Cover image courtesy of Magic Millions

Slade's Kestrel Thoroughbreds teamed up with Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott for the first time on the Gold Coast, and, on numbers of yearlings purchased alone, it proved a major success. Waterhouse and Bott bolstered their stable by well over 40, with 35 purchased in partnership with Kestrel.

Slade also continued his successful partnership buying for Gold Coast locals, Toby and Trent Edmonds in a market that was extremely competitive for buyers, and that required a fair bit of strategic planning to secure a winning bid.

"I thought it was a very good catalogue, a really high-class catalogue across the board. Pedigree-aside, just on types and racehorses, I thought there were plenty of good-running horses there, which of course Magic Millions has built its reputation and brand on," Slade said.

"There were lots of nice choices and it was just a matter of trying to get them bought. We just felt our way around it, did a lot of vetting and sat and waited for the ones that fell within our value ranges.

"Gai and Adrian have come away with close to 40 out of the Sale, which is more than they have for a few years and Toby and Trent had a record haul of 20-odd horses. It was really pleasing, it’s just great to get some good-quality horses into the stable, get them educated, get them into the system and hopefully polish a few diamonds."

Waterhouse was rapt to have Slade back on board helping her select yearlings on the Gold Coast.

“It is great to have Bruce. I plucked him, so to speak, from New Zealand when he was bid-spotting many years ago. He worked with me, then he went on to work at Newgate Farm and he’s come back more mature and a lot more experienced and he’s a huge help to us,” she said during the Sale.

For Slade, the phenomenal energy Waterhouse brings to her job, at an age where many are already in retirement, still amazes him.

"She said she thought I'd matured a lot, which I thought was interesting. I suppose we all mature and age and organically grow!" he said.

"Gai has bought a lot of horses in her life, so it’s always educational and it’s just incredible when you think I first started working with her a decade ago, just her energy and her enthusiasm and the way she never stops.

"Even though the business is Adrian's day-to-day, she treats it as her own and she hasn't lost any of her passion, vigour or work ethic. It was good fun, and when she's out in front, leading as she does, you just follow. That ties in quite nicely to the way she likes her horses to race, it’s just trying to keep up, but it’s good to have a bunny to chase."

Bott's growing influence as a co-trainer is the major change Slade has seen since he last worked with Waterhouse Racing in 2015, and he sees the pair as a great foil for one another.

"He's an incredible person, he really is. The way he and Gai work in together, it’s impossible for you to always to see eye-to-eye, but they bounce off each other and let each other have their wins here and there," Slade said.

"Gai's trained for a long time, and of everyone who has been through the gates there, he is the one that has been able to take over the mantle, and so that's a huge credit to him."

No Doubt over the standout

Of the all the purchases made by the team at Magic Millions, it was Lot 705, the filly by Not A Single Doubt out of Rhodamine (Success Express {USA}), offered by Silverdale Farm, that Slade is most excited about. At $750,000, she was the most expensive buy of the Sale for Waterhouse, Bott and Kestrel Thoroughbreds.

"We are just ecstatic to land her. You go in there hoping, and we had been beaten on a couple of other fillies we really liked. She was a top three physical in the Sale for us, filly or colt. What made her stand out was just her mentality," he said.

"When you go back to see her the eighth, ninth and tenth time, and it's getting closer to the Sale and little things can upset them, but every time she came out of the box, it was business as usual. I love seeing that, when fillies are able to cope with pressure."

The most exciting colt purchase in Slade's eye, was lot 665, by Pierro out of Princess Mia (Fastnet Rock) from the draft of Bott's father Tony's Evergreen Stud Farm. He cost $475,000.

"He's a beautiful horse. Obviously his second dam is Princess Coup, who was a champion horse. He's just that horse that has got the physicality and strength to be up and going as an autumn 2-year-old like his dad, but he's also got that scope and size," he said.

"You can see him leading out big weight-for-age, mile and sprint races in time. He's an exciting colt."

Edmonds Racing's record haul

Slade was also rapt with the horses he was able to secure for Edmonds Racing, who were the first clients in his new business at this Sale last year.

The pick of the bunch from 2021 was Lot 283, a filly by I Am Invincible out of Extra Olives from Coolmore which cost $360,000.

"We have had so much luck with I Am Invincible, through Houtzen and I think four or five other stakes winners as well. Toby selected I Am Invincible as a yearling and purchased him and initially trained him for the Gall family. He's a sire very close to our heart," he said.

