Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
Across Randwick and Flemington, three fillies bought as weanlings won Group races within hours of each other, while Sir Delius was also picked up as a foal in his first sale ring visit.
At Randwick, Autumn Glow (The Autumn Sun), a $600,000 Magic Millions National weanling later sold for $1.8 million at Inglis Easter, stayed unbeaten in the G1 Epsom Handicap, and Shiki (Too Darn Hot {GB}), a $150,000 Inglis Sydney weanling later a $420,000 Magic Millions Gold Coast yearling, won the G3 Gimcrack Stakes on debut.
At Flemington, Getta Good Feeling (So You Think {NZ}), a $400,000 Magic Millions National weanling later a $525,000 Inglis Easter yearling, landed the G2 Edward Manifold Stakes. Even Sir Delius (Frankel {GB}), bred overseas and sold through Tattersalls for 675,000gns (AU$1.445 million) as a foal then 1,300,000gns (AU$2.78 million) later, added weight to the theme.
'Suman, what are you doing?'
Suman Hedge was involved with two of those winners. He bought Getta Good Feeling as a weanling for $400,000 dollars from Phoenix Broodmare Farm. She was a half-sister to his Dundeel (NZ) colt Elliptical, which meant curiosity came before logic.
“She’s a really interesting horse,” Hedge said. “She’s a half to the good Dundeel colt of mine (Elliptical) and there was always the curiosity on what she was like. Even before I saw her, Damien (Gleeson) said to me, ‘you’re going to like this filly,’ because he knows what I like.”
Then she walked out of the box. “My God, she was just the epitome of beauty. She was so beautiful.”
Getta Good Feeling as a weanling | Image courtesy of Magic Millions
He had gone into the sale planning to cap his bidding at $350,000. When it climbed, he kept going.
“As it was going, as things happen in auctions, you get excited and go again. After, I looked at my partners and they have no expression and then they were like, ‘you’ve gone a bit far there and I don’t think we can make that work’. My heart just sank.”
He rang Sheriff Iskander, “I said I’ve bought this horse and it’s a lot. He said, what did you pay and I said 400. He said, oh what is it? I said, a So You Think filly. And he’s like ‘Suman, what are you doing? You must really love it.’ And I said, I absolutely adore this horse.’”
Another trusted opinion helped. “The other person who loved her was Scotty Holcombe. Prior to bidding, he said, just buy this horse. Normally when I talk to him after I’ve paid a lot for something, he’ll roll his eyes and say, Oh jeez, but this time, he was like ‘Good’. I said, Really? And he said ‘proper horse.’”
Milburn Creek sold her as a yearling for $525,000 to Dean Hawthorne Bloodstock.
Getta Good Feeling as a yearling | Image courtesy of Inglis
“We took her to Easter. But it was the usual story with trainers. They look at their iPads and see what we paid for her and use that as a valuation, and then they’d be like ‘Oh it’s a So You Think’. But the one guy who was bullish about her was Dean Hawthorne.
“He’s such a great judge and buys great types. Unfortunately, we didn’t have someone to go with him. We needed someone to feel the same way and then we would’ve been paid appropriately for what she was.
“I’m so glad she’s got ability, because what a beautiful horse she is.”
Suman Hedge | Image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
In fact, they almost tried to keep her.
“We almost put a big reserve just to keep her because I just loved her. We were happy we got out of her and it wasn’t a loss, but it was very frustrating because she was as nice a horse as I’ve seen.”
The one with the Dubawi walk
The other filly, Gimcrack winner Shiki, came from Cornerstone Stud. Hedge bought her for $150,000 at the Inglis Sydney Weanling Sale and resold her for $420,000 through Riverstone Lodge at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
“She was just a really well balanced horse, an elegant filly,” Hedge said. “She was presented really well by Cornerstone, a really natural type.”
Sam Pritchard-Gordon from Cornerstone described her as easy to handle.
“She was really straightforward. Plenty of muscle mass and always had a good shape. She was an obvious horse. She might have been considered a little bit small by some judges, and a lot of people wanted to see a more fluid walk on her, but that’s a Dubawi characteristic, that short staccato walk on a nuggety close-coupled type.”
Shiki | Image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
Riverstone kept a share when Kurrinda Bloodstock and the Waterhouse-Bott team bought her.
“We were rapt when Waterhouse and Kurrinda put a group together to buy her. Riverstone retained a share in her. They didn’t have to, but they really wanted to keep something of her.”
Hedge said buying fillies like Shiki fits a broader plan. “It’s part of a broader strategy we’ve got moving forward, where we are looking to establish a partnership to buy some fillies, race them, and breed from them later on.”
“It’s part of a broader strategy we’ve got moving forward, where we are looking to establish a partnership to buy some fillies, race them, and breed from them later on.” - Suman Hedge
That approach gives flexibility. “Nick Taylor asked if I could help with pinhooking some weanlings for them. The method for Riverstone was that anything we bought, we’d be happy to race if we didn’t achieve what we needed to at the sales.”
Buying on crutches
Both Hedge and Silverdale proved that when the right horse walks out, budgets become background noise. Hedge kept bidding on Getta Good Feeling even after she cleared his ceiling, convinced she was worth stretching for - while Silverdale did the same with Autumn Glow.
Silverdale’s Steve Grant remembers the moment he went over budget at the Magic Millions National Weanling Sale.
