Cover image courtesy of New Zealand Bloodstock

COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced the opening-up timeline for New Zealand's borders this week, which will see double-vaccinated New Zealand citizens able to return to Australia without having to hotel quarantine from January 17.

That means any Australian-based agents, trainers or other buyers with New Zealand citizenship would be able to attend the Karaka Sale, which starts on March 7, and only need to do seven-days home isolation. Australian-based kiwis would need to fly out on the last day of the Inglis Melbourne Premier Sale, which runs from February 27 to March 1, in order to complete the home quarantine in time.

Hipkins also confirmed that a similar arrangement would not apply to fully vaccinated foreign internationals, including those from Australia, until April 30, meaning, as it stands, any Australian citizens who wanted to attend Karaka would have to stay in managed isolation and quarantine for the full 14 days.

New Zealand Bloodstock Managing Director Andrew Seabrook said while the timelines for opening-up were not what it had been hoping for, having moved the National Yearling Sales Series back from its traditional date in January to March, the situation was still evolving.

"It wasn't the news we were looking for, but it’s an ever-changing beast this COVID-19 and things are moving swiftly," Seabrook told TDN AusNZ.

"It was interesting with Minister Hipkins' interview yesterday, in the question and answers, he did say that they would probably look at reviewing the Australia and New Zealand situation in due course.

"We are holding out hope that by March there still might be a possibility of getting the Australians in here."

The decision to open-up border restrictions to New Zealand citizens was significant as well and would mean that a host of high-profile Australian-based buyers will be able to attend.

"We can get the Kiwis here that reside in Australia, all those top trainers, from Busuttin to Moroney to Waller, to Baker, to Sargent as well as all the agents over there. We can get them home," he said.

"At the moment, they have to isolate, but this is ever-changing and by March, who knows, we could be fine."

Seabrook said NZB continues to speak regularly to the New Zealand government, hoping to find a solution to freer travel for the Karaka Sale.

"We are lobbying government and doing everything we can to try and sort the situation out," he said. "It’s probably just a bit disappointing that double-vaccinated Australians aren't treated the same as double-vaccinated Kiwis."

Business as usual

Seabrook said the Sale would continue as scheduled and if Australian buyers couldn't attend, he was confident that they would be prepared to participate in an online environmental as they have for much of the past 22 months.

"Online sales have really boomed in the past two years. The Sale in January was very good and peoples' appetite for buying online just grows and grows. We saw that at last week's Ready to Run," he said.

"We are still confident that we will have a good Sale in March."

Seabrook said the run of strong results from New Zealand-bred horses in Australia in the past 12 months would prove a compelling reason for buyers from across the Tasman to want to be involved in the New Zealand yearling market.

"Our product is so good and we have got to have belief in the New Zealand product. The last 12 months has been as good as it has been, it’s like the good old days," he said.

"With New Zealand horses going so well, I think that stands us in good stead. We know the Australians will still want to buy them and the appetite for buying online has moved up another gear since COVID has come along."

Cover image courtesy of Sportpix

The turf world was stunned on Thursday with big-race rider Glen Boss calling time on his riding career of 37 years. The 52-year-old jockey announced his retirement via an exclusive interview with Channel 7’s Bruce McAvaney.

Boss will ride his commitments at Caulfield this Saturday, which include just Spanish Mission (USA) (Noble Mission {GB}) in the G2 Zipping Classic, and thereafter he will hang up his saddle.

“I’ve made a decision that I’m retiring from professional race riding as of this Saturday,” Boss told McAvaney. “To be at the level I want to be at all the time, and to be at the level that I should be at, you’ve got to be all chips in, especially in the last three months where I felt I was wavering.”

Within moments of the news, Ladbrokes revealed that Boss had joined its content team. Speaking to the company’s Head of Talent and Content Development, Adam Hamilton, Boss said the decision had been coming for a while.

“It’s something I’ve been mulling over for about six months, especially the last two or three,” he said. “I’m one of those individuals where everything I do is always 100 per cent. I’m chips in all the way.”

