Armidale Stud well poised for another fruitful Tasmanian Sale

Cover image courtesy of Armidale Stud

There is little doubt that the Magic Millions Tasmanian Yearling Sale is an auction at which extraordinary value can be found, and more often than not it can be found within the Armidale draft.

Multiple stakes heroine Still A Star (Toronado {Ire}), a winner of the G2 Rose Of Kingston S. at Flemington, was secured from this auction for $13,000, the same lowly sum for which Lady Lynette (Ladoni {GB}), a multiple Group winner and Group 1 placegetter, was purchased for at this sale. And who could forget Mystic Journey (Needs Further), the Group 1 winner, inaugural $5 million All-Star Mile winner and Champion 3-Year-Old Filly in Australia, who was snapped up at this sale by her trainer Adam Trinder for just $11,000 back in 2017.

The latter pair were both sold through the Armidale Stud draft, and few farms have dominated a thoroughbred auction quite like Armidale Stud has dominated the Tasmanian Yearling Sale since the turn of the century.

The Carrick-based operation has been crowned leading vendor by gross and sold the top lot at each of the last five renewals of the auction, while its reign as leading vendor pre-dates the sale’s statistics on the Magic Millions website.

Last year Armidale was crowned leading vendor by both gross and average and was also responsible for an astonishing six of the top 10 lots, including the sale-topping Toronado (Ire) filly.

Fairytale stories like Mystic Journey and Lady Lynette are what keeps people coming back to Quercus Park each year according to Whishaw and taking the above statistics into account, it’s no wonder that he holds this auction in such high regard.

“Time and time again we see this sale throw a Group horse for under $30,000,” he said.

“The stud and the sale have been very lucky to breed a lot of Group horses and sell them for not a lot of money - I don’t know whether the stud has been lucky to sell them for not a lot of money, but they’re great stories and they’re stories that keep the mums and dads, the punters and the Joe Blows in the industry.

“For me, a horse that sells for $1.5 million and wins a city race is not a great success story. If you’re spending that much, you’re wanting to win a Group 1, and we all know how hard they are to win.

“It’s these horses that sell for a very humble figure that make racehorse ownership affordable - when they go on and win Group races, that’s what gets me excited about the industry because it proves that the average Joe Blow can still compete with the best.”

Whishaw is under no illusions about the sale’s size and gross relative to other auctions in the calendar, but the Armidale principal is unequivocal in his belief that the Magic Millions Tasmanian Yearling Sale continues to punch above its weight year after year.

“I think it has been the best return on investment yearling sale in Australia since Magic Millions took it over,” he added.

“The sale has grown a lot, it was only grossing a million going back 10 years ago and it grew to over $4 million last year.

“You can come and buy the whole Tasmanian catalogue for the same price of the two top lots at the Magic Millions sale on the Gold Coast, and the chances of you getting a return on your money would be a hell of a lot better.

“That’s the game we play in and it’s a funny old game.”

‘Year of consolidation’

Despite his belief in the quality of bloodstock on offer, Whishaw’s expectations for this year’s Magic Millions Tasmanian Yearling Sale have been tempered slightly in the wake of rising interest rates.

Last year’s auction on the island state returned a record gross, median and average, and Whishaw believes that anything close to those benchmarks would be a positive result in light of the current economic landscape.

“It’s hard to know where the sale is going to sit, and I think it’s going to be a year of consolidation,” he said.

“The economy has tightened up a bit locally, and federally as well, so if we can consolidate and hold our ground, that would be grand.

“We have a really nice, even line of horses in our draft and I don’t think we have a real, clear standout. We’ve probably got three or four that stand out to me.

“There are definitely some nice horses here that are going to fly under the radar.”

One such horse in Armidale’s 26-strong draft for this year’s sale is Lot 57, an All Too Hard filly out of Garland (I Am Invincible) who hails from the family of the late Hinchinbrook and four-time Champion Sire Snitzel.

“I think this is a filly who will probably demand plenty of interest and may end up being quite good value,” Whishaw said.

