News

Classic colt North England wins $1m Golden Gift

9th Nov 2024

Exciting colt North England (Farnan) secured his berth in all the feature 2YO races of next year with a tough victory in today’s $1m Inglis Golden Gift at Rosehill.

The Classic Yearling Sale purchase entered today’s race as favourite, having finished an unlucky third on debut in the G3 Breeders’ Plate last month.

He more than made amends today and trainers Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott will now target features such as the $2m Inglis Millennium and G1 Golden Slipper next year with the star 2YO.

North England is a $280,000 Classic Sale buy for the Newgate Farm, China Horse Club, Trilogy Racing and Go Bloodstock partnership.

The same partnership has enjoyed success at the Classic Sale previously, having teamed up in 2018 to buy Cosmic Force, who went on to win the G2 Pago Pago Stakes and G2 Roman Consul Stakes and now stands at stud at Newgate Farm in the Hunter Valley.

Bred by Mr Gu Tao’s Zhongli Thoroughbreds, North England was offered in the Valiant Stud draft earlier this year.

North England becomes the fourth Inglis graduate to win the Golden Gift from just six renewals of the race following previous successes by Dame Giselle (2019), Sneaky Five (2020) and Sejardan (2021).

China Horse Club’s Michael Smith was anything but surprised by today’s impressive victory.

“Ever since we bought him at Classic he’s done nothing wrong, he developed nicely in his early days then was an unlucky third in the Breeders’ Plate on debut and he’s atoned today,’’ Smith said.

“Gai and Adrian have done a super job with him and we’re really excited about his future.

“We go to Classic to buy those early running 2YOs and those horses we think are the goods and there’s always plenty of them at Classic.

“We were delighted to take him home and we’ll be back at Classic in February to find plenty more like him.’’

Valiant Stud’s Fergal Connolly described today’s win as “absolutely fantastic’’.

“We’re just delighted to have been involved with this horse’s journey in some small way,’’ Connolly said.

“He joined us at Valiant ahead of the sale and we took care of him during the sale itself and just tried to get the best result for the breeder and $280,000 is a lot of money.

“He was always a nice horse, very professional the whole way through. He was very popular at Riverside and sold accordingly.’’

Valiant will again have a select draft at Classic next year, for which the catalogue will be revealed within the next 10 days.