Operating under the banner of Lyndhurst Farm, Mark and Shelley Treweek have claimed eight leading vendor titles in little over a decade of selling at New Zealand Bloodstock’s Ready to Run Sale for two-year-olds.
Their top price was $650,000 for a Sebring colt at the 2016 edition of the sale, which remains a Karaka Ready to Run record.
Across all sales, their graduates include the champion Hong Kong sprinter Mr Stunning (Exceed and Excel) and other Group 1 winners such as Hall of Fame (NZ) (Savabeel), Volpe Veloce (Foxwedge), Atlante (Fastnet Rock), Albany Reunion (Fastnet Rock), Glorious Days (Hussonet {USA}), Historian (NZ) (Choisir), Linton (Galileo {IRE}), Snazzy (NZ) (Danske {NZ}), Zabeat (NZ) (Rhythm {USA}) and San Luis (Flying Spur).
Hong Kong sprinter Mr Stunning
Due to a number of factors, including a 2018 Ready to Run Sale that proved difficult for vendors, they are currently working exclusively with the weanling-to-yearling market.
“We're giving the breeze-ups a year off this year,” Mark Treweek said. “That market has changed a lot. There will still be a lot of money to go around there, but we've got older, and getting riders at home has made it harder to prep them. We just decided it was getting a bit hard.
"We're giving the breeze-ups a year off this year." - Mark Treweek
“Not that we'll give up on it altogether, but just decided to give it a year off and concentrate solely on the weanlings to yearlings.”
Half the quota secured
Lyndhurst made a strong start to their weanling recruitment for this season, securing five lots at Riverside Stables for a total of $562,000. The goal is to purchase around 10 to 12 weanlings across the major Australasian sales this year.
“A lot of people are probably hanging out for the Gold Coast, but if you go to any sale and find the ones you like and you can get them for the price you want, you should do it," Treweek said.
“It can be bloody hard buying horses on the Coast. We only got one there last year and were underbidders on three or four, up around $230,000, so you’re right up there. We didn't want to get to the end of the sales there this year and be well under what we wanted.”
"If you go to any sale and find the ones you like and you can get them for the price you want, you should do it." - Mark Treweek
Kicking off proceedings at Inglis on Thursday, they purchased a Pierro colt for $160,000, an I Am Invincible colt for $150,000, an Exceed and Excel colt for $100,000, a Divine Prophet colt for $90,000 and an Exosphere colt for $62,000.
The Treweeks purchased Lot 24 I Am Invinicble x Main Chance (USA) for $150,000
Their mix of three proven stallions and two up-and-comers was by circumstance rather than design.
“It was just the way the cards fell,” Treweek said. “We came here to buy proven sires, like we did last year, but we looked at a lot of the new sires and some of the ones on their second and third terms.
“You just do that because you never know. Sometimes they might not look the way you want early on, but you just don’t know which one is going to come out and leave those two-year-old winners. They can be the ones that you can make big overs on.
"You just don’t know which one is going to come out and leave those two-year-old winners." - Mark Treweek
“So we’ve taken a risk on two by unproven sires, but we just thought they were outstanding individuals, and at the price we thought it was worth the risk.
“But if you'd talked to us this morning, we were definitely not going to buy new sires. We were mainly here to buy progeny by proven sires”
Proven sires at great value
Mark was delighted with the proven sires’ progeny they were able to secure.
“Pierro is turning out to be a sensational sire, and we just loved this colt,” Treweek said. “We thought he was probably our pick of the sale. We were very strong on him.
Pierro
“The I Am Invincible was passed in and we thought we probably wouldn’t be able to buy him, so in the end we thought $150,000 was good buying. If he’d been at the Gold Coast, we probably wouldn’t have been able to do that.
“We paid $255,000 for one of his progeny last year, who we later sold for $550,000 on the Coast. So I thought this guy was excellent value at that.
“As for Exceed and Excel, we’ve always loved him. We’ve had a really good run buying and selling his progeny. Mr Stunning is an example, and a couple of others who have gone on and done well. We’ve got one we sold at the breeze-ups a year ago, who recently won a trial by 10 lengths. His name is Aquila.
“At $100,000, I thought this colt was really good buying. It’s a lovely family, only two dams on the page, and he’s the type of colt we could probably bring back for the Easter Sale.”
A great track record
Treweek puts a lot of their pinhooking successes, and the subsequent results of those horses on the racetrack, down to luck and gut instinct.
The Treweeks' Lyndhurst Farm
“I just tend to like a horse and just can't get it out of my head, so I just chase it up,” he said. “And we've been lucky enough that it's turned out all right.
“That hasn't always been financial for us, but most of the ones that we've fallen in love with have gone on to be our Group winners.
“We bought Atlante. He was a very good horse, and we probably didn't see the best of him in the end.
“Sousa (NZ) (Galileo {IRE}) was one of our first buys – we bought him as a weanling in New Zealand, by Galileo.
“That hasn't always been financial for us, but most of the ones that we've fallen in love with have gone on to be our Group winners." - Mark Treweek
“We paid $150,000 for him, which I think was the top price paid in New Zealand for a weanling at that time.
“Everyone thought we were mad, and we didn't actually sell him in New Zealand, because Galileo hadn't really come up before then down this end of the world.
“We took him to Easter and he made $440,0000, and Woodlands bought him then, and he ended up being Darley's first Group 1 winner in the Spring Champion Stakes.
“Mr Stunning, we bought him as a yearling, sold him in New Zealand. He's been an outstanding horse. Glorious Days, he was a very good horse in Hong Kong. It's been quite exciting," said Treweek.