"This filly is from a very fast family, her third dam is Alinghi and it’s a quick family. She looks like she could get up and take on black type before Christmas this year and hopefully she is in the race next year."

Slade was also pleased with the purchase of Lot 40, a colt by Nicconi out of Amansara (Not A Single Doubt), which Edmonds Racing and Kestrel Thoroughbreds were able to buy for $250,000.

Lessons learned

Working for two major clients presented its challenges for Slade on the Gold Coast but having got through a very busy start to the year, he has probably learned that he may need some help keeping up with his clients moving forward, particularly with Gai.

"It's just full on the whole time, full pace. Especially working for the two. It’s the only Sale where both of them are really active. At other sales, it will generally be one or the other," he said.

"Going into it, I wasn't sure how it was going to work. You just have to have very open communication lines and be very honest and where they come together on the same horse, they bid against one another as they normally would.

"I could definitely do it better for them both and that probably means I just need some help going forward in that regard. There are some things I could be doing, which I just can't physically do by myself. I probably just need an extra set of hands that can be there helping me add further value to them."

Cover image courtesy of Magic Millions

In what was an uncertain market pre-Sale, Magic Millions backed the appetite of buyers to absorb an extra 200 lots, and an additional day of selling at the Gold Coast, and the results have shown it was exactly the right move, with the generation of an additional $20 million in sales, without a significant impact on the average, median or clearance rate.

Given the border restrictions prevented a percentage of the buyers' bench from travelling to participate in the Sale, resulting in a noticeable reduction in people on the complex, it was a phenomenally successful Sale which will give much confidence to the yearling market heading into the rest of the 2021 yearling sales season.

"There is a great thirst for horses out there. We had a quality line-up here at all ends of the market, we had people here to buy the horses. That's our mandate and is what we are here to do for our vendors. I'm pleased that overall, we have been able to succeed in that," Magic Millions Managing Director, Barry Bowditch, said.

"When you have pulled off what we have over the past 10 days, you’d like to think the market has faith in whatever Magic Millions is doing. This Sale has been a record breaker, $212 million gross has never, ever been seen before. We’ve exceeded last year's record gross by $23 million. It’s an incredible result."

The 74-lot larger Book 1, held over an extra session with the Sale starting a day earlier, met buyers' desire to get involved in the market, with the average rising to $252,481, a $5000 increase on 2020, and a clearance rate and median on par year-on-year.

But the Book 2 results were also particularly pleasing to Bowditch. The average and median did drop, but with 97 additional horses sold that was to be expected. The clearance rate was particularly healthy at 83 per cent, compared to 79 per cent in 2020, pointing to the depth of the market.

"When you look at the fact that the clearance rate for Book 2 increased on last year, that's a fantastic result, an amazing result, really. So to be able to sell a lot more horses than what we did last year into a market where we had less foot traffic on the ground is an incredible result," Bowditch said.

'Bigger' approach vindicated

While not suggesting the catalogue could grow even larger next year, Bowditch did see the results as an endorsement of the changes that Magic Millions had made to the format in 2021.

"You can always tinker with things and make them better, but I think the blueprint is there. We are in a position where the market has accepted we can sell the amount of Book 1 horses we do. We are also keen to continue to hold a good number of Book 2 horses," he said.

"It was a seriously good Sale. I want to thank the vendors for working with us. The logistics of this Sale were a bit more challenging than they have been in the past, but they worked with us and the results reflect that the buyers still got behind the Sale and it worked."

He also praised buyers for finding ways around the evolving border situations to get to inspections and then facilitate their bidding.

"December was evident that everybody was out there working hard to look at horses and do as much heavy lifting as they could. The online bidding has been quite good. It’s been as busy as it has ever been for this Sale," he said.

"We’ve had agents working for a lot of people, I think the trainers are doing a lot of work, with the owners and syndicators that were unable to get here, the trainers have been able to get in and help them and ensure they can buy horses."

A relationship builder

One of the upsides of the trying circumstances in the build up to the Sale, is the strengthened relationships built between Magic Millions and the Queensland Government, according to Bowditch.

"We've always had a very important relationship with our government up here. We've worked closely with hem, building our carnival to what it has been in recent years," he said.

"The relationships we have had have been fostered during this time and we continue to communicate with these people and ensure we do things to the best of our ability, working within the confines and restrictions at any given time."

While the 'big show' on the Gold Coast has come to an end, the 2020 sales season has just begun for Bowditch and his team, with the challenges around movement of buyers and vendors continuing to present themselves as well as the usual logistics around conducting a yearling sale.

