News

Millennium winner's half sister tops Day 3 as Classic concludes in style

13th Feb 2024

They say timing is everything in this industry and Glenlogan Park’s Steve Morley’s certainly wasn’t complaining when his half sister to Saturday’s $2m Inglis Millennium winner Fully Lit topped the final day of the Classic Yearling Sale.

Lot 750 (North Pacific x Sunlit) had been the talk of the Riverside complex since her undefeated half brother exploded into G1 Golden Slipper contention with a devastating victory in Saturday’s feature race.

So it came as little surprise to most when she topped the Day 3 action, selling to a new partnership of R Unicorn Stable, Rising Sun Bloodstock and Satomi Oka Bloodstock for $420,000.

Morley was “over the moon’’ with the outcome, which ended a “perfect week’’ for the farm, who sold eight from eight at Classic.

“It’s been a terrific week,’’ Morley said.

“We’ve sold them from $40,000 to $420,000, we’ve sold every single one of them, averaged close to $130,000 and as always, the facilities are wonderful, the people are great, there’s plenty of opportunities to sell your horses at Classic with lots of buyers here so we’re thrilled with it.

“This filly was very much well admired from day one – before Fully Lit won the Millennium even – but that result certainly didn’t hurt. You always get good inspections of your Classic draft, there’s always plenty of people here and this year was no exception, from the bottom to the top there was endless inspections but I guess the main thing that changed pre and post Millennium was the price they might have to pay for her.

“I still put a small reserve on her which is what I intended to put on her regardless of what happened at Randwick on Saturday but I was just very confident that she was going to triple our reserve or a touch more, which she did.

“When you’ve got the right product and you know how well admired she is and you can see who’s looking at her and you know they’re the serious players in the industry, there’s no nerves, just anticipation. It’s a real thrill.’’

The owner of R Unicorn Stable was enjoying his first trip to Australia for a horse sale and was delighted to purchase the filly (pictured), who will be trained by Chris Waller.

“We race horses in different countries around the world, we came to Australia for the first time last week, was impressed by the quality of horses, we enjoyed the racing and meeting the industry people here,’’ he said.

“When [Inglis’ Japanese rep] Satomi [Oka] showed me this horse, she wasn’t in our budget but we talked to Rising Sun who also really liked the horse and agreed to team up to make sure we bought her.

“We’ve been absolutely impressed by the Inglis complex and their hospitality and services, the whole experience was so friendly, they’re all very nice people.’’

At the end of today’s sale – which was the first under a new format of one book for the entirety rather than a Book 1 and a Highway Session – the average sat at $93,658, median at $70,000 and clearance at 82%.

The leading buyer by both individual lots purchased (13) and aggregate ($1,320,000) was Domeland while the leading vendor title went to Sledmere Stud, who sold 25 horses for a gross of $2,932,000.

“What a week,’’ Sledmere’s Roysten Murphy said.

“Every buyer you’d want to see at a sale was here, this sale really dragged everybody here.

“The depth of the buying bench was massive. Our top horses did up around the 190 parades which is colossal. When you have 29 horses and they’re averaging close to 120 parades across the board, that’s extraordinary.’’

Inglis’ Bloodstock CEO Sebastian Hutch very pleased with how the sale played out over the past three days.

“We’ve been hesitant to compare year-on-year statistics up to this point because of the new format of the sale and the only realistic way to do that was at the end of the sale and to look at the 2024 figures alongside the combined Book 1 and Highway Session figures from 2023 and when you do that, this sale compares very favourably with last year, particularly given 48 fewer horses went through the ring this year.’’ Hutch said.

“Clearance is going to reach the mid-80s, which is fantastic, while all the relevant figures are indicative of a healthy market.

“Our main goal every sale is to see vendors go home happy and I’m confident a majority of vendors are doing exactly that. There were some really extraordinary results over the past three days, some great buying to be done and some great results for sellers so when you can facilitate a market where both buyers and sellers go home happy, it’s very satisfying.

“Our focus moves to Melbourne now for the Premier Sale, a sale that produced The Everest winner a couple of years ago for $70,000.’’

To enquire about any passed in lot from this year’s Classic Sale, contact Harry Bailey on 0420 997 417.

The Inglis Premier Yearling Sale will be held at Oaklands from March 3-5.

To view the Premier catalogue, CLICK HERE.