Westbury Stud a point of difference in the Ready to Run market

Cover image courtesy of New Zealand Bloodstock

New Zealand Bloodstock (NZB) is just days out from its 2022 Ready to Run Sale, an auction that has year in, year out been one of the strongest of the breeze-up concepts in the world.

Its graduates include the likes of Sharp ‘N’ Smart (NZ) (Redwood {GB}), Gingernuts (NZ) (Iffraaj {GB}) and Golden Sixty (Medaglia D’Oro {USA}), all Group 1 winners, while the cold, hard facts of the sale rarely fail to deliver each November.

Gallery: Some of the NZB Ready to Run top-flight graduates, images courtesy of NZ Racing Desk

In five seasons, Ready to Run graduates have won 17 Group 1 races and 102 total stakes races, which outshines the combined results of its Australian competitors. Its ratio of winners to runners is 61 per cent, while its graduates have won more Group 1 events in the last five seasons than any other breeze-up in the world.

It’s hard to argue with those facts, especially given that four of the last eight winners of the G1 New Zealand Derby have emerged from this sale.

They started with Mongolian Khan (Holy Roman Emperor {Ire}) in 2015, and they continued with Gingernuts, Vin De Dance (NZ) (Roc De Cambes {NZ}) and Asterix (NZ) (Tavistock {NZ}) as recently as this year.

It’s also been a particularly sharp sale for the Asian market. Golden Sixty’s romp through Hong Kong is well-documented, but the multiple Group 1 winner in Hong Kong, Beat The Clock (Hinchinbrook), also emerged from here in 2015.

With these sorts of facts in hand, next week’s Ready to Run Sale won’t be short of attendance, and neither has its catalogue been, with 329 juveniles by 89 different sires for leading Kiwi vendors.

There are the big-name specialist consignors like Ohukia Lodge and Woburn Farm, and there are the major New Zealand breeders there too, in particular Gerry Harvey’s Westbury Stud.

Don’t watch the clock

Westbury isn’t a specialist breeze-up vendor, and that’s where its large draft of 43 horses differs next week to the other major consignors.

It is replete with 2-year-olds by Telperion, Redwood (GB), El Roca, Swiss Ace, Brazen Beau, Reliable Man (GB) and Tarzino (NZ), and among the families represented is a grey colt (Lot 56) by Redwood from the popular Australian stakes winner Chinchilla Rose (Lion Hunter). Gold Water, the brilliant Choisir winner of the G2 Angus Armanasco S., who was also second in the G1 Coolmore Classic to Alverta (Flying Spur), is also there with Lot 106, a Redwood colt.

So with well-bred families like these represented in its bumper draft, what is Westbury Stud trying to achieve in heading to next week’s sale?

“It’s well-documented that Gerry (Harvey) breeds a lot of horses both in Australia and here in New Zealand,” said Russell Warwick, Westbury’s general manager. “We probably end up with around 200 foals born in New Zealand each season, and it’s physically impossible to market them all as yearlings.

“So once we get everything weaned in June and July, we go through each of them and come up with a suggestion as to where they’d be ideally suited to go. We take into account date of birth, pedigree and physical style of horse, and we work out which ones would be better off as Ready to Run horses, or even tried horses down the track.”

For large breeders like Westbury Stud, the breeze-up is therefore an important corner of the annual market. The farm’s aim each year is to get as many horses sold as possible because the following spring will deliver 200 new foals to contend with.

“You can’t keep stockpiling them,” Warwick said. “We initially had 50-odd horses consigned to the sale and I think we’re taking around 42 now, and they’ve all breezed up really well this year. With the exception of maybe one or two, they’ve all been within a second of each other and all between about 10.2s and 11.4s.”

The fleetest of Westbury’s horses at the breeze-ups last month was Lot 184, a Swiss Ace colt from Musically (Belong To Me {USA}) who galloped in 10.21s. Next in line was Lot 164, an El Roca colt from Mandevillle (Hussonet {USA}) who went around in 10.26s.

Both compare favourably with the catalogue’s quickest juveniles, the top four all coming from Ohukia Lodge and posting 10.06s, 10.07s and 10.08s respectively.

