Lloyd Webber backing Too Darn Hot down under with A$1 million splash on filly

A regally bred filly by Too Darn Hot set a dizzying new benchmark figure on Friday, selling for A$1 million (£570,000/€642,000) – the most expensive yearling by a first-season sire sold on the Gold Coast since 2015 – while his Darley shuttling counterpart Blue Point ended the sale just shy of the record average price for a first-season sire at Magic Millions, set by The Autumn Sun last year.

The seven-figure Too Darn Hot filly, who is out of juvenile Group 2 winner and Blue Diamond Stakes runner-up Enbihaar, eclipsed A$900,000 and A$700,000 Blue Point yearlings posted earlier in the session, as the appetite for Darley’s shuttling duo lived up to and exceeded all previous expectations.

Alastair Pulford, Darley’s head of sales, said: “We didn’t expect it to be quite as good as it’s been. We were confident, but this is well above expectations, it’s fantastic.

“It’s been a brilliant sale all round, but those first-season sires have really stood up. As we had hoped, the buying bench has been fantastic.

“We’re not complaining and I think the people who supported our horses will not be complaining either, they’ve been justifiably rewarded for supporting three champions (including Microphone) by three champion sires. We put a lot into promoting those stallions and those stallions had a lot to promote themselves.”

The Vinery Stud-consigned Too Darn Hot filly is the second foal out of high-class two-year-old Enbihaar and was purchased by agent Johnny McKeever for the stallion’s UK-based owner Andrew Lloyd Webber of Watership Down Stud, as the famed composer and theatre personality moved to back his stallion with a first investment in Australia.

The Lot 828-catalogued yearling will be trained by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott.

“My client [Simon Marsh, stud manager of Watership Down] is on a plane to Vietnam at the moment and he told me, ‘Don’t spend too much money, but make sure you buy it’,” said McKeever.

“I don’t know what he meant by that but, anyway, I bought it. Too late now. Done deal. When Simon lands in Vietnam for his holiday he might get a little shock. But I’ll deal with that!”

Too Darn Hot raced in Lloyd Webber’s pink and green sash silks to three Group 1 wins, including the Dewhurst Stakes at two and the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood, while the stallion’s first northern hemisphere yearlings sold for up to 600,000gns during last year’s European sales season.

“We wanted to come and buy something by Too Darn Hot,” said McKeever. “[The Lloyd Webbers] still own half the horse, they stand it in conjunction with Darley, so we looked at every single yearling by this stallion in the sale and she was the one we fell in love with the most.

“We love all of them, but she was the absolute queen, we felt.”

Too Darn Hot has had 12 yearlings sell this week at an average of A$288,750.

While Too Darn Hot looks set to take top-lot honours among first-season sires, fellow Darley shuttler Blue Point is in a commanding position to be the leading first-season sire by average on the Gold Coast.

At the conclusion of Friday’s session, and with all 19 of the Book 1 Blue Point yearlings on offer at Magic Millions having passed through the ring, the sire is averaging A$378,125, short of the A$382,939 set by The Autumn Sun at last year’s Magic Millions sale.

Leading the way was the Blue Point-sired half-brother to Western Australian Group 1 winner Amelia’s Jewel, which fetched A$900,000 to the bid of the Rosemont Alliance, while Japanese powerhouse Northern Farm took a shine to a colt out of a half-sister to the dam of Super Seth.

Going to A$700,000 to prise the colt from the Newhaven Park draft, Shunsuke Yoshida, son of Katsumi, said they were on the lookout for a sprinting type.

Yoshida said: “We thought he was very athletic. We liked him a lot. Blue Point is a young stallion. He was a very good sprinter and his colt looks like a sprinting type.

“We have many stallions in Japan, but we don’t have many sprinting stallions.”

Too Darn Hot’s A$1m filly matches the figure reached for a Justify yearling at last year’s Inglis Easter sale, while Blue Point’s sale ring average is the highest ever for a first-season shuttle stallion.

Pulford conceded that while the success was welcome, the expectation levels now placed on the duo are even higher for when their progeny reach the track at the end of this year.

“Expectation can be your worst enemy in the thoroughbred industry, because expectations are now very high and they will have to perform,” said Pulford.

“We’ve done all we can for those stallions and the public have accepted them. If they don’t run up to expectations then the market will go off and that’s just the way the industry works, and so it should. It’s not a beauty pageant, the racecourse is the ultimate judge.

“I think the indications are that they will [perform], but expectations are going to be high and they’re going to have to perform at the level the market expects them to.”

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