Buyers' appetite to reinvest in a bloodstock market despite trepidation about what the wider picture may look like over the next 12 months helped push the Inglis Australian Weanling Sale to a record turnover May 6-7 at Riverside Stables near Sydney.
After a strong opening session Monday, in which the five highest-priced weanlings were sold led by an AU$575,000 (US$379,051, AU1$=US $0.66) I Am Invincible filly, Day 2's smaller offering saw sustained demand for high-quality foals for pinhooking and end-user purposes.
The sale's aggregate was up 25% year-on-year, closing Tuesday at a record AU$16,164,000 (US$10,668,240) while the average was up 5% at $55,167 ($36,410) with a healthy clearance rate of 79%.
A day after a colt by Swettenham Stud's leading sire Toronado sold for AU$260,000 (US$171,600), another colt by the now permanent Victoria-based stallion sold for AU$320,000 (US$211,200), the second session's most expensive weanling.
The Lustre Lodge-consigned colt, the second foal out of Deep Field mare Atomic Pulse, screams "Asia" being by the same sire as Hong Kong Jockey Club Century Sprint Cup (G1) winner Victor The Winner, dual Sha Tin group 3 winner and dual group 1-placed Senor Toba, and Hong Kong Classic Mile winner Helios Express.
The progeny of the now-pensioned Deep Field are also highly sought after by Hong Kong buyers, being the sire of group 1 winners Sky Field and Voyage Bubble, so his appearance as the broodmare sire would no doubt be part of the consideration for the Toronado colt's buyer.
Lustre Lodge's Paige Churcher was delighted with the result, which well and truly exceeded the vendor's expectations.
"What an unreal result. He's a colt we brought here thinking we could get $100,000, maybe $120,000 for, because he's a beautiful-moving colt by a sire that's really on fire, so we're absolutely rapt," Churcher said.
"Honestly, I was just hoping I could get reserve back on him, so we're just ecstatic. He's gone ahead in leaps and bounds and hopefully the end users get a great result as well."
The colt is out of the placed Atomic Pulse, a filly whose racecourse career was brought to a premature end.
"We raced the mare, Kris Lees trained her and thought she had a lot of ability, but she had a tendon injury, so we added her to the broodmare band and now we're here," Churcher said.
Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch noted strength at the top of the market.
"It felt like there's been really good trade for nice horses, but there's no disguising the fact that there's a significant disparity between the 'wants' and the 'do not wants', and those horses that find themselves out of favor, so to speak, can be bought at a significant discount on probably what they've cost breeders to produce," Hutch said.
"Like we said after the Gold sale and the HTBA yearling sale, there's probably some breeders with tough decisions to make with how they manage their breeding portfolio, but what I think the past few days has illustrated is that if you present quality to a market like this, more often than not you're going to get well paid for it."
Hutch said indications were that there was still demand for weanlings from buyers heading into rival Magic Millions' foal sale and Inglis' Great Southern Sale.
"The volume of people who are going home from here with orders unfilled or horses not bought is almost disappointing from our point of view because we had so many people looking to shop but not being able to shop [because of the competition]," he said.
"There are plenty of reasons for people to be positive about the market on the basis of what's happened here over the past two days."
Hutch, as he did in the lead-up to the Sydney sale, reiterated that this year's decline in the yearling market was not insurmountable for breeders and traders alike.
"There's an element of bravery in what any pinhooker does. It's speculative and we've seen significant variances in the market from year to year," he said.
"The market in 2024 has had its challenges but it's been a good market, just not as good as 2022 and 2023. I think people are taking the view that if the market holds to 2024, then there's enough [margin] for them to work within that, and certainly we'll be working hard with them to facilitate the best market we can in 2025."
