Revealed: ex-striker Kevin Doyle's €300,000 Altior half-brother now retained

Altior’s half-brother by Camelot, who headlined the first day of the Goffs Land Rover Sale on Tuesday at €300,000, could still be for sale it emerged on Wednesday.

The dead-ringer for the former champion, who is by High Chaparral and won 21 of his 26 starts under rules including ten Grade 1s, was bought by former star striker Kevin Doyle for €155,000 as a barely five-month-old colt and was offered on Tuesday through his neighbour and good friend Peter Nolan.

Lot 93 was certainly the star attraction on the opening day of the auction, with the sales ring packed and bidding on the three-year-old gelding out of Key Of Luck’s daughter Monte Solaro opening at €100,000.

Raises were in increments of €25,000 until the €250,000 mark, when bids became steadier and it was Mags O’Toole, taking instructions on the phone, who brought the gavel down at €300,000, leaving the combination of Gordon Elliott and Aidan ‘Mouse’ O’Ryan as underbidders.

O’Toole did not give much away to reporters on the day, saying only: "He is for an existing client and will be kept in Ireland to be trained. His page speaks for itself.”

Nolan, who was also consigning plenty of other horses on the day, added: "It's brilliant, the horse is a superstar and I hope he goes on to be lucky. He seems to be the real deal so let's hope he is.

"Yes, there is some pressure selling a horse like this but they are the horses you want to be selling. He did his job well.”

Goffs’ website listed O’Toole as the buyer overnight, but on Wednesday the company changed the status of the purchaser to vendor.

That followed a tweet by Nolan which said: “We were delighted with the great day at the Land Rover Sale yesterday. On reflection our beautiful brother to Altior has been retained and we look forward to following his career.”

Nolan was not in a position to immediately elaborate on that as he was busy looking after his consignment on the second day of the sale.

Speaking to the Racing Post last week for a cracking interview which underlined how the former Irish international and Premier League footballer has been bitten by the breeding bug, more than he thought he would after hanging up his boots, Doyle said: “Some of them have to go to try to pay a small bit of the way for the others, fortunately or unfortunately Altior's half-brother is the one to go

"It was the outline plan from the start but you grow attached to them and my wife would love to keep him as well, but you have to try to make it a small bit commercial as well and hopefully he will do that.”

He added: “He looks the part. We think that anyway, but it's not what we think, it's what the buyers think of him now that matters.

"We couldn't have asked for more from him in the last two and a half years, he has been a pleasure to deal with and has grown into the horse we thought he could be. It's all his work, I've just fed him and tried to look after him as best as I could."

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