Boss said he’d made a promise to himself a decade ago that when the time was right, he would exit.

“I just felt like I was slipping mentally. Physically I’m absolutely on top of my game, but mentally I wasn’t there, and it’s a mental game,” he said. “I’ve come through with that promise that I felt I had to move on, and I’ve got so much energy. I want to put that energy into something else.”

Boss told Hamilton that life wasn’t all “rainbows and sugar”. He said the life of a jockey was swings and roundabouts, and he was taking his exit from racing with all the highs and lows of his long career.

“I’m looking forward to Saturday,” he said. “Hopefully the horse (Spanish Mission) will give me a great ride and we’ll get a victory. That would be the crowning moment, but if he doesn’t, as long as we both come home in one piece, that would be excellent as well.”

Beginnings

Boss began his career in professional racing with a tenure under Gympie trainer Terry Chinner. That was in 1984, and the then 15-year-old enjoyed such success on the Gympie circuit that within eight months he had relocated to an apprenticeship under Kaye Tinsley on the Gold Coast.

Boss is born and bred Queensland, growing up in Beaudesert, Gympie and Caboolture. He was raised on honest, country values, which stood him in good stead throughout much of his later riding career.

On the Gold Coast, he delivered two apprentice premierships and stamped himself as a name of the future. One of the best horses he rode early was Rancho Classic, on whom he won the 1990 Listed Hawkesbury Gold Cup.

Those early results came thick and fast for the young Glen Boss, which he attributed to aggressive competitiveness. But he also averaged six to eight suspensions a year and, in his 2007 biography The Boss, he said his determination was overwhelming.

“Ambition is a noble quality, but it can have an ugly side,” the jockey wrote. “My competitive nature was so strong and my self-belief so complete that the issue of not winning brought out the very worst in me.”

In 1994, Boss relocated from Queensland to Sydney, to a jockeys’ room he would later describe as one of the toughest in the world. Within a short time, he was riding for Gai Waterhouse, Bart Cummings and Les Bridge, and his associations were strong with Clarry Connors and Jack Denham.

That year, he won his first Group 1 race aboard the Star Way (GB) horse Telesto (NZ), and the following year he won the G1 Golden Slipper (his first of two) aboard Flying Spur. In fact, the 1995/96 racing season was one of the best for young Boss when he rode four Group 1 winners, including Intergaze in the G1 Champagne S.

That was also about the time that Boss specialised in a freelance riding career, which has been a theme through his long years in the saddle.

Career heights

Since those early beginnings, Glen Boss carved out an auspicious career as one of the best race-riders in Australia, and he tempered his years with bouts of riding in south-east Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau.

He first went to Hong Kong in 1997 where he learned a lot of things, but in particular his style of riding. ‘Sit quiet and still. Concentrate on balance and rhythm. Keep the stick to a minimum', he wrote in his book.

In 2002 Boss was in Macau, and a serious race-fall changed both his career and his attitude. He broke his neck in two places and was advised he likely wouldn't ride again.

“That was like waving a red flag to a bull,” Boss told McAvaney.

Returning to Sydney, he was calmer and wiser, and it kicked off the biggest years of his career. He defeated Northerly (Serheed {USA}) aboard the Guy Walter-trained Republic Lass (Canny Lad) in the G1 Ranvet S. of 2003, and he piloted Choisir to victory in the G1 Lightning S.

In this era, his Group 1 wins occurred aboard such horses as Private Steer (Danehill Dancer {Ire}), Starcraft (NZ), Shogun Lodge (Grand Lodge {USA}) and Show A Heart. And, with the spring of 2003 came the first of the Makybe Diva (GB) (Desert King {Ire}) Melbourne Cups, a famous trio of wins that is unlikely to ever be replicated.

Gallery: Some of the Group 1 winners Glen Boss rode in his career

Boss’ association with ‘the Diva’ extended to all of her Group 1 wins.