Bowditch said the past six months has taught his team many lessons which can hopefully prove useful through the upcoming sales in Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland.

"We've got a busy couple of months coming up. We've got Perth, Tassie, Adelaide and then back here for March, and they are all important Sales. They are sales we will be doing our best to ensure we can get as many of our buyers as possible to," he said.

"You can only deal with what is in front of you and what restrictions may be there, so we can succeed at these sales. We will be working hard with our vendors, and with our buyers to give them the best opportunities to view the horses. Hopefully, they can participate in these markets," he said.

"We just have to keep communicating and ensure we are across everything that is happening, whether it be to the health department, government, our vendors or our buyers. We just have to keep across everything and ensure we are making the best decisions to move with whatever is out in front of us. That's what we will do, and that's what we have done for both our sales over the past six or seven months."

Cover image courtesy of Fenwick Farm

There are many stages a horse must go through from the time it is born until the day it hits the racetrack but arguably the most important step is the process of breaking in.

The breaking in period is where the horse learns the tools to set it up for the rest of its career and Greg Bennett, the Head Trainer at Fenwick Farm was responsible for that early education of the first two runners home in Saturday’s R. Listed Magic Millions 2YO Classic.

This time last year, both Shaquero (Shalaa {Ire}) and Alpine Edge (Better Than Ready) had graduated the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale and arrived at Fenwick Farm to begin the road to becoming racehorses.

With two full days to process the result, Bennett was delighted to see two horses of which he and his team laid the foundations of, return to the Gold Coast and quinella the $2 million feature for 2-year-olds.

“That’s why we get up and go to work every day, just to try and get results and try and find a good horse,” Bennett told TDN AusNZ.

“I was training racehorses for years but now I’m back breaking them in and pre-training and I love this end of the industry, where we’re just taking the babies and starting them off in their careers. To see a couple come through like that, it’s just so good.

“It’s very humbling and it’s very pleasing and we all love our horses and staff and we all get a fuzzy feeling when things go right because as we all know, there are so many disappointments in this industry, probably more so than there are excitements and for that to happen, it was unbelievable.”

The personal feeling of satisfaction to produce a result of that calibre in a race so many connections are targeting their horses towards is one thing, but Bennett said it was also a great advertisement for the Fenwick Farm operation.

“Results speak for themselves and I started up here three years ago on my own and then over the last 18 months we’ve morphed into Fenwick Farm with some new investors and some good people around us,” he said.

“We’ve upped the ante a little bit on what we can offer and without showing off, none of us want to show off, but it’s just a wonderful way of letting people know that we’re out here and this is what we can do.”

Standouts of the crop

Bennett said he had 220 yearlings come through his operation last year but Shaquero and Alpine Edge, at the time just two colts by Shalaa (Ire) and Better Than Ready, put their hand up from the start as two standouts of the crop.

“I’m 62-years-old and I’ve been doing it for a long, long time, I’ve lost count of how many thousands of horses I’ve broken in but the good ones stand up, the good ones tell you, they announce their arrival pretty quickly and I’ve learnt to read the signs,” Bennett said.

“Without exciting people too much, you don’t want to go over the top with your praise because then people will be disappointed, but those two probably got an eight out of 10.

“I very rarely hand out a 10 out of 10, there’s probably only two horses in my entire life that I’ve handed out a 10 out of 10 to and they were Makybe Diva and All Silent and Typhoon Tracy rated highly as well, but there’s plenty that rate very low on the scale.

“Two years' ago we broke in Eleven Eleven and we also did in that same crop a lovely filly of Gerald Ryan’s called Vilami and I tipped them early and told those owners that they’ve got something about them. They’re beautiful, they’re strong, they’re intelligent and they’ve got a great attitude and they cover the ground and then once we’ve done that it’s up to the trainers."

Bennett acknowledges that the breaking in progress is a crucial part of the horse’s career but there is a lot of work that must be done by the trainers and their staff once they move on, and so he credited Chris Waller and Toby and Trent Edmonds and their respective teams for presenting Shaquero and Alpine Edge in impeccable order on Saturday.

“All the accolades then go to the trainers and rightly so. Chris Waller and his crew up here and Toby and Trent Edmonds and their crew, they’re the ones that have got them to the races. We help start them and educate them and gave them an opinion.

“I started those two colts this time last year, so there has been 12 months work go into them to get them to this point.

“A lot of credit has got to go to the trainers and their staff and everybody involved.”

Guiding factors

Bennett doesn’t get to see his breakers hit top speed on the track and so to determine their ability, he is guided by a range of other factors.

