'The most difficult exercise in the world'

There were 43 yearlings sold in the Melbourne Sale Premier Session at a higher price than they fetched as foals, theoretically delivering a positive return on investment.

Big pinhook results are great marketing tools for the art of trading, and looking through the prices at Melbourne, it is clear there particularly an opportunity for those who can identify stallions with reputations on the rise.

Arrowfield Stud's Dundeel (NZ), whose reputation has exploded over the past 12 months, delivered a trio of strong returns for pinhookers at the Premier Sale.

Paul Willetts Bloodstock paid $90,000 for a colt out of Daisy Can Too (Mossman) at last year's Magic Millions National Weanling Sale and the colt fetched $380,000 to James Harron when offered as Lot 116 by Three Bridges Thoroughbreds in Melbourne.

A Dundeel filly out of Boston Symphony (Street Sense {USA}) sold for $120,000 to Grant Bloodstock at the same Gold Coast sale and as Lot 62 delivered $180,000, while a $90,000 weanling Dundeel colt turned into a $120,000 yearling as Lot 34.

Maluka Thoroughbreds reaped the rewards for its investment in a Kermadec (NZ) filly ($50,000) and an All Too Hard colt ($70,000) last year when they sold for $180,000 and $240,000 respectively as Lots 43 and 113 at Oaklands Junction this week.

Not as easy as it looks

It looks easy when you highlight the big results, but even after Tarcoola Stud's Ken Williams returned a tidy profit pinhooking a Pride Of Dubai colt (Lot 404) from a $52,000 weanling to a $200,000 yearling when selling to Andrew Williams Bloodstock/Lindsay Park Racing, he was at pains to emphasise just how hard a caper it is.

"Pinhooking is the most difficult exercise in the world. We have seven filters a horse needs to go through, I would love to pinhook five horses a year, but my average is between nought and one," he said.

Tarcoola's record in pinhooking is pretty strong over the past six years according to Williams, who said all but one of the foals it has purchased has returned a profit, but there are so many factors which can complicate the process.

"You need to pick a stallion you think is going to come out and do something and you have to buy them at the right price. The x-rays have to be clean and by the time you go through that, there aren't many left," he said.

"Then, even if he does pass all those filters, by the time you get to the buy-side, the price can become ridiculous. I've fallen in love with horses as a weanling and they have gone for big prices, say $180,000, and they are back to the sales and sold for $200,000. I don’t get that. You can't make money and you take a lot of risks on the way through.

"I've gone years when we have bought none, because it is just too hard."

Supreme's plan works wonders

Supreme Thoroughbreds went looking for weanlings at the 2019 Great Southern Sale because it knew its 2020 draft of yearlings was not at the quality it desired.

"We hadn't pinhooked for a while and we felt when we looked at our stock, we were down a little bit on quality on what we have normally. We just wanted to boost our draft up," Supreme Thoroughbreds General Manager Brent Grayling said.

Supreme spent $85,000 on a colt by Real Impact (Jpn) and $28,000 on a colt by Shalaa (Ire) and returned them to Oaklands nine months later to achieve a couple of fantastic results.

The Real Impact colt sold to Robert Roulston Bloodstock for $200,000 as Lot 186 at the Premier Sale, while the Shalaa colt, catalogued as Lot 102, went to Freedman Brothers/Rick Connolly Bloodstock for $150,000.

Reflecting on the two success stories, Grayling felt he had picked out the right types and the right breeds, with the yearling buyers in Melbourne particularly keen on the two emerging stallions on offer.

"We bought a Shalaa, and they have become flavour of the month and the Real Impact colt, the Japanese horses have exploded internationally. He was very popular as well off the back of that," he said.

"Things change in the 12 months and we've had the Japanese horses become more dominant. We had so many Asian buyers on that Real Impact colt because they know the dominance of Deep Impact and that sireline."

Pride pays

Williams had a similar experience with his colt by Pride Of Dubai. He had a sense that the early crops of the Coolmore stallion weren't getting the respect they deserved by the market and backed his judgement.

"We just saw him as a great prospect but as the sales progressed last year, we felt the herd didn’t see that. We often look for that. If we see a mis-match between what the herd thinks and what we think reality is, we are happy to back ourselves," he said.

"We had to look at him for the prospect that as a weanling, he might have been a bit big. I think we felt that maybe why they are selling him, but we assessed that and thought, he will be right by the time he is a yearling.

"He was well-bred and he was an unbelievably good walking horse as a weanling."

Williams' instinct for the stallion and his colt was right and he has been rewarded with a $148,000 profit, but it is a reward which comes with substantial risk along the way.

"It’s a tough business. You are running a risk all the way through that something will go wrong with the horse," he said.

Reward with substantial risk

The other danger which Grayling identifies is the risk to reputation if the result doesn't turn out as planned.

"It's high risk and you are judged on it. Everyone knows what you paid, and everyone knows what you get. You have nowhere to hide when you take a loss," he said.

While this week's success has had plenty of clients ringing Grayling asking about pinhooks, he said Supreme was unlikely to go down the same path again ahead of the 2021 sale.

"We have an outstanding bunch of foals this year, probably the best we have every had, so we don’t need to pinhook. Our draft is very strong, so I don’t know if we do or not. We'll have to see what the wash-up is," he said.