'It's time to cash in' - Amelia’s Jewel’s dam set for 2024 sale date

As racing fans keenly await Saturday’s debut of the A$900,000 (£470,000/€545,000) half-brother to Amelia’s Jewel, the star mare’s owner has dropped news to set pulses in the breeding world running considerably faster: the sale of her dam in foal with her sibling.

Veteran West Australian breeder Peter Walsh on Friday night told ANZ Bloodstock News the mare, Bumbasina, who’s soon to return to Australia after a successful southern hemisphere-timed cover by Siyouni in France, would go to auction this year.

With no sales company yet decided, the revelation will likely start a feverish duel between Inglis, for their Chairman’s Sale on May 9, and Magic Millions, for their National Broodmare Sale later that month.

And with the twice-stakes placed Irish mare only turning ten on February 28, it’s likely she’ll become one of the top-priced broodmares to go through a ring in Australasian history.

The news comes as only her second foal to reach the track, Bosustow, lines up for his first race in the five-and-a-half-furlong two-year-old handicap that opens Saturday’s Rosehill card, possibly alongside another much heralded debutant in Coolmore’s Switzerland. That A$1.5 million Inglis Easter colt was favourite at around A$3.20 on Friday night, but needed one more scratching for promotion from emergency to starter.

Walsh has kept a quarter share in Bosustow, who was bought by the Rosemont Alliance, Suman Hedge and trainer Annabel Neasham at the Gold Coast last January.

Bumbasina’s second foal, a colt by Merchant Navy, topped Book 2 at the Magic Millions Perth sale of 2022, at A$160,000, before Amelia’s Jewel had raced. But, named True Heroes, he died of colic as a yet-to-race two-year-old last April.

Walsh bought Bumbasina, via Astute Bloodstock’s Louis Le Metayer, at the Tattersalls’ July Sale in 2018 for 75,000gns, specifically for the Siyouni mating which produced Amelia’s Jewel. After she threw True Heroes and Bosustow, she missed to Deep Field and Capitalist in 2021. Walsh sent her back to France in May, 2022 for two more covers by France’s leading stallion.

Her Siyouni cover that year has produced another colt, who Walsh said will be brought to Australia with Bumbasina in around a month’s time. That brother to the nine-time stakes-winning Amelia’s Jewel will likely become a seven-figure star at a to-be-determined yearling sale next year.

Walsh said he’d aim to keep a share in that colt, but would sell Bumbasina this year.

“It’s time to cash in with her,” said the 68-year-old, who’ll leave it to his long-term east coast associate, Segenhoe’s Peter O’Brien, to choose which sale the mare goes to.

“I’ve got the daughter [Amelia’s Jewel] and I’ll have her as a broodmare eventually, and then you think about my age and those sorts of things, so it’s time to sell. 

"I will have a reserve on her, and if she doesn’t meet it, I’ll keep her. But I think she’d be worth a bit of money now, so you ask yourself, ‘Well, when do I cash-in?’ I think the time is right.”

While she might not quite threaten the Australasian broodmare record price of A$5m, paid for Milanova in 2008, Bumbasina’s value is certain to be immense, especially considering the market in recent years.

Siyouni, star sire at Haras de BonnevalCredit: Zuzanna Lupa

Given that the A$3.9m paid for Sunshine In Paris at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale last year – after six starts including a Group 1 and a Group 2 win – is the sixth-highest price paid at an Australasian broodmare sale, it’s likely Bumbasina will lodge among the top handful on that list.

Her value is also enhanced given the Haras de Bonneval stud has indicated the 17-year-old Siyouni might not be made available for southern-timed matings again.

“They allowed only 15 mares to go to him on southern hemisphere time last year, and the word is that this year they’re cutting it out altogether,” said Walsh.

Siyouni, who stands for €200,000, has sired 74 stakes winners worldwide – ten at Group 1 level including Coolmore shuttle sire St Mark’s Basilica, Europe’s champion two- and three-year-old colt and a five-time Group 1 winner and one of the stars of Europe this year, Paddington. In Australia he has four stakes winners from 41 runners.

Subscribe to make sure you never miss updates from Australia, New Zealand and beyond and to have ANZ Bloodstock delivered to your inbox every day