The pair won the Sydney Cup, Cox Plate, The BMW, Australian Cup and three Melbourne Cups, all between 2003 and 2005. Boss said the great mare turned his world on its head with endorsements, corporate invitations, public appearances and promotions. If he’d been well-known before Makybe Diva, he was dizzyingly famous after her.

“That final moment with her, where I took my hands off the reins (returning to the enclosure), that was the greatest moment I’ve had on an animal,” the jockey told McAvaney.

Still, the caravan rolled on for Boss with Group 1 wins aboard Racing To Win (Encosta De Lago), Haradasun, Typhoon Tracy (Red Ransom {USA}) and Turffontein (Johannesburg {USA}). In 2009, he won the G1 Cox Plate aboard Bart Cummings’ So You Think (NZ), the first of the horse’s two.

He won the G1 All Aged S. in 2011 aboard Hay List (Statue Of Liberty {USA}) and three Group 1s aboard Ocean Park (NZ), and in 2019 he won the G1 Epsom H. and G1 Doncaster Mile before the Newmarket H., Sydney Cup and Cox Plate of 2020.

All up, Boss’ stats to date read 90 Group 1s, 62 Group 2s, 78 Group 3s and 144 Listed wins. These figures don’t include the jockey’s win aboard Yes Yes Yes in the 2019 edition of The Everest, nor his winning ride on Kolding (NZ) (Ocean Park {NZ}) in the inaugural Golden Eagle.

Boss has 2406 race wins to his name and he’s just short of 19,000 total race rides. He has ridden the bulk of his success in New South Wales, with 52 Group 1 wins as against Victoria’s 32. His Group 1 wins over the Randwick mile alone tally 15, and the track has hosted the most of his overall wins at 215 (Flemington, by comparison, 103).

Boss has won over $125 million in prizemoney, and he’s ridden in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Japan and Dubai. He also had a single start at the now defunct Hollywood Park in Los Angeles.

The jockey’s most recent top-shelf win was aboard the late Sir Dragonet (Ire) (Camelot {GB}) in the G1 Tancred S. at Rosehill in April, which followed Think It Over (So You Think {NZ}) winning the G1 George Ryder S. in March.

Winding up

The most recent spring had been a tough time for Boss, with the jockey stating as recently as October that he was relocating from Sydney to Melbourne on a permanent basis.

Boss had travelled to Howard Springs in the Northern Territory to serve quarantine in aid of riding the Melbourne Carnival, but it didn’t transpire when he was ordered back to Sydney. He was due to partner Incentivise (Shamus Award) in the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, and the Queensland gelding duly won the former with Brett Prebble, while he was famously second to Verry Elleegant (NZ) (Zed {NZ}) in the latter.

“It was a tough watch to watch Incentivise win those couple of races,” Boss told Hamilton. “I knew the horse he was going to be and I really targeted him and made sure I got on him. But the flipside of that coin is that that horse took some people on an amazing journey.”

Boss hinted last month that his family life had suffered considerably in the last five years, and his relocation to Melbourne was motivated by that primarily. It came after a lean year by the jockey’s usual excellent standards, with just five feature wins to his name in 2021.

Nevertheless, the announcement of Boss’ retirement was a shock across racing and, as the various media will spend the next few days until Saturday’s Caulfield meeting breaking down the career of the famous jockey, one of the lingering legacies of his years is the sheer number of future sires he rode to Group 1 victories.

With the first being Show A Heart in the G1 Toorak H. of 2001, and the last being Bivouac in the G1 VRC Sprint Classic, Boss has ridden, in the middle, no less than Fastnet Rock, Choisir, Starcraft, God’s Own, Haradasun, Sebring, So You Think, Turffontein, Ocean Park, Rebel Dane, Kermadec (NZ) and Brutal.

Cover image courtesy of Western Racepix

At this time of year, with so much attention turned west to Perth’s summer racing, it’s hard not to recall the efforts of the late Marjorie Charleson, who reinvented Western Australian racing nearly 50 years ago. Her legacy is particularly salient this year, with Perth’s absence of any interstate horses owing to COVID-19.