Autumn Glow as a weanling | Image courtesy of Magic Millions
“We assessed her at half a million plus a bit, and when the bidding came around, she quickly jumped up way past our half million. At $550,000 we were about to bid and it jumped up to $575,000. We hesitated, well I hesitated, and with much encouragement, we had a bid at $600,000. It was our first and only bid on her.”
The team’s manager, Rob Petith, was on crutches after a motorbike accident.
“Brian (McGuire) worked with me at the sale, and I did a lot of miles at that sale ground on crutches,” Petith recalled.
“Then when we were bidding, the hammer is coming down and we decided to go over budget and put in one bid. We didn’t just go above the budget, we smashed it. Kenny (Lowe) is jumping on my toe.”
“The broken one!” he laughed. “It didn’t matter, it was electric, and I couldn’t feel the injury. Magic Millions sent us the video and we got our bid in just in time. There’s a photo of all of us after the sale, and Kenny is leaning on one of my crutches.”
Ken Lowe, Rob Petith, Brian McGuire and John Kelly | Image courtesy of Magic Millions
From the start the filly was composed. “She always had an incredible quality,” Petith said. “An amazing athletic action, she just moved in an effortless way. Everything she did, right the way through, she’s always had that calmness about her. A weanling who has just been through the ring is usually fired up but she walked along as calm as ever.”
“She (Autumn Glow) always had an incredible quality. An amazing athletic action, she just moved in an effortless way.” - Rob Petith
Grant says that attitude was then nurtured through their yearling education system.
“We go through a lot of processes to give our horses an early education. We want our horses to be the favourite – at the sales, at the races, and when they retire. We know that if we turn out beautiful well-educated horses, they’ll get the best strappers.”
Every day, the yearlings walk over the farm’s treadmill ramp, not running, just walking, getting used to confined spaces and noise.
“We bang things and make noise,” Grant said. “We feel all those tiny one-percent things we do to educate the horse for their whole life, not just their racing portion.”
Even on bleak mornings, Petith said, she carried herself like a finished horse. “She never wastes any energy, and is very intelligent. She had that mind from the get go. Even feeding on the coldest mornings when it’s miserable, you’d look at her and she’d give you confidence. She looked like the ultimate professional.”
Autumn Glow as a yearling | Image courtesy of Inglis
Reading foals for a living
Hedge has been around enough young stock to know there’s no weanling buying system that guarantees success. What experience gives him is a faster filter.
“You might look at 100 to 120 a day, and most of them you’d never buy,” he said. “It’s a quick process. You look at them for 20 seconds and know that there’s no way I’m going to buy this.”
“They are weak and small, or have no scope, light or narrow, or they are never going to develop the bone density or power they need. Even if they improve, they are so far behind where they need to be.”
He pays attention to rhythm more than size. “For weanlings, it’s their first time away from the farm and it’s a high-pressure thing. But if they come out every time and walk the same way, and have got the swagger and the action, and you just know what they are going to become. If they are elite, they are always going to be elite.”
“If they (weanlings) come out every time and walk the same way, and have got the swagger and the action, and you just know what they are going to become. If they are elite, they are always going to be elite.” - Suman Hedge
On the other hand, Hedge avoids foals that look too perfect.
“Other farms push their horses early to get them looking big and strong and those horses don’t work out. They disintegrate when you take them home. You don’t want them to be too heavy. They become big heavy camels, and they are not athletes.”
And he watches who’s selling them. “A guy like Damien Gleeson, they just do it the right way. They present them well and with natural improvement they’ll grow into nice animals. The good judges and good trainers want athletes. You can have a show horse or a racehorse. I’ve been guilty of buying show horses in the past. They look big and strong and impressive, but then they didn’t have the improvement.”
How the game’s changing
Both Hedge and Grant talk about the same pressure building in the market. Everyone has seen a few pinhooks work. Everyone wants in.
“More people have seen others do well and there are heaps of gun pinhookers out there,” Hedge said. “People are attracted by the idea that you are only holding the horse for a short time, so the risk is mitigated, and you are choosing the horse, rather than when you breed, you have to sell what you get.”
The challenge is the competition. “Some end users, like Simon Miller, Ciaron Maher and even Gai Waterhouse, have started to go out and buy weanlings. That’s hurt the pinhookers, because the horses we buy have commercial pedigrees and are more forward horses and they appeal to those end users.”
“Some end users, like Simon Miller, Ciaron Maher and even Gai Waterhouse, have started to go out and buy weanlings. That’s hurt the pinhookers...” - Suman Hedge
As a result, prices have crept up faster than the margins.
“A horse who used to cost $80,000, I might have to pay $150,000 because the competition has gone up. You have to be disciplined because you want to buy the best ones and you are used to buying a particular type of horse, but if you are paying too much, there’s no margin.”
Suman Hedge inspecting at the Magic Millions Gold Coast sales complex | Image courtesy of Magic Millions
Grant has watched the same shift, mentioning how the pinhooking market has changed over time, and that impacted on the price they had to pay for Autumn Glow as a weanling.
“Rob, Brian, and one of our investors Ken Lowe found half a dozen (weanlings) and one outstanding one. Then it was a case of getting the price right,” said Grant.
“It’s our business plan to sell everything. All our pinhooks and all the ones we breed are for sale, so we put her up for sale.”
As a half-sister to Group 1 winner and young sire In The Congo, Autumn Glow would be a wonderful addition to any broodmare band even as an unraced $600,000 purchase.
“We had a few people congratulate us yesterday. I said, ‘it’s okay for you - but I have to drive Ken Lowe home and he wanted to keep her’!” Grant laughed.
