this week – up by 15 per cent on last year according to some vendors – and a consensus that 2023 has produced a vintage crop, from the Hunter Valley at least, many vendors are anticipating an extremely competitive top and middle sector over the next two days at Riverside.
North Bloodstock general manager Mick Malone is one person predicting a robust sale. The relatively new stud presents its second Easter draft, 18 lots including two of the four yearlings catalogued at the sale by surging Darley sire Street Boss (Street Cry) on offer at the sale.
Malone said he expected high competition for the sale’s more elite yearlings which, considering the relatively tight book, would help inflate the middle band.
“There’s been plenty of people at the complex this week,” Malone said. “How that converts is always interesting, but so far it feels like the interest is good.
“But I look at a lot of yearlings as well as selling them, and I’ve seen nearly every horse here, and the quality this year is extraordinary.
“The good ones are ridiculously good, and there’s enough of them, that I think that will have a knock-on effect of really boosting the middle market. Buyers are going to have to fall back on other horses, because there’s just not going to be enough of the top ones to go round, for the amount of people who want to buy.
“We’ll only know once we get going, but I think the top will be crazy. The middle – where we vendors are always a bit nervous – will be a bit better than we normally think. And the bottom you’ll be doing your best on, but you’ll probably get them away after the event.”
North’s head-turners include Lot 248, a filly by Street Boss – whose star juveniles Tempted and Tentyris have him sixth on the two-year-old sires’ table – out of Listed winner Vienna Miss (Snitzel).
She’s bred on a cross which is firing for Street Boss at present, with eight winners from nine runners and two stakes winners, at 22 per cent. They include Memsie Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) hero Pinstriped.
And Lot 21 is another Street Boss filly out of a full-sister to Group 1 winner and six-time stakes victor Dreamforce (Fastnet Rock).
“Street Boss is flying at the moment,” Malone said of the 20-year-old, who’s equal–sixth by stakes winners (eight) in Australia this season. “He’s actually always done a good job. He’s been a great stallion, and we’re very happy with our two. They’re both lovely fillies.”
Coolmore Stud offers 37 yearlings including the colt first foal of dual Group 1 winner Shout The Bar (Not A Single Doubt) by their first–season sensation Home Affairs (I Am Invincible), a Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj) colt out of Group 1 winner Nakeeta Jane (So You Think), and the filly third foal of the outstanding Group 1 winner Invincibella (I Am Invincible), by Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice).
“It’s going to be a good sale,” said Coolmore nominations and sales manager Colm Santry.
“The top of the market will be very strong, and because of that the middle and lower will probably hold up well. There’s only going to be a limited amount of horses here for the amount of buyers we’ll have.
“And I know our draft has been really well received. We’ve an amazing group of colts and fillies, and the response from buyers has been very good.”
Arrowfield Stud’s 42-horse draft – the largest at the sale – is representative of the quality on offer. Among many highlights, it includes a full–brother to Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Switzerland (Snitzel), a full–brother to Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) hero and now burgeoning sire Super Seth (Dundeel), and a half-sister to Group 1 winners Lady Shenandoah (Snitzel) and Stronger (Not A Single Doubt).
“We’ve had some good drafts here before, but this is one of the better ones we’ve brought here in recent times,” said Arrowfield’s bloodstock manager Jon Freyer.
“We’ve had a couple of drafts here where we’ve had four Group 1 winners come out of it. It’d be saying something to say we’ll do that again, but put it this way – I showed a leading trainer some horses on Thursday. He said, ‘Keep showing them to me as long as they’ve got an A rating’. We got to 11 and he said, ‘I give up! I can’t see any more’. It was an amusing but positive sign.”
Freyer added: “It often goes like that, where you do get a good crop. You see over the years there’s been crops of three-year-olds where there’s half–a–dozen outstanding ones, like when there was Nothin’ Like A Dane, Saintly, Octagonal and Filante all in the one year. This might be one of those years.
“We’re approaching the sale with a level head but with hopes high. Racing is strong, the metrics are pretty good, and there’s a lot of people in the market who’ve had quite successful years and you’d think would be encouraged to reinvest. If that all happens I think it’ll be a very good sale.”