“Speed comes later and to get to the speed you need to build a foundation and all of that comes from the way they carry themselves,” Bennett said. “You can feel the strength in a young horse and their length of stride and how comfortable they are on the ground.

“If they’re going around like a double-decker bus with three wheels, they’re not going to make it. That action is never going to change, they’re born with that.”

Horses come into Bennett’s system for 30 days at a time, however, many horses will come through multiple times and learn a bit more each time.

“We start them off on a 30-day program but they’re not going to learn everything in 30 days that’s going to set them up for the rest of their life so a lot of them I take through three or four times.

“Both of those horses (Shaquero and Alpine Edge) came back to us twice after we initially broke them in, and then they went off to Toby (Edmonds) and Chris (Waller).

“In those ensuing periods, we build on what we’ve taught them and every time they come in we show them a bit more. We get them up cantering, we get them doing a bit of half-pace. I’ve got very experienced trackwork riders that take them over after myself.

“We get a feel of them and we say ‘look, we really like these ones’. The trackwork riders can feel the motor and they’ve got gears.

“It’s like driving a speed boat, you push the throttle forward and they lift up and travel forward and you pull the throttle back and it sinks back into the water. These horses have gears, they don’t just want to charge.

“You can settle them and control the speed and control the strength and you learn to understand that and look for that in a young horse.

“The fastest we get them going is probably half-pace and then when they leave the barriers, they don’t start to jump-out properly until they’re with the trainers. We build them up so they can get out of the gates at about half-pace and go for 200 yards and that’s it.

“If you go too hard too soon with those babies out of the gates, you turn them into barrier rogues. They start wanting to not go in, they start predicting and preempting what’s going to happen, they get over excited, if they get nervous they get stressed and then they start playing up.

“So all of that has got to come later and that’s the trainer’s job, but we have to set the foundation and that’s the exciting part about what we do.”

First impressions

When asked about his first impressions of Shaquero and Alpine Edge when they first arrived at the property, Bennett said they were very different, but the one thing he liked about both of them is the sire they came from.

“First impressions are amazing with yearlings and we all know what we like to look for so immediately they took our eye as types, they were beautiful types.

“I’ve had a lot to do with Better That Readys over the years. Kelly Schweida trained Better Than Ready and he was a great horse and he is great advertisement for Queensland racing and breeding.

“Alpine Edge was a lovely type, he had a beautiful temperament. Peter Foster who bred the horse did a great job preparing him and he arrived to us in great order and that made the job a lot easier.

“Even though he had a lot more pressure put on him in different ways through the sale prep, he was a beautiful horse with a lovely, big, powerful length of stride and nothing bothered him.

“Shaquero on the other hand, he was a lot more highly strung and a lot more nervous energy to start with.

“It took a while for him to really settle in but we got a few Shalaas and we all just said ‘gee these are nice horses’.

“That was the first crop of them, they just felt big, strong and powerful but intelligent, and they had that feeling of just power and sensibility.

“I actually even rang John or Paul Messara and said ‘these Shalaas are going to be good’ and they, of course, said, ‘well, we hope so, that’s why we bought him’.

“All the Shalaas we did that year were very good. I think I’ve got another seven here at the moment to start on in the next few days. They’re all lovely types with lovely temperaments and they float over the ground and that’s what I like to see in a young horse.”

The new class

With the 2021 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale wrapping up on Tuesday, Bennett is already welcoming his new class of yearlings to break in and is hoping one of them can live up to their 2020 predecessors.

“We’ve got about 25 here already and about 60 have gone to the paddock,” Bennett said. “We share a lot of our business and do all our spelling out at Newington Farm and Crisp’s Creek, so a lot of the yearlings have gone over there to go into the paddock for a month to five weeks.

“I’ll sit down with the trainers and owners and spelling farms and we’ll put them in order of how important they are to get broken in as soon as possible, so some of them have started and some of them we might leave for three to four weeks and some we might leave for six or eight weeks.

“We just put them in an order of the most precocious, the biggest and the strongest and we’ll do them first and then we leave the weaker ones and the smaller ones to a bit later.

“We’ve got our work cut out now for the next three or four months. The Classic Sale is coming up and then we’ve got the Easter Sale and then the Sale in June so it never ends. Our year is now mapped out for the next 10 to 11 months.”

Zed’s rise to prominence has been a well-documented journey from serving Clydesdale mares and hacks on a high-country South Island beef and sheep farm in 2012 to his relocation to Grangewilliam and Group 1 success.

