An extra-long road to Magic Millions for Mill Park Stud

Cover image courtesy of Mill Park Stud

The distance between Meningie in South Australia and Bundall on the Gold Coast is almost 2000 kilometres, not that it matters much to most people. However, it matters a lot to studmaster Chris Watson, whose 12 yearlings had to overland every inch to the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.

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As such, the first day of inspections at the sale, which was Wednesday, was a furious day for the Mill Park draft, and also for Watson and his staff. Owing to geography, very few buyers had clapped eyes on the yearlings back home, so they beat a path on Wednesday and Thursday to stables QC and QD.

“We got up here on January 1, so the horses have been settling in since New Year’s Day,” Watson said. “It gave them a few days to relax before parades started, which was good because we had a huge number of inspections.

“We’re a little behind the eight-ball in terms of us not being in the Hunter Valley. It means we’re one of the few drafts probably that hasn’t been inspected by the masses, and it made for a huge day when everything then kicked off.”

Watson is used to this annual problem. In fact, he’s so used to it that it’s more a ritual than a problem these days.

While the bulk of farms in the breeding epicentres of the east coast have had continual farm inspections the last two months, down in Meningie, Mill Park Stud was tucked away from it all.

“We had a couple of local trainers come down, like Michael Hickmott and Adrian Hancock,” Watson said. “We had Leon Macdonald as well, so we really only hosted some of the major trainers in South Australia, that’s all.”

It makes for a busy debut when the draft arrives each January on the Gold Coast, and this week’s was busier than most.

“It was phenomenal,” Watson said. “I’ve never had a day one like it. We were hit with around 38 inspections on Wednesday, which was a big day, and we had anyone you can think of, from Gai Waterhouse through to Michael Wallace from the US. It felt like everyone came through.”

Year on year, the Mill Park draft on the Gold Coast is hotly watched. Watson rarely brings big numbers, sitting on 12 this year while last year it was just eight. Nevertheless, from little things in 2022, big things grew.

The draft was headed by a dazzling Trapeze Artist colt from the More Than Ready (USA) mare Cocoa Doll, who made $850,000 when selling to Phillip Stokes Racing. Cocoa Doll is a half-sister to the star filly Away Game (Snitzel), who herself has been a consistent poster girl for Magic Millions.

Mill Park also sold a colt by The Autumn Sun for $550,000 to Tasman Bloodstock, while all eight of its January yearlings were sold, and all eight fetched six figures for a $2.8 million collective.

This time around, the draft is slightly bigger and the sire power slightly different.

There are nine respective stallions represented in the draft and they’re Blue Point (Ire), Capitalist, Deep Field (with two), Magna Grecia (Ire), Rubick, Snitzel, So You Think (NZ) (with three), Too Darn Hot (GB) and Yes Yes Yes.

Gallery: Stallions represented in the Mill Park Stud draft for the 2023 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale

Cocoa Doll makes a return with Lot 735, and Lot 196 is a half-sister to the triple Group-winner Seradess (Astern). Each and every one is well-related and well-presented, promising that long line of interest Watson is getting used to.

Triple honour for So You Think

For the team at Mill Park Stud, there are no rules to the Gold Coast Yearling Sale.

“We have never been afraid of bringing the likes of So You Think to this sale,” Watson said. “That’s a mile- or 2000 metre-producing sireline, even if it’s not what you’d typically expect at the first sale of the year.”

Mill Park has three yearlings in the catalogue by So You Think, two colts and a filly, and they come from mares by Rebel Raider, Zenno Rob Roy (Jpn) and Hussonet (USA). Lot 601 is a half-brother to the Group 3 winner Ecumenical (Zebedee {GB}), while the dam of Lot 57 is a half-sister to the four-time Group winner Dalasan (Dalakhani {Ire}).