Inglis bloodstock CEO Sebastian Hutch is cautiously optimistic the positive trends seen at Classic and Premier will continue at Easter, with footfall strong over the past week, and with a vast range of keenly anticipated yearlings on offer.
They also include siblings to Coolmore Stud Stakes winner Ozzmosis (Zoustar) and Growing Empire (Zoustar), half-siblings to Group 1 winners Sunshine In Paris (Invader), El Castello (Castelvecchio) and Autumn Angel (The Autumn Sun), and the progeny of top-level winning mares such as Arcadia Queen (Pierro) and Hungry Heart (Frankel).
“The interest and engagement in the sale has been positive, and that’s been consistent with Classic and Premier,” Hutch said.
“Obviously we’re operating at a different price point here to any other sale we’ve had this year. And it’s certainly been a more discerning and selective approach from buyers this year, and we’d expect that to continue to be the case at this sale, but certainly the signs are encouraging in terms of people looking to be involved.
“The horses have come together really nicely. There’s good variety through the catalogue, the right stallions are firing at the right time, and there have been a lot of nice pedigree updates.
“For a sale that people get more excited about than any other, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about this sale.”
Hutch said Easter – which hatched Switzerland, Lady Shenandoah and the unbeaten Autumn Glow (The Autumn Sun) in 2023 – was again set to benefit from its timing on the calendar.
“We see it year in, year out at this sale that horses present at their best at this time. Buyers are looking at a more developed, mature, more furnished product, and that gives buyers more confidence when bidding,” he said.
“Still, ultimately the test of the sale is on the racecourse and the sale has distinguished itself in that respect. You look at Lady Shenandoah, Autumn Glow and Switzerland, then two of the most high profile older horses in the country in Overpass and Joliestar, among many others.
“These are the benchmarks set by the sale in the past. This is what people come to the sale looking to find, at the top level, but they also come expecting to be able to find some value through the middle and lower parts of the sale, and they’ll be finding that as well.”
The latter aspect is much overlooked at Easter. While the headlines are dominated by million–dollar lots – of which there were 18 last year – others have emerged such as Autumn Angel. She was a $230,000 purchase for bloodstock agent Wylie Dalziel and trainer Peter Moody in 2022, and after winning the ATC Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) fetched $1.225m as a broodmare.
Hutch points out at the same sale Dalziel bought Queen Starlight (Zoustar) for $240,000.
“She probably didn’t reach the level Wylie hoped she would, but she’s ended up being a half-sister to Wodeton, and she’s going to be a feature lot at the Chairman’s broodmare sale, and will return her owners a significant dividend on her purchase price,” Hutch said.
“Wylie is a great advertisement for the opportunity there is to have value at this sale. He’s exploited it time and again.”
Hutch said a strong buying bench had been assembled, with representation from Hong Kong, Japan, China, New Zealand and South Africa, along with Europe and the US.
Giant American buyer John Stewart is understood to be set to make his presence felt, while Japan’s Northern Farm will also be present.
“People will be pleased with what they’re seeing here. This is a very strong representation of the best yearlings in the market, and if there’s a good appetite for good yearlings then the sale should go well,” Hutch said.
North Bloodstock’s draft also includes one of the last fillies set to go through a sale by the great Fastnet Rock (Danehill), out of Roebuck Bay (Medaglia d’Oro). Fastnet Rock, who was retired after the 2023 season, had five fillies born that year, with another four from his final crop.
Malone also has high hopes for North’s Ole Kirk (Written Tycoon) filly out of ATC Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Go Indy Go (Bernardini), a Snitzel colt from the stakes-placed Zasorceress (Zabeel), and a “nice bunch” of four yearlings by Coolmore’s So You Think (High Chaparral) – three fillies and a colt.
“Ole Kirk can’t be going any better. He could be the most dominant sire we’ve seen for a long time,” Malone said.
He added: “Sadly, commercially, So You Think gets overlooked, but these first-season sires who’ll outsell him here, they’ll probably never be as good as him.”
Bidding at the Easter sale starts at midday on Sunday, and 10am on Monday.