However, slick times aren’t necessarily the selling factor when it comes to this sale each year. In 2021, the Savabeel colt from Etiquette (NZ) (O’Reilly {NZ}) that topped proceedings when selling for NZ$640,000 posted a time of 11.44s, which was a full second slower than the sale’s overall fastest time.

“New Zealand is a little bit different to Australia in that respect,” Warwick said. “Australian breeze-ups predominantly chase time and it’s all about who’s run the fastest. To me, the New Zealand sale is very different. Horses run up in good times, and it’s preferable that a horse can run up comfortably, but a lot of the horses aren’t actually put under pressure to run a time.”

According to Warwick, this is particularly prescient for trainers who don’t want an over-cooked 2-year-old.

“A horse that’s had pressure on it to get up and run hard for 200 metres can then get to a trainer who has to unwind all of that and get that horse back to being able to relax,” he said. “A lot of them can be over-pushed to get to the breeze-ups, but if they’re going to get to the races, they have to learn to handle themselves for a lot longer than 200 metres.”

Sharp ‘N’ Smart is a good example of this logic.

At this sale last year, the 3-year-old gelding, a winner of the G1 Spring Champion S. at Randwick a fortnight ago, was passed in by Graeme Rogerson’s Dormello Stud with a reserve of NZ$90,000. He’d been sold to Rogerson for NZ$55,000 by Westbury at the earlier NZB Premier Yearling Sale at Karaka.

“Sharp 'N' Smart breezed up at the Ready to Run in 11.19s, and he’s now a Group 1 winner and was second to Manzoice in the VRC Derby,” Warwick said. “He’s won shy of $2 million, so without putting a dampener on those horses that run fast times, it’s an interesting exercise if you go back and look over the last five years at the fastest times at the sale, and see what those horses have done. It’s a pretty telling story that time isn’t everything.”

Good results in 2021

The Westbury Stud draft features plenty of Gerry Harvey’s old, good families, and it’s not a set of horses that was thrown together because they didn’t make the cut earlier in the year.

“Some of those horses were just immature as yearlings,” Warwick said. “The majority of the horses in the draft, with the exception of two or three, have never been through a sale before, so they’re freshmen in regards to going through a ring. I think buyers love the opportunity of seeing a horse for the first time.”

The Gold Water colt, Lot 106, is one of those few that was offered at Karaka last January. He was passed in with a reserve of NZ$60,000 and a horse that simply needed more time.

None of this is new territory for Westbury Stud, which has had six or seven winners from its 2021 breeze-up draft already.

One of them is Cadazio (NZ), a Tarzino gelding that topped last year’s draft when bought by Mick Price and Phill Cataldo Bloodstock (BAFNZ) for NZ$120,000. Cadazio is raced by OTI and he was first on debut at Geelong in July. He’s since stepped up to stakes company, running in behind Mr Maestro (NZ) (Savabeel) in the Listed Super Impose S.

Another is Librarsi (NZ) by Reliable Man from the General Nediym mare Tennesse Love. This filly was Lot 3 last year, invidiously early in selling and passed in with a reserve of NZ$50,000.

“She won on debut and then ran fourth in a stakes race,” said Warwick. “So, there’s been nice horses sold from that draft last year and they’re really only just making 3-year-olds now.”

From the perspective of the Asian market, Warwick said the 3-year-old angle is a useful one because buying horses for Hong Kong or Singapore at the breeze-ups means less time for buyers to tide those horses over until they hit the racetracks.

“They usually don’t want horses up there (Asia) until they’re three years old, so they’ve only got to hold breeze-up horses for 12 months, as opposed to two years if they buy yearlings,” Warwick said. “For those markets in Asia, it’s a big attraction to be able to come to see a horse gallop, get its demeanour and see its education before buying it.”

Westbury’s team will be busy next week at the NZB Ready to Run Sale. Its 43-strong draft bookends the two days, beginning with Lot 5 and ending with the very last horse in the catalogue, Lot 329.

After that, it’s onwards to the 2023 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale where it has 20 horses to sell, among them three colts and a filly by Tarzino.

“It looks on paper a very elite lineup of horses,” Warwick said. “We’re very much looking forward to presenting them in the flesh come January.”