Online record is smashed as Coolmore secures champion mare Avantage

Champion New Zealand mare Avantage will return to the place of her birth after the nine-time Group 1-winning Fastnet Rock six-year-old created one more record before heading off to the breeding barn, selling for NZ$4.1 million (£2.11m/€2.46m), the highest price ever paid for a mare sold through an online sale.

The Te Akau-owned mare was yesterday purchased for the record sum by global thoroughbred heavyweight Coolmore after waging a spirited digital bidding duel with a rival, believed to be another growing international powerhouse, from the NZ$2.5 million mark onwards through New Zealand Bloodstock’s Gavelhouse platform.

Avantage, at least in the short-term, will remain in the southern hemisphere at Coolmore Australia where high-profile shuttler Wootton Bassett is the front-runner to be her first mating while Pierro and Justify have also not been ruled out as potential first-year suitors for the Jamie Richards-trained mare by her buyer Tom Magnier.

The massive sale price, achieved three weeks into the southern hemisphere breeding season, continues the surging value of high-end breeding stock as well as an example of the dramatic shift in the way bloodstock is traded through digital means worldwide.

Avantage, who won as a September two-year-old, took out the Karaka Million as well as nine Group 1 races, suffered a career-ending tendon injury last Friday, on the eve of the Tarzino Trophy at Hastings for which she was favourite.

The shock discovery led to Gavelhouse being employed to offer the valuable mare to an international buying bench.

Te Akau’s David Ellis last night credited NZB for the way it handled the auctioning of Avantage.

“It is a fantastic result and I take my hat off to Joe Walls, the chairman of New Zealand Bloodstock, and [managing director] Andrew Seabrook who put this online Gavelhouse sale together. It has been a huge success,” Ellis told ANZ Bloodstock News.

“I am a huge supporter of the New Zealand industry and NZB and I am just so thrilled and proud. They have promoted this mare so professionally; they did such a good job and I am very proud … that it is a world online record.

“We were hoping that she would make $3 million, but to get $4.1 million is terrific, and [I have no doubt that] she is going to be a great broodmare. She won Group 1 races at 1200, 1400, 1600 and 2000 metres.”

Avantage’s price tag surpasses the online record set a little more than two months ago by the Chris Waller-trained Group 1 winner Funstar, who was sold to Japan for A$2.7 million via the Inglis Digital online auction platform, and she also holds the honour of being the third most expensive broodmare sold at auction in the southern hemisphere, live or online.

Milanova, who sold for A$5 million in 2008 through an Inglis sale, and Sunlight (A$4.2 million) are the two highest-priced mares sold. Incidentally, both were also purchased by Coolmore.

“Congratulations to David Ellis, Jamie Richards and the connections of this wonderful mare for what they have achieved with her on the track,” Magnier said.

“We love Fastnet Rock mares, and she has won more Group 1 races than any of them. He is making his presence felt as a broodmare sire throughout the world, and she is one of his best daughters.

“A mare like her needs to go to an elite stallion and thankfully there are a plethora of options for her here at Coolmore, so the likes of Wootton Bassett, Pierro and Justify will be considered. We look forward to welcoming Avantage back to the farm where she was raised and grazed.”

Avantage, a 16-time winner, is a daughter of the Listed-winning Asavant, herself a half-sister to Hong Kong Group 1 winner D B Pin.

A producer of three winners from three to race, Asavant has also produced Asathought, a stakes-placed year-younger half-sister to Avantage by So You Think.

Bred by New Zealanders Willie and Karen Calder on a foal share arrangement with Coolmore, the home of her champion stallion Fastnet Rock, Avantage was purchased for NZ$210,000 by Ellis at the 2017 New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale. Of her 16 wins from 28 starts, 13 were at stakes level, as she earned NZ$2.16 million in prize-money.

Sir Owen Glenn now owns Asavant and the unraced three-year-old sister to Avantage named Mystic Mermaid who is set to have her first start in a 1200-metre maiden at the Goulburn provincial meeting in NSW on Saturday. She is trained by Chris Waller and she won a Rosehill barrier trial on September 14.

She also has a yearling brother to the pair who is likely to be offered at next year’s Inglis Australian Easter Sale and she is due to foal, again to Fastnet Rock, in the next week at Coolmore.

Last October, Gavelhouse also sold Spanish Whisper, a three-time Group 2 winner who was also successful at two, for A$1,202,500, while Inglis Digital has sold Group 1 winner Funstar and, last week, Every Rose (A$1.3 million), a Gimcrack Stakes and Light Fingers Stakes winner, for more than a million dollars.

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