Fourteen yearlings sell for A$1m or more during stunning opening session at Inglis Easter Sale

Gandharvi Racing, a relatively new entrant making its mark on the global racing industry, has upped the ante in its quest for success down under by acquiring a A$1.75 million (£955,000/€1.1m) blueblood filly during Monday’s opening day of the 2023 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale.

In a stunning show of faith in the Australian bloodstock industry, leading domestic and international investors indicated the longer-term health of the sector was in good shape as buyers shelled out more than A$65m in the first session on 208 yearlings, defying any economic downturn and sentiment at some of the earlier sales this year.

Fourteen yearlings sold for A$1m or more during the eight and a half hours of trade, the headline act being a A$1.75m Pierro half-sister to top juvenile Learning To Fly, the Widden Stakes, Inglis Millennium and Reisling Stakes winner this season.

Successful bidder Michael Wallace was acting for Gandharvi Racing’s Boston-based Kuldeep Singh Rajput, who has a growing bloodstock portfolio in a number of jurisdictions, including Australia, Singapore and the United States.

"He's looking to build a [portfolio of] quality racing and long-time breeding prospects, and with her credentials she hopefully fits that," said Wallace.

"She'll probably take a little bit longer than what Learning To Fly took, she was a big, masculine filly, so this filly may take just a little bit longer, especially being by Pierro, but there's no rush."

Learning To Fly’s trainer Annabel Neasham has been handed the keys to the daughter of Pierro.

Consigned by Coolmore, she is the third foal out of MRC Chairman’s Stakes winner Ennis Hill, a sister to Inglis Nursery)-winning sire Acrobat and fellow stakes winner Lake Geneva. Her second dam is Group 2 winner Hips Don’t Lie, whose now three-year-old daughter Humming, a A$1.95m Easter filly, won her first start in February.

Coolmore’s Tom Magnier said he and co-owners Michael Kirwan, James Bester and Demi O’Byrne, who bred the Pierro filly and maintain a strong interest in Learning To Fly, found it difficult to part with the session-topper.

“[This filly and Learning To Fly] had a lot of attributes that are the same and you heard the auctioneer (Jonathan D’Arcy) talking about her [wonderful] temperament,” said Magnier. 

Tom Magnier: 'With a bit of luck she’s the next Learning To Fly'Credit: Mark Evans

“She is a lovely filly, she’s gone to a good team and with a bit of luck she’s the next Learning To Fly.”

Targeting fillies was a strategic decision by Wallace and Rajput. 

“[The plan is to] very much race some high-quality fillies, which we’ve done worldwide, and to take some equity in some colts where we can,” said Wallace.

“Obviously that’s a pretty saturated marketplace, the colts marketplace, so we’ll step into that if and when we find the right colts. 

“Fillies, long-term, are a pretty safe play in this part of the world with such a thriving racing and sales environment, so that’s the focus, to build a nice, quality racing team and long-term a quality broodmare programme.”

Yulong’s Yuesheng Zhang, a Riverside Stables behemoth on day one, was the underbidder on the half-sister to Learning To Fly.

However, Zhang could be on course to break a long-standing Easter buying record after on Monday splashing A$9.74m, which comes after his unprecedented investment in broodmares across the globe in recent years.

Not since the 2008 Easter spending spree by Darley (A$19.005m on 20 yearlings), Jack and Bob Ingham (A$18.125m on 24 lots) and Patinack Farm’s Nathan Tinkler (35 yearlings for A$9.647m) has a single entity had such a stronghold over the market. 

The scale of the Yulong operation of stallions, broodmares and now a dramatically ramped up racing division, has been turbo-charged by the addition of 18 yearlings including a A$1.4m colt by Written Tycoon and two A$1.3m colts by Snitzel and I Am Invincible.

“In the last the few years we’ve built up the broodmare band and this year Mr Zhang decided he’d get back into yearlings and we’ve bought some really nice colts and fillies here today, so it’s a good result,” said Yulong chief operations officer Sam Fairgray.

“We had done our work and we were going to wait and see where they sat in the market and I think the market for the top-end horses has held up pretty well.

“We’ve had to bid up to get a couple of the really nice colts, but we are really happy with what we’ve got so far. 

“The prize-money here in Australia, it certainly shows such a resilient market and when you’ve got the quality, the quality always stands up and you can’t go wrong buying quality.”

The Written Tycoon colt is the first foal out of Frank and Christine Cook’s Group 3 winner Meryl, who was trained by Lee and Cherie Curtis. 

Fairgray said: “He was the best Written Tycoon colt on the ground and possibly within the top three colts overall on the ground. He’s a lovely horse with a great temperament, he has a great physical and he’s out of a great racemare.”

With tears welling in his eyes, breeder Frank Cook was flanked by the vendor, Fairview Park’s Linda Duckworth, after Yulong signed for his Written Tycoon colt who was underbid by Coolmore.

Cook said: “We passed in (Group 1 winner) Espiona’s half-brother for under A$300,000 and I thought, ‘Oh, the day’s just going badly’ and I was going to go and sleep in the car for two hours to wait to get to our boy and Linda said, ‘No, come on, gee up’.

“He just glows. Watching him walk, he didn’t turn a hair.”

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