Rare gems give cause for optimism as Inglis kickstarts weanling sale series

Cover image courtesy of Inglis

A long list of high-profile graduates that includes Group 1 winners Redzel (Snitzel), Begood Toya Mother (Myboycharlie {Ire}) and Spright (Hinchinbrook) has made the Inglis Australian Weanling Sale an important and highly-anticipated fixture in the sales calendar.

Saturday’s Listed Anniversary Vase winner Cardinal Gem (Choisir), a $32,000 weanling purchase at this sale in 2019, provided a timely reminder of the quality that can be sourced at this auction for relatively modest sums.

A record catalogue of 448 lots has been assembled for this year’s edition of the two-day auction and with siblings to hugely commercial names starring alongside typically strong drafts from some of the sale’s biggest supporters, Sebastian Hutch believes there is plenty of cause for optimism ahead of this year’s weanling series curtain raiser.

“We are very fortunate in that I think we have the best-credentialed weanling that will go to sale anywhere in Australia this year,” Hutch said of Lot 271, the full brother to Kia Ora stallion Captivant (Capitalist) who will be offered as part of Senga Bissett and Ivan Woodford Smith’s dispersal of Ashleigh Thoroughbreds.

“He’s a full brother to a Group 1-winning 2-year-old in Sydney, and incidences where horses like that get offered for sale as a weanling are very, very rare.

“Combined with the fact that he’s a very nice colt, he’s a pretty special opportunity for the sale and Senga and Ivan have a really lovely draft of horses that have been very popular on the ground.

“Across the board there are some really high-profile horses here. Mike O’Donnell (Fairhill Farm) brings a good draft of foals to this sale every year and he traditionally tends to be very reasonable in terms of meeting the market. There’s also a Farnan half-brother to a colt that made a million dollars at (Inglis) Easter, out of Tavarnelle (Lot 301).

“These are horses that rarely make their way into the weanling market, so it’s a fantastic opportunity for us to be offering them.”

Aside from the stand-out lots, Hutch is also excited at the prospect of selling the first progeny by this year’s first-season sires, a crop that he believes is one of the best credentialed to hit the market in recent years.

“This sale is one that we look forward to every year, primarily because it’s the first opportunity to see the first offspring of the crop of new stallions,” Hutch said.

Gallery: Stand out Lots for the Inglis Weanling Sale

“It’s a particularly interesting crop this year. The likes of Farnan, Prague, Ole Kirk, Bivouac, Wootton Bassett, Dirty Work, Peltzer, King’s Legacy etc - all the first-season stallions who are represented in the sale have some nice weanlings here to represent them well.

“The thing that’s fun about it is that a lot of people have differing opinions as to who the horse that’s making the right sort of impression is.

“Ultimately the market will have a say on Monday and Tuesday as to in what regard these particular horses are held, but it’ll be interesting to see how things prevail on the racecourse in the subsequent years.”

Hanseatic on show

G1 Blue Diamond S. runner-up Hanseatic is one of a number of first-season sires well represented across the two days, which comes as no surprise given the level of support he has received in his first two years at stud.

A colt out of the Group 3-winning Savabeel mare Adorabeel (NZ) (Lot 351) spearheads a four-strong offering by the son of Street Boss, who became the most patronized first-season stallion in Victorian breeding history in 2021, covering 195 mares at his introductory fee of $17,600 (inc GST).

Watch: Lot 351 parading

Still buoyed by a 2-year-old stakes double for the farm on Saturday, Rosemont Stud’s general manager of bloodstock Ryan McEvoy feels that this year’s Inglis Australian Weanling Sale represents a unique opportunity for those who have missed out on breeding to Hanseatic thus far.

“He has been unbelievably popular and has covered near enough to 370 mares in his first two seasons,” McEvoy said.

“We were looking at the stats last week and almost 70 per cent of breeders that used him in year one came back to him in year two, which is a great endorsement of the types that he’s getting.

“He was booked out and you couldn’t get into him in his first year, so this sale is certainly an opportunity for those breeders that missed out to get their hands on one.”

In light of his impressive race record at two, during which he landed three stakes races in succession before being beaten a pimple in the G1 Blue Diamond S., plenty will be expected of Hanseatic once his first runners hit the track in the 2024/25 season.

The Group 3 winner has a solid chance of making an immediate impact according to McEvoy, who feels that Hanseatic has done a good job of passing the same sort of speed and precocity onto his progeny that he himself possessed.

“I know it’s a bit of a cliche, but you can go out to a paddock with eight or nine foals and can really identify a Hanseatic almost immediately,” McEvoy said.