Stud Principal Mark Corcoran has subsequently added new blood to the roster and is upbeat about the first-crop prospects at New Zealand Bloodstock’s National Yearling Sale of Derryn.

The son of the ill-fated Hinchinbrook was a Group 2 winner who kept the best of company throughout his career with all but one of his 20 starts in Group or Listed company.

Older hand Zed is currently New Zealand’s highest-ranked sire in Australia this season, sitting in 15th place on the General Sires’ Premiership. His progeny has amassed more than AU$4.6 million across the Tasman and headed by G1 Caulfield Cup, G1 Turnbull S. and G1 Winx S. winner Verry Elleegant (NZ).

He has also produced the Listed Ballarat Cup winner Irish Flame (NZ) while his son Waisake (NZ) is prep-post favourite for the G3 Wellington Cup at the end of the month.

“Verry Elleegant was the third Caulfield Cup winner to come off the farm following Silver Bounty and Doriemus so we’re pretty proud of that,” Corcoran said.

“The Zeds get better with time and there are plenty of them sitting in the wings. We’ve had really good feedback on our draft.”

Zed has also sired 21 winners on home soil this season, including the Listed Metropolitan Trophy winner and G3 City of Auckland Cup placegetter Robusto (NZ), and will be represented at Karaka 2021 by a pair of yearlings in Book 1 and 10 in Book 2.

“Zed’s done a fantastic job this season and just keeps chipping away and producing these great results,” Grangewilliam’s Mark Corcoran said. “He had really strong support at the sales last year and I’m expecting that to continue this time around.

“All but one of his yearlings last year sold to Australia and I think those buyers will be very interested in his progeny again this year. They know what he can do now, and his horses just tend to need that little bit of time.”

Zed has emerged as a Group 1-producing stallion from humble beginnings and continually displayed his ability to upgrade mares.

“He’s never had the quality he’s deserved and kicked off at a NZ$500 service fee so it’s always been a battle in the sale ring. What he has achieved with lesser-quality mares makes it all the more impressive,” Corcoran said.

“Anyone can afford to breed to him and get a good racehorse. New Zealand-breds have had a fantastic 12 months in Australia and I’m sure they will be looking at Zed, he fits the bill.

“The pick of ours would obviously Lot 436, the three-quarter brother to Verry Elleegant. He’s a lovely, correct horse so he’s got to be the pick of them.”

Watch: Lot 436 parade

Corcoran is also excited and bullish about the first representatives of Derryn to be presented at Karaka with two colts by the first-season sire in Book 1 and another 10 yearlings in the catalogue for Book 2.

By Hinchinbrook out of the Lonhro mare Munhro, it is the stallion family of Not A Single Doubt and Snippets and the G1 Golden Slipper S. winner and former champion 2-year-old filly Forensics (Flying Spur).

“He’s been really well supported by breeders,” Corcoran said. “He served 105 mares in his first season, then 120 in his second. This spring he served just under 90, he’s going to have every chance, with some good numbers and some nice-quality mares in his books.

“Everyone who’s seen his progeny has given really positive feedback about them. They’re real Hinchinbrook types of horses, which is what we were really hoping to see and also a lot of really nice dark-coloured horses, that’s that Lonhro influence coming through.”

Derryn turning heads

Among those to have been impressed with Derryn’s youngsters are Dean Hawthorne, who bought Derryn for $110,000 at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, and Marcus Corban, according to Corcoran.

“He is really stamping them with plenty of strength and overall quality. Dean has been here a couple of times to see them as weanlings and yearlings and has a keen interest in them and said they are a quality line.

“Marcus was here for our parade and he was also really taken by them.

“My favourite is a filly out of the five-time winner and stakes performer Miss Isle who is a half-sister to Levante and I think she is a freak,” he said.

“The colt out of Magic Tryst, who has produced two stakes horses, is another really good type.”

The daughter of Derryn, Lot 894, is out of Miss Isle (NZ) (Bachelor Duke {USA}) and her half-sister Levante (NZ) (Proisir) has won five of her seven starts, including the Listed Counties Bowl, and was third in the G1 Railway on New Year’s Day.

Lot 875 is the colt out of Magic Tryst (NZ) (Magic Ring {Ire}) and she won five races and was runner-up in the G3 Highview S. She is the dam of multiple winners Magic Moment (NZ) (Don Eduardo {NZ}) and Princess Rihanna (NZ) (Showcasing {GB}) with both placed at Group 3 level.