For 16 years through the 1970s and 1980s, Charleson was tireless in opening the western state to the best of the eastern states. She enticed Bart Cummings, who brought Dayana (NZ) across in 1972, resulting in that smart colt becoming the first 3-year-old in Australian history to win four derbies in a single year.

There were many others.

Vo Rogue (Ivor Prince {USA}) was there in 1988 to win the G1 Kingston Town Classic, and Reckless flew across in 1978 for the Perth Cup. That same year, Dulcify (NZ) went for the Derby.

In 1975, Denise’s Joy (Seventh Hussar {Fr}) won the WATC Australian Derby before founding a dynasty through Joie Denise (Danehill {USA}), Sunday Joy (Sunday Silence {USA}) and More Joyous (More Than Ready {USA}).

In 1982, Charleson got no less than Kingston Town (Bletchingly) to the summer carnival, and those that were trackside will never forget the spectacle. Ascot Racecourse was waist-deep with fans cheering the Sydney horse home in the G1 Western Mail Classic. It was the horse’s final race and final win, and it’s been named the Kingston Town Classic ever since.

Last year, Marjorie Charleson passed away at the age of 88.

By all accounts, she was a dynamo with an infectious loyalty to Western Australian racing, and her results as the Western Australian Turf Club (WATC) public relations officer were spectacular.

Working closely with the late Harry Bolton, who served as the WATC secretary from 1958 to his death in 1978, Charleson is largely credited with the halcyon era of racing in the west, and she’s a strong example of how far good leadership can go.

Tips from the east

Trainer Lindsey Smith is known these days for his yard at Warrnambool, but his roots are in Western Australia. He moved there from Williamstown in Victoria when he was an infant, and he grew up around Palmyra, to the southwest of Perth.

By the age of 14, Smith was serving a jockey apprenticeship with Rockingham trainer Colin France, and he remembers vividly the era of Marjorie Charleson and all the eastern stars that came with it.

“As an apprentice, I knew Marjorie then,” Lindsey said, speaking to TDN AusNZ. “She was a real go-getter and maybe the first of her kind to generate interest in coming to WA. She was the instigator in getting the Bart Cummings; the Tommy Smiths and Geoff Murphys. There were so many good horses coming over because of her, and I used to go and hang over the fence just to watch them.”

Smith said local racing had never seen the like of the horses that started to arrive in the 1970s.

“We’d never seen these kinds of horses before,” he said. “We might have read about them in the papers or seen them on the news, but it was more us seeing them on the television at Melbourne Cup time. Next minute, you had Bart Cummings and Tommy Smith walking around in the mounting yard with Dayana and all these horses you’d seen in the Melbourne carnival.”

Smith has been training since the 1990s, and he’s a student. He has absorbed the ways of others all through his career, wanting to learn and be successful.

In the 1970s, when the wave of interstate horses to Perth began, he saw for the first time the way things were done in the big league.

“Looking at them then, they were superior horses to ours,” Smith said. “Just the way they trained them was a little bit harder than the way they did in Western Australia, so a few of the local trainers cottoned on to that a little bit. Their professionalism was something we all noticed.”

Smith believes that spectacular era in WA was all down to Charleson.

He said her attention to detail and her fastidiousness covered every base in those days, from flights to airport transfers, stabling and accommodations. Even all these decades later, the trainer is trying to win the Marjorie Charleson Classic, which was established in 2019 and is run each April.

“As a trainer, I’ve tried a number of times to win that race in her honour,” Smith said. “She did a lot for Western Australian racing, and maybe we take it for granted at times. Marjorie opened the world to Western Australian trainers, especially me. I was there to see all these magnificent horses and trainers I admired, and it was all because of her.”

Good leadership

Charleson was the public relations officer for the WATC (now Perth Racing) for 16 years. It wouldn’t have been an easy role initially. She was the first in that position of any race club Australia-wide, and the sport’s loudest voices and most important faces then were all men.