“He’s a real, quintessential Australian speed horse with great natural muscle tone. We’re getting some really astute breeders and good judges catching onto him now and he’d have a book of near on 70 or 80 mares already, having only just announced his fee.

“He’s a horse that could have a real impact as a first-season sire and I think that he’s a great punt this year, going into his third season with such a big 2-year-old number set to hit the ground this time next year.”

Despite the temptation to increase Hanseatic’s service fee this year off the back of strong support in his first two seasons at stud, the Rosemont team opted to leave him unchanged at $17,600, owing mainly to the slight drop in yearling sale figures that has been observed so far in 2023.

McEvoy expects this year’s weanling sale market to follow suit, with the middle bracket predicted to be the area that suffers most while the top end remains in rude health.

“I think we have seen evidence of some cooling in that middle market,” he said.

“Certainly in the yearling market, we have seen a bit of strain there for horses in that $80,000-$200,000 bracket. I’d like to think that the Hanseatics are in that space, so it’s going to be interesting to see how that all plays out.

“One thing we have taken out of the yearling sales is that there is still a premium price being paid for good quality stock. I think there will be a level of correction happening, but we’re still seeing that anything with quality can sell above itself.”

A different dynamic

Like McEvoy, Hutch is expecting the top end of this year’s Inglis Australian Weanling Sale to thrive, but against the backdrop of a slowing economy, the very nature of a weanling sale means that other areas of the market are likely to find life considerably tougher.

“As we see year in year out, the clearance rate doesn’t tend to be on the same level as what it tends to be at the yearling sales, just because vendors aren’t quite under the same pressure to sell,” Hutch explained.

“There’s a more relaxed attitude to the sale. Some people will feel that if the market isn’t valuing their weanlings at the level they see them at, they’re happy to take their chances through a yearling sale, or a 2-year-old sale, or on the racecourse in the following years.

“So while I think in certain parts of the market supply is going to exceed demand, I think in the case of foals that are well-credentialed, by stallions who people perceive to be commercial, with commercial pedigrees, there will be a surplus of demand relative to supply.

“I think that the challenges that have been evident in the market this year will be something that pinhookers are sensitive to in terms of what they are prepared to pay for weanlings to trade, for example, but this year is on track to be the second most lucrative year in the history of Australian bloodstock, so I think the challenges need to be looked at in the context of that fact.”

In addition to a strong cross-section of local buyers, Hutch is anticipating involvement from Queensland, Western Australia, New Zealand and further afield over the next two days, with many representatives from those jurisdictions already in attendance at Riverside Stables on the weekend.

Such diversity, combined with some notable pinhook results from last year’s sale, points towards another strong buying bench 12 months on, and Hutch expects both pinhookers and end users to once again come to the fore when the gavel is raised on Monday morning.

“We’re very lucky to be offering the quality of foals that we have this year, but as tends to be the case at this sale, we can only wish that we had more nice horses to offer the buying bench, because it certainly feels that the appetite is going to be there,” he said.

“Pinhookers, for want of a better word, are a brave group who traditionally embrace the challenge of variances in the market, year after year.

“You think back as recently to the year of the pandemic and you still saw circumstances where the pinhookers were still prepared to front up and buy weanlings, even though we were in a very, very uncertain market at that stage.

“Our sale has a good record of producing racehorses for people, so I still think it will engage a good representation of end users as well.”

Just the beginning

With the weanlings taking centre stage on Monday and Tuesday, attention will quickly turn to The Chairman’s Sale on Thursday night, and Hutch can barely contain his excitement for what he believes is the best line-up in the auction’s burgeoning history.

“We can say definitively that it’s the best catalogue that we’ve ever assembled for this sale,” Hutch said unequivocally.

“Traditionally we’ve been afforded the opportunity to sell nice pregnant mares, but this is the best group of race fillies and mares we’ve offered for sale across the board. High-profile lots like Montefilia, Nimalee, Icebath, right the way through to race fillies like Jal Lei and Tralee Rose, and then mares like Pantonario, Dashing Legend and Scorched Earth.

“There is great depth to those race fillies and we have some really fantastic covers as well. To be able to go into a sale like this and have mares in foal to Extreme Choice, Gun Runner, Frankel and all the other major proven and young stallions in Australia, and primarily with young mares, it’s a pretty exciting opportunity.

“The sale itself is a cool spectacle, it’s good fun and it certainly seems to be drawing interest from a strong group of buyers. Hopefully that manifests itself in a good sale on Thursday night.”