A judicious approach to buying horses that avoids the hype and ignores the overpriced will accompany three Tricolours Racing and Syndications prospects into the rescheduled Magic Millions meeting.
The Playwright, The Novelist and Ningaloo Star will contest feature races on the Gold Coast with a combined purchase price of $305,000 that underpins the philosophy of Tricolours principal James Moss.
“We try to point ourselves at the value end of the market. And that means we miss out on more than we take away from a sale like the Magic Millions,” Moss told The Straight.
‘I'd rather buy the right horse for the right price than go, ‘OK, I really want this horse so I'm going to pay three times what I think it's worth’.
“That's not to say that the right horse up there (at Magic Millions) might have made three times what it's worth and it might win the race next year.
“But we're happy to stick to our guns and back our process, which seems to be working really well.”
The Playwright, trained by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, will be Tricolours’ runner for a women’s syndicate in the Magic Millions 2YO Classic.
While The Playwright has caught Moss off guard with a willingness to mix it with the best early two-year-olds, she is a good example of how Tricolours sets its buying benchmark throughout yearling sales across Australasia.
The Playwright cost $60,000, emerging from the less fashionable part of the Magic Millions catalogue as a Book 2 entry as a daughter of Widden Stud’s young stallion Written By to become one of the cheaper horses to make the field for the $3 million race.
As the filly bids to give Waterhouse her sixth 2YO Classic win and her second with training offsider Bott after Storm Boy’s success in 2024, Moss says The Playwright has already exceeded his expectations as a Sydney winner in November and a Brisbane stakes placegetter in December.
The Playwright is a sister to Tricolours’ three-year-old Manuscript, a winner of two races for Tulloch Lodge.
And while Moss wasn’t certain if early-season two-year-old racing would be her forte, there was never a doubt she would end up racing in Tricolours’ silks.
“She was pretty easy to find at the time because we had her full brother already in the stables with Gai and Adrian and at that stage he hadn’t been exposed but they had a good opinion of him,” Moss said.
“I thought she might make close to a hundred (thousand),” Moss said.
“Manuscript was an $80,000 purchase the previous year so it was an absolute no-brainer at that price ($60,000). I was more than happy to secure her.”
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Inside information on her sibling aside, The Playwright is the latest example of an unorthodox method of selection criteria that has been the key to finding Tricolours stars such as Ballistic Lover, Miss Moana, Pecans, Threeood, Fasika, Gin Martini and Captain Stardust.
As it did during this year’s sale with the purchase of a Wild Ruler filly for $100,000 and a Pierata colt from Spirit Of Boom’s family for $95,000, a process of elimination starts with the unaffordable, “and there are plenty of those”. Soundness and conformation inspections help create a shortlist of “50 or 60” horses.
“That’s when we get the trainers involved. We'll get the horses properly vetted and ultimately try to bid on them,” Moss said.
“It’s a bit like working backwards. It's definitely different to everyone else, but I find that it's certainly worked for us.”
“The track record over the last few years proves that we're doing it the right way.”
The early promise of The Playwright can attest to that, and Moss has no qualms about admitting he underestimated the filly.
“To be honest, I didn't expect that I'd have her up and going and ready for the Magic Millions but I'm very happy that she is,” he said.
“I thought she might take a little bit more time. She wasn't as precocious and as advanced as her full brother was as a yearling, but she's a really nice type. Very neat and very compact.”
The Novelist, a $110,000 purchase, makes a belated debut on the Magic Millions raceday stage after going amiss as one of the leading chances on the eve of the 2023 2YO Classic.
Also a son of Written By, The Novelist will line up in the $1 million Magic Millions Snippets while Deep Field mare Ningaloo Star, bought for $135,000, takes her place in the $1 million Magic Millions Fillies & Mares in a breakthrough edition for syndicator.
“We haven't had a runner on Magic Millions day itself,” Moss said.
“We've had a lot of really nice Magic Millions horses and a couple of stakes winners to come out of the sale.
“The Novelist two years ago was one of the favourites to win the (2YO Classic) after winning the BJ McLachlan before he went amiss but we’re in a really good spot now.
“It's a game where you've got to be open-minded, considering which way things can go and which way things can't. And that's why we just stick to our process and we don't try to get involved in the theatrics of paying big money for yearlings.”
