Few precedents for sale of young Grade 1 Festival winners

The sale of a young Grade 1-winning hurdler or chaser directly after victory at the Cheltenham Festival has few precedents. Horses of the calibre of Labaik are usually snapped up by the leading owners in big-money private deals, as was the case when Unowhatimeanharry was bought by JP McManus after he landed the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle last year.

Mysilv fetched 155,000gns as part of the Million in Mind dispersal just weeks after she had won the Triumph Hurdle and finished third in the Aintree equivalent, but that was 23 years ago now. More recently Un Temps Pour Tout, not a Cheltenham Festival winner but a Grade 3-winning and Grade 1-placed hurdler in France, was sold for £450,000, while Moon Racer, an easy winner of the George Mernagh Memorial bumper at the Irish Grand National meeting, made £225,000.

Labaik comes with the obvious health warning of being a truculent character with a penchant for planting himself at the start, which could knock a few pounds off his value.