“All Too Hard has done a great job, I wouldn’t say he’s super sexy, but he’s a great trainer’s horse. This filly is very much in the mould of her sire out of a three-time winning I Am Invincible mare. She just strikes me as an athlete and just looks like a runner.

“She’s not flashy, you’re not going to look at her and think ‘oh wow she’s an oil painting, I want to take a photo of her and put it on the wall’, but you’ll think ‘yeah I’m going to have you on my wall, you’re going to win some races for sure’.

“She walks well, she’s tough and she strikes me as a horse who's going to get up and run, without necessarily having the beauty of a sale-topper.”

Away from the progeny of their resident stallions, Whishaw also singled out colts by young sires Calyx (GB) (Lot 80), Brutal (NZ) (Lot 52) and Brave Smash (Jpn) (Lot 15) for praise, with the latter described as a “strong, sprinting type who walks well and is very athletic for a strong horse”.

Need for speed

Armidale’s dominance of the Magic Millions Tasmanian Yearling Sale in recent years has been helped in no small part by the exploits of their resident stallion Needs Further, who was crowned the auction’s leading stallion by gross and by average (more than three lots sold) twelve months ago.

A significant drop in Tasmanian-bred yearlings at this year’s sale means that the son of Encosta De Lago faces a difficult task defending his crown, but Whishaw’s confidence in the stallion’s ability to produce top-class racehorses remains as high as ever.

“His stock were highly sought-after last year, but unfortunately there’s a much smaller crop by him in the sale this year - he actually stood in Victoria the year that these yearlings were conceived, so there’s not many of them in the sale,” Whishaw revealed.

“I think that will be to the Tassie racing industry’s loss. We’ll no doubt see less of them on the racetrack in Tassie next year too for that reason, and that’s a bit of a disappointment, but it means those six yearlings in this year’s sale should attract really good interest.

“They’ve been such great, consistent horses. He’s a stallion who consistently sticks his neck out during our summer racing carnival down here (in Tasmania) and he seems to have runners in our feature races year in, year out.

“He’s had 2-Year-Olds of the Year, 3-Year-Olds of the Year, sprinters, milers, distance horses, Cups horses - he’s been such a versatile sire for us and we’re very lucky to have him.”

Of Armidale’s sextet of Needs Further yearlings, Whishaw was effusive in his praise for Lot 91, a colt from the family of Horse of the Year and dual-hemisphere Group 1 winner Scenic Blast (Scenic {Ire}), whom he described as a “gorgeous, athletic, big, strong colt”.

Big things are also expected of Lot 56, a daughter of the Melbourne metropolitan winner Flying Krupt (Krupt), as well as Lot 126, a filly out of the stakes-placed, seven-time winner Speedonova (Tough Speed).

Whishaw feels the former’s appeal will undoubtedly have increased off the back of her sire’s recent pair of juvenile stakes winners, with talented duo The Spirit Of Zero and Needs Sugar providing their sire with the quinella in the Listed Gold Sovereign S. earlier this month.

“We have two particularly nice fillies by Needs Further, both first foals out of two, young, stakes-placed mares,” Whishaw said.

“I don’t expect them to top the sale, but I expect most trainers who view them to be very happy to take these two fillies home.

“The filly out of Flying Krupt is a ripping first foal, she looks a real runner and is in the mould of Needs Further’s 2-year-old types.

“I think she’ll catch the eye and I think she’ll sell really well, especially off the back of his recent 2-year-old stakes success.”

While Whishaw expects the Flying Krupt filly to make an impact as a juvenile, he believes the Speedonova filly will likely benefit from a more patient approach than her barnmate.

“She’s a bigger, scopier sort of filly that looks to me like she could run at two, but she’s definitely got the scope to run over a bit of a trip, not dissimilar to some of his stock like Pateena Arena and Mystical Pursuit,” he added of Lot 126.

“She’s in the same sort of mould as those fillies and she’s just got a heap of athleticism about her.”

Quiet achiever

Armidale will also be heavily represented in Monday’s sale by their other resident stallion, Alpine Eagle, with over a third of their draft made up of sons and daughters of the G1 Australian Guineas runner-up.