Gallery: Yearlings by So You Think (NZ) in the Mill Park Stud draft for the 2023 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale

They’re three of 26 progeny by So You Think in the sale next week, which is a decent number for a sireline that isn’t known for its early runners and, for Watson's part, it’s a good statement of faith.

“Traditionally, the ones that we tend to bring Magic Millions in January are the more precocious styles of horses by those sorts of sires,” Watson said. “They’re the ones we know are sound horses, the ones that on comparison to the majority of the stock are a bit more forward.

“In the past, we brought up the likes of Peltzer, who was a very precocious So You Think horse, so we’ve certainly brought up here horses that will be better 3-year-olds, but it would not surprise me to see them getting up as 2-year-olds.”

Peltzer, these days, is a sire in residence at Olly Tait’s Twin Hills Stud. But in January 2019, the horse joined Mill Park’s seven-yearling draft on the Gold Coast, selling to trainer Gerald Ryan and David Raphael for $260,000. He went on to win the G2 Stan Fox S. the following year, and the G3 Eskimo Prince S. the year after that.

In fact, joining Peltzer in that draft was a Not A Single Doubt filly from Hussy Of Choice (Hussonet {USA}). She sold for $725,000 to Peachester Lodge and her So You Think half-sister is Lot 948 next week.

New sires, new expectations

Scanning the Mill Park draft, it’s quickly obvious that four of the nine sires on show are new names in the stallion game.

Lot 19 is a colt by Blue Point from the Group 3 winner Just Discreet (Exceed And Excel). Lot 196 is a Magna Grecia filly and half-sister to Seradess. Lot 34 is by Too Darn Hot whose dam is a half-sister to the G1 Champagne S. winner Go Indy Go (Bernardini {USA}), and Lot 908 is by Yes Yes Yes from the well-related Gotta Be Gold (Bernardini {USA}).

Gallery: Yearling photos of lots found in Mill Park Stud's draft for the sale

“I don’t think it’s a lot of new sires in a typical draft, but it probably is for us,” Watson said. “We tend to aim for proven sires most of the time, but circumstances over the last few years forced us to go to first-season sires, and Magic Millions is the place to try out those new sires, especially the more precocious ones.

“What we’ve brought up here, certainly with the families and what those sires have done on the track, they point towards being very precocious horses. We’re very happy with what we’ve got here and we can only hope they represent their sires well and the studs that stand them.”

There has been plenty of boom about each of the shuttle stallions on this list. The Australian marketplace has eagerly awaited the Darley pair of Blue Point and Too Darn Hot, while Magna Grecia and Yes Yes Yes are top Coolmore products with headlines of their own.

“We haven’t had enough inspections yet to make a call on which of these stallions has had the most interest by way of inspections,” Watson said. “But I really do expect them all to be very well-received by trainers. All four of these yearlings are very nice horses.”

Good vibrations

After just a few days on complex, it’s still early in the piece for Watson to predict how the 2023 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale will unfold, but he has a crack at it anyway.

“If you look outside the thoroughbred industry, certainly in the financial markets things aren’t looking rosy at all,” he said. “But we’ve had so many instances in the past where we’ve had a few negative thoughts in our heads, like the marketplace could be down against all external factors.

“But the industry is so resilient. Prizemoney is at an all-time high and many people have said the same facts. I honestly can’t see a sale like this one being anything but at least level-pegging with what it did last year.”

In 2022, the January sale cruised past a 93 per cent clearance rate and a gross of $229,807,500. The year before, equivalent figures were an 89.71 per cent clearance rate and a $199,118,000 aggregate. These figures present a year-on-year improvement, despite COVID.

It gives vendors like Mill Park Stud plenty of confidence in a summer largely reinstated to normal conditions.

“It’s pretty hard not to be in a positive frame of mind,” Watson said. “But from our perspective, we’ve also just had Christmas with the family, we’ve landed on the Gold Coast where the weather and the sunshine is magnificent compared to what we’ve had in South Australia. We’re all very happy to be up here.”