Her success across 16 years, however, earned her the title of WA’s ‘first lady of racing’ and, arguably, her female place in the sport is rivalled by only Gai Waterhouse.

While the obvious consequences of her leadership were record racecourse attendances, record levels of interest in Western Australian racing and, possibly, then record turnover, the underlying consequences are more interesting.

Charleson brought a maturity to WA horse racing, flinging it onto the national stage in the 1970s, and Perth trainers benefitted from that. Injections of prizemoney and exposure to new ways of training... these were all things that came with interstate interest.

In Melbourne, 93-year-old turf journalist Ron Taylor, who was on-hand each year to cover the carnival for Truth newspaper, has a unique and modern perspective on Charleson’s achievements.

“She was a leader,” Taylor said. “It’s a bit like the way Peter V’Landys is running racing in New South Wales at the moment. He has taken control of it himself, and he’s made it a personal thing. He’s put on races worth millions, and it’s all through his personal drive and effort that Sydney racing is now so dominant.”

Taylor’s parallels are fascinating.

“That’s the way it was in Perth, to be truthful,” he said. “It was a one-woman show. I couldn’t pay Marjorie tribute enough to say that she brought racing in WA to the forefront of people in Australia.”

Weaving the magic

At 93, Ron Taylor’s memories are crisp from his first trip to Perth’s carnival in the summer of 1972, and he went every year thereafter until his retirement from the press in 1993. For 33 years, Taylor was the racing editor of Melbourne’s Truth newspaper.

His annual Perth junket kicked off when Charleson arrived in Melbourne for a 1972 visit.

“I didn’t know anything about Marjorie until she called a press conference of all the leading racing writers and editors of the daily papers,” Taylor said. “She got us all together, issued this invitation to us to visit the Marco Polo Hotel in North Melbourne, and she put on drinks and canapés and proceeded to tell us the attractions of racing in Western Australia.

"She convinced us it would be remiss if we didn’t express that view to all the trainers around Australia, that Western Australia was a wonderful place to race horses.”

Did Taylor buy it, though?

“I did,” he said. “Marjorie was very persuasive. She was a very dynamic character. She was a youngish woman then, maybe in her 30s, unmarried and full of her love for her job. Oh boy, she was good. She would get hold of Bart Cummings and Colin Hayes, and she’d extol the virtues of Perth on them while disposing of some of the myths that tracks over there were too hard and that horses would break down if they went there.”

Taylor said Charleson constantly weaved her magic and, as a result, the WATC got what it needed.

The Club wanted to popularise Western Australian racing and get more people to the track, and the best way to do that was to bring the big names from the eastern states. Charleson and Harry Bolton delivered.

They looked after every horse, trainer, jockey and strapper, even the journalists flying in to report. Charleson met Taylor at the airport in her own car, drove him to his hotel and took care of anything asked of her. Nothing was beneath her, and it’s an attention to detail that even Lindsey Smith said has never been bettered anywhere in his experience.

“It was all down to Marjorie,” Taylor agreed. “It was her drive and her passion, and her powers of enticing people. It must have been her personality. She was quick as a wit, a clever lady but she was caring. She mothered the press, but also the trainers and jockeys. They were given every consideration because she was so good at her job.”

In the years since, both Smith and Taylor said Charleson has been irreplaceable. Her work ethic was exhaustive and her results remarkable, and it’s possible that Western Australian racing owes its modern identity to this woman.

In 1988, the Club altered the schedule of its calendar, moving certain races like the Derby to April, moving them back again in 1993 and then back to Easter in 2002. In a way, this has interrupted the momentum Charleson created, which both Smith and Taylor agree on.

As the most isolated of Australia’s capital cities, separated from the east by a vast expanse of sand that is the Nullarbor, Perth has had its geographical challenges. This year, it’s COVID-19 and state-border controls. Nevertheless, even in the modern era with horses like Buffering (Mossman) and Takeover Target (Celtic Swing {GB}), the Perth summer carnival has remained a destination event for the country’s biggest stars.

