Top grossing Lot 221, Savannah Cat, sold for R4.75 Million
There is, in the grand scale of things, no apparent relationship between what people are prepared to pay for horses and prize money to be earned.
Take the current crop of 4yo’s. There are some 3350 horses born in 2011 on our files. Of those, some 1850 did not win, and about 1300 have not earned a cent. Among the leaders of the generation are 15 millionaires, and 47 who earned 500k or more. Louis The King leads the pack with earnings of 5 million, followed by Legislate on 4.75m. That last figure is the same as the price of the new South African record breaking yearling at Nationals in 2015.
And to give more perspective, 57 yearlings at Nationals went for 500k and more, of which 21 broke the million Rand barrier. Compare that to the 47 earners of 500k and 15 millionaires in the whole of the 4yo crop.
Clearly it’s the big fish that matter. The lure of champions. No one knows that better than Mike Rattray, who for a change found himself at the other side of the fence, having sold his Lammerskraal studfarm last year. The old warrior still wants to have those big ones to race, and had set his sights on one he’d bred but no longer owned. His eye-popping opening bid of R2 million for the Fort Wood filly out of a half sister to Rattray’s former stallion Western Winter should have done the trick – but Shadwell’s Angus Gold had other ideas. The battle went all the way to 4.75m, and by then it was crystal clear that Rattray wasn’t giving in to Arab money. Whatever it takes! The price was a new yearling record for South Africa. Interestingly, the filly was one of only two of her sex among the 21 million Rand breaking yearlings at the sale.
Tony Millard – bought two lovely Dynasty colts
Hong Kong trainer Tony Millard was responsible for the next two highest prices, both colts by Dynasty. The former South African champion trainer went to 4.25m for the second foal of stakes placed Arabian Jazz, a Danehill Dancer mare whose own dam Arabian Lass had been a multiple champion for Millard in his early training years. The colt was consigned by Ascot Stud, which had the sale of a lifetime. The stud was also responsible for the second highest priced filly, a Silvano daughter of Gr1 Royal Fantasy for which Form’s Jehan Malherbe forked out 2.7 million. Between them, Dynasty and Silvano had six of the seven top prices at the sale.
The overall median at Nationals of 240k was on a par with the previous year, with the colts down a bit (250k vs 260 last year) and fillies up (215k vs 200 last year). That was a very pleasing result given the introduction of the new CTS March yearling sale a week earlier, where some one hundred yearlings with a median of 300k must have taken wind out of the sails of Nationals.
On the whole, all’s well with auctions in South Africa.
Money makes the world go round. Now all that’s needed is a sound export protocol and then we’ll really be flying.
