Tony and Calvin McEvoy were the hardest hitters on Day 1 of an Inglis Classic Yearling Sale which resoundingly defied fears of a downturn when the father and son duo snapped up the day's two highest lots in Lot 183, an AU$400,000 (approx. US$250,480, AU$1=US$0.63) colt by boom sire Wootton Bassett, and Lot 114, an AU$360,000 filly by I Am Invincible.
"Quality is expensive," Tony McEvoy said of the colt. "He's a beautiful horse. Wootton Bassett is a leading international stallion and they're a hot ticket item here in Australia, so I knew it wasn't going to be easy to purchase him. But, I think at the end of the day he'll be pretty good shopping once Easter comes around."
The purchases, along with two more that took the McEvoys' day-leading aggregate to AU$1.22 million, came in a session that delivered an average—AU$99,952—comfortably eclipsed last year's mark of AU$94,929, despite many vendors' anticipation of a difficult, soft sale.
Day one's median was unchanged on last year's AU$80,000, while the aggregate of AU$17,691,500 was down from AU$18,707,000 for the first session of 2024, but with only 177 lots sold compared with 197.
That reflected what for Inglis was the only downside of Sunday—a clearance rate of 73% compared with 83% on last year's opening day.
Still, many vendors reported the clearance was stronger than they had feared, given the country's ongoing economic tough times which were shown in difficulties in the bottom half of the market at the Magic Millions Gold Coast and New Zealand Bloodstock's Karaka sales last month.
"It's a more than satisfactory day," said Inglis's CEO of bloodstock sales Sebastian Hutch.
"There's only so much you can do in advance of a sale in preparation. We thought we had a strong group of buyers lined up, but to what extent they were prepared to participate was always going to be an unknown.
"But we were happy with the group of horses here, happy with the group of vendors here, so we were cautiously optimistic the sale would function well, and I would say it feels like the sale has functioned really well today.
"The clearance rate has been short of where we'd like it ideally but by the same token it's solid in the current climate."
Hutch said the demand for quality horses "felt really strong", partly buoyed by the work of Inglis personnel to draw overseas buyers.
"The breadth of participation was very encouraging," he said. "We have a huge cross-section of people participating.
"We knew we were going to have a good representation of overseas buyers. (Inglis's Victorian bloodstock manager) James Price and (international business development manager) Nicky Wong have done a lot of traveling in the last number of months, and that's reflected today in the nature of participation from buyers from Hong Kong and Malaysia in particular.
"That's really pleasing. It's reward for effort."
I Am Invincible was the top-averaging stallion of more than three lots sold with his three yielding an average of AU$253,333. Then came Wootton Bassett with three at AU$216,667 and The Autumn Sun with five sold lots averaging AU$200,000.
By average, I Am Invincible's home stud Yarraman Park was leading vendor, with five lots sold at AU$212,000, ahead of New Zealand's Waikato Stud, whose four yearlings sold for an average of AU$172,500.
On aggregates, Arrowfield Stud ranked first with AU$1.22 million from nine sellers averaging AU$136,111.