Cover image courtesy of Tattersalls

Passing every Test

Time Test (GB) is the only rookie stallion in Europe to have mustered four black-type winners from his debut crop but here he owed his latest headlines to the people who stand his rival Ardad (GB), who has matched him with two Group scorers.

For it was Overbury Stud who presented a son of the National Stud stallion to achieve the top price of the opening session, at 75,000 gns (AU$146,000), from Redpender Stud. And Time Test must share the credit for Lot 362 with his dam, Wild Mimosa (Ire) (Dynaformer {USA}), who had further decorated what is already an excellent family when the result of their first mating, Love Interest (GB), made a stylish winning debut for David O'Meara at Newcastle since the publication of the catalogue.

Wild Mimosa was confined to a single start in a frustrating career for the Lloyd-Webbers and was culled for 52,000 gns (AU$101,000) to Blandford Bloodstock in this ring four years ago – despite a productive start as a broodmare, and counting two Group 1 winners Compton Admiral (GB) (Suave Dancer {USA}) and Summoner (GB) (Inchinor {GB}) and the dam of champion The Fugue (GB) (Dansili {GB}) among her siblings. It is not difficult to understand why, however, judging from the testimony of Simon Sweeting.

“She's a mare we have to take the foals off straightaway as she savages them,” explained the Overbury Stud manager. “She has done it twice. So we were told not to let her see the foals, and to raise them on foster mares: we have one organised every time now. But she's been a huge success.”

Indeed, her yearling colt by Ardad brought six figures at the October Sale here.

“The 2-year-old looks like she might be okay,” said Sweeting. “She'll go back to Time Test. She was in foal to Ardad, but sadly lost it at 42 days.”

Sweeting declined to be partisan about Ardad's rival, describing him as a very different sire–while “almost” as good. In fact, he has a breeding right in Time Test. “He's a fabulous stallion,” he said. “And he's got a lot farther to go, we're very excited about him. It's great that the National Stud has such a good horse, I'm thrilled about that.”

The new owner of this colt, Jimmy Murphy of Redpender Stud, said: “He's a nice-looking horse by a promising young sire. I've never had a Time Test before, but this one is well-made, so we'll hope for the best. There's a bit going on in the pedigree. I thought less would buy him, but you have to keep bidding if you want one.”

Time Test, who also shuttles to Little Avondale Stud, had another colt stoke up the embers of the session when one of the very last into the ring, presented by his home farm as Lot 433, brought 66,000 gns (AU$128,000) from Michael Fitzpatrick.

“Time Test is a son of Dubawi and they're doing well,” explained Fitzpatrick, after signing as Good Will Bloodstock. “It's a trend that is becoming apparent. I'd like to have a Time Test to sell next year as I think his first crop will go on again as 3-year-olds.”

Shooting for the Stars

The market is gradually waking up to the gift made by Tweenhills in introducing the Australian sensation Zoustar at such an inviting fee, and if his first Northern Hemisphere crop lives up to expectations next year then he may prove a very fertile pinhooking medium.

Sure enough, the March colt consigned by Highclere Stud as Lot 355 brought one of the top prices of the day from Billy Jackson-Stops.

“This is for a new pinhooking venture for Tony Elliott's Rogues' Gallery,” the agent explained, after signing a 70,000 gns (AU$136,000) docket as JS Bloodstock/RGS. “He's a good physical, and hopefully there will be good upside with Zoustar. He's likely to be prepped for next year's sales back here.”

His dam is also entitled to contribute, of course, as a listed winner on both sides of the Channel. Making Eyes (Ire) (Dansili {GB}) is catalogued as Lot 2067 in Highclere's mare consignment here next week.