Alpine Eagle’s first two crops are spearheaded by dual Guineas hero Alpine Wolf, who has spent this campaign chasing home Tasmanian pin-up horse The Inevitable (Dundeel {NZ}) and looks set to lock horns with the Silver Eagle winner once again in Wednesday’s Listed Hellova Street S.

Whishaw is adamant that Alpine Eagle’s progeny will continue to improve with age and feels that the son of High Chaparral (Ire) has made a better start to life at stud than what the bare statistics suggest.

“It’s worth saying that he was our leading juvenile sire in Tasmania last year, which considering we have the likes of Needs Further and Wordsmith, who have been renowned for throwing precocious horses, I think for him to win that award was pretty impressive,” Whishaw said.

“He didn’t have a lot of 2-year-old winners, but our juvenile sire award takes into consideration two and 3-year-olds, and he had so many 3-year-old winners. He outgunned both of those outstanding Tassie stallions and he’s doing a great job.

“We don’t think his stock are juveniles at all. They clearly need some time, and on the whole they appreciate a little bit of a trip. They’re not 2-year-old sprinting types.

“He’s a gorgeous horse and he throws gorgeous types.”

One member of Armidale’s draft who Whishaw believes fits that description is Lot 17, a daughter of Alpine Eagle out of the eight-time winning Not A Single Doubt mare Arenzano.

The filly’s year-older half-brother, now named Durazzo (Needs Further), sold to Denise Martin’s Star Thoroughbreds and Randwick Bloodstock Agency (FBAA) for $97,500 at last year’s Tasmanian Yearling Sale, and won his first barrier trial in impressive fashion just a few weeks ago.

The pair’s older half-sister, Emily (Wordsmith), ran a career-best fourth in the G3 Bow Mistress S. last week and will line-up in the Magic Millions 3 and 4YO Classic at Launceston on Sunday.

Recent evidence suggests that Emily looks to be on the cusp of a breakthrough stakes success, as does fellow Armidale graduate The Map (Alpine Eagle), whom Whishaw hopes will give Alpine Eagle a well-deserved second stakes winner in the not too distant future.

“Alpine Eagle has The Map, who’s stakes-placed and heading towards the Adelaide Cup,” he said.

“We have her full sister in this sale, Lot 138, who is a gorgeous filly. She’s a beautiful, big, leggy filly with a great, deep girth and a great walk. She’s a real staying type of filly and unfortunately, the sale comes before the Adelaide Cup, but The Map has been so close to a stakes win.

“If a couple of these horses that have been running bottlers in stakes races can pop up and win some black type, that will definitely help Alpine Eagle keep ticking over.

“We’d love to see him get a Group horse in Melbourne. He’s had plenty run around in Group races and there’s been heaps win races, but he’s yet to get a Group winner there.”

Continued support

This year’s Magic Millions Tasmanian Yearling Sale will once again be held in conjunction with Tasracing and Tasbreeders, and Whishaw, who also holds the position of Vice President of Tasbreeders, is delighted that the auction house has committed to a new deal to host the island state’s sale and race series for a further five years.

Whishaw was quick to thank all those involved in the negotiations, and praised Magic Millions for their long-lasting and continued support of the Tasmanian racing and breeding industries

“I’m thrilled to be part of those negotiations and thrilled to be working with Tasracing and Magic Millions for the next five years,” he said.

“The Breeders’ association is very grateful for Tasracing’s support, so I’d like to thank Andrew Jenkins and the board for continuing to support our breeding industry down here, and I’d also like to thank Magic Millions for continuing to believe in us as breeders and giving us the opportunity to have our $11,000 sales graduates go on the front of their catalogues.

“I think it’s a great story for Magic Millions, it’s their affordable sale where the general punter can get a horse and race up against their million-dollar yearlings that they sell up on the Gold Coast.

“We’re very thankful to Gerry and Katie, and Barry Bowditch and his team, for showing us their commitment to Tassie for the next five years.”