Railton boards the Ulysses bandwagon…

As the son of a Derby winner and Oaks winner, Ulysses (Ire) appears eligible to do better still as his debut crop benefits from maturity and middle distances next year. That obviously makes his achievements already still more auspicious, with 16 juvenile winners from 37 starters including G3 Eyrefield S. runner-up Piz Badie (Ire).

Some pinhookers were ahead of the curve, as they would hope to be, most notably Hegarty Bloodstock in converting a 4000 gns (AU$7700) punt on a colt by the Cheveley Park stallion in this ring 12 months ago into a bumper payout of 150,000 gns (AU$291,000) in Book 3. Demand has risen accordingly, and Jamie Railton was obliged to pay 60,000 gns (AU$117,000) for a colt offered as Lot 279 by Bearstone Stud.

“We will just have to see how Ulysses turns out, but he has certainly made a promising start,” Railton said.

“I've not been fortunate enough to have one yet, but he was a top 10-furlong horse so looks a sire with a future. Let's hope this horse matures and develops and goes the right way: I just thought he was a nice, attractive individual–and that is what they cost.”

The Force is with rookie sire

Needless to say, a lot of the energy in this market traces sooner to a newer cycle; to the search for a future Time Test, Ardad or Ulysses. And plenty of rookies predictably prompted an early roll of the dice.

One was Land Force (Ire), the G2 Richmond S. winner by No Nay Never (USA) who, after a single start at three in Australia, under the name King Of Yulong (Ire), returned to Europe to cover 155 mares at Highclere Stud. That gave him quite a footprint here and he landed a couple of breakthrough punches in his home farm draft–both ending up in the day's top six transactions.

“They look runners,” said Con Marnane, such a good judge of the evolving physical, after giving 65,000 gns (AU$126,000) for a February colt (Lot 380). “This is a lovely, quality colt, and we had to go an extra bid or two to get him. But I think the stallion could have some quality yearlings next year. Of course, he was a very good racehorse himself.”

But the dam could certainly contribute in that respect, too, having been placed in the G3 Princess Margaret S. and herself being out of a stakes-placed half-sister to dual Classic winner Finsceal Beo (Ire) (Mr. Greeley {USA}). She was bought by Avenue Bloodstock at the end of her career with Paul Cole, at the December Sale here three years ago, for 190,000 gns (AU$369,000).

Lot 356, similarly, had the benefit of a young dam with a useful page: she's an unraced Redoute's Choice half-sister to G1 Haydock Park Sprint Cup Regal Parade (GB) (Pivotal {GB}) and G3 Acomb S. winner Entifaadha (GB) (Dansili {GB}). That steeled Alex Elliott's resolve in giving 60,000 gns (AU$117,000) for this February colt.

“I'm a huge fan of the Scat Daddy line,” the agent said. “And a big admirer of Land Force. But this colt has a lovely pedigree all round.

"I've always loved the family. And he's a lovely horse, a good early foal with a lot of upside to him. He's bred to be fast, and should be easy to place in any sale next year. I buy for a few (resale) syndicates and he'll probably go to Ireland in the meantime.”

New Territories for Wentwood's half-brother

Pinhookers seeking motivation through the toil of the months ahead will keep in mind the inspiring touch pulled off by John Foley of Ballyvolane Stud with a Time Test colt picked up in this ring a year ago for 56,000 gns (AU$109,000). Having elevated his value to 400,000 gns (AU$770,000) in Book 2 of the October Yearling Sale, Foley was back to play up his winnings on a March 5 foal by Territories (Ire) offered as Lot 234 by Hungerford Park Stud.

“He's a lovely horse with good updates,” Foley remarked after signing a 50,000 gns (AU$97,000) docket as GHS Bloodstock. “He'll be for resale, I doubt we can repeat what we did but we'll try.”

Those updates concerned the colt's half-brother Wentwood (GB) (Pour Moi {Ire}), who has been in productive form in Australia, notably in winning the G3 Bendigo Cup last month. Among those disappointed to see the colt head off to Co. Limerick was Matt Coleman, who gave Foley sporting congratulations as underbidder.