Another Special result – Sir Patrick’s prediction provides Carrick with sales ring windfall

In 2014, the late Sir Patrick Hogan told Australian owner and breeder Peter Carrick that the Pins filly he’d just bought from Karaka would repay him in spades.

Stakes-placed, albeit without managing to win a race, the filly named Special Lover has done just that in the breeding barn for Noorilim Park principal Carrick.

From the family of the great Octagonal, Special Lover’s five foals to be offered by the plumbing industry businessman have reaped $2.74 million.

With Group 3 Blue Diamond Preview winner Miss Roseiano among them, it was her half-sister, a daughter of first-season sire Shinzo, who added to Special Lover’s legacy at the Inglis Australian Weanling Sale in Sydney on Tuesday.

Sold through the Noorilim Park draft, the filly was bought by SP Bloodstock for a session-high $600,000.

The fifth foal out of Special Lover, she was one of 11 weanlings to sell for $200,000 or more on day one of the Inglis foal sale at Riverside Stables on a day of trade that broke $10 million.

The aggregate, median, average and clearance were all up year-on-year.

“I’ve said to a number of people, she’s never let me down, this mare,” Carrick said of Special Lover. 

“We’ve broken a few records now, I did expect a strong result today and I hope she holds out as the top of the sale.”

The Shinzo filly was on the market at $500,000. If she didn’t reach that figure, she would have been retained to race.

In reference to Special Lover, Carrick recalled of the Cambridge Stud founder’s remark at Karaka in early 2014: “Patrick Hogan, when he was around, he said to me when I bought her off him, ‘she’ll pay for your farm’ and I stole her really, $160,000 as a yearling, and she’s done an amazing job. 

“It’s just a shame she didn’t go on to race a bit more for herself, but sometimes it works the other way.

“In the breeding barn, she’s better there. I had a $1.1 million sale from her a few years ago out of her and then $500,000 a year after. Don’t ask me where we’re going this year, but (my son) Glenn will sort that out, and it’ll be a top-end (stallion).”

Stefan Pardi’s SP Bloodstock enjoyed enormous success pinhooking into this year’s yearling sales, with a Too Darn Hot colt making $2.2 million at the Inglis Easter sale in March.

He bought the colt, a brother to Too Darn Lizzie, for $775,000 at last year’s Australian Weanling Sale.

Pardi reasoned that the high-priced gamble can pay off again next year with the assumption that yearling buyers will embrace the progeny of Coolmore’s Golden Slipper winner Shinzo.

“She was my number one pick of the sale, so I wanted to go away with her and I think she’s a real Easter graduate, basically, for next year,” Pardi said. 

“So, I think we bought well in the end. She just floated when she moved. She was all quality. She’s the right height. She’s not going to get too big.

“And Shinzo, in Australia, we have a love for first-season sires. He’s a Golden Slipper winner. Everyone will be all over him.

“If you have a look at the first-season sires, and I do my statistics, he’s up against Ozzmosis, really. I think he’s just a standout as a first-season sire. 

“Trainers will just be all over him.”

Grenville Stud’s Graeme and Bart McCulloch combined with Pardi to pinhook a Too Darn Hot colt for $1.3 million at the Easter sale, having bought him for $335,000 at last year’s Great Southern Sale in Melbourne.

In recent years, the McCullochs, under the leadership of son Bart, have focused on quality to bring to the mainland, be it Magic Millions or Inglis Premier and Easter sales.

They went back to the well on Tuesday, securing a Frankel colt out of War Front mare Awhile for $400,000 from the Coolmore draft in partnership with Pardi, although Grenville was listed as the sole buyer on the results’ page.

Frankel yearlings bred to southern hemisphere time sold up to $2 million and averaged a tick over $500,000 at the Australasian sales this year.

Third-season stallion Home Affairs, the sire of Golden Slipper winner Guest House, was the leading sire on day one by aggregate, with seven lots fetching a combined $1.435 million, with five of the top 10 weanlings also by the son of I Am Invincible.

Mike O’Donnell’s Fairhill Farm was the leading vendor, with 14 foals making $1.555 million, while Pardi was the leading buyer with three lots at a cost of $830,000. Fernrigg Farm bought six weanlings on Tuesday.

Inglis Bloodstock chief executive Sebastian Hutch was circumspect leading into the weanling sale, particularly after the Easter sale didn’t meet his own high expectations, so he was pleased with Tuesday’s results.

“Easter was very frustrating, right? It was a very frustrating sale, because I very definitively pinned the outcome of that sale, or certain disappointing parts of that sale, very squarely at the door of the lack of economic confidence brought about by the war,” Hutch said. 

“Now, various people have challenged me on that, and I’ve talked about various different points, but I feel what’s happened subsequently, where the uncertainty that was in play at that time has become less prevalent.

“We saw it at the HTBA sale, it was a more pragmatic market, and to me, this has been a pragmatic market (on Tuesday) that makes sense.

“People recognise if you want to be a participant in the yearling sale series next year, and you don’t have the necessary stock, or you want to increase the volume of stock that you have, you have to be a participant here.”

Day two starts at 10am (AEST).

Australian Weanling Sale statistics – day 1

Offered: 204 (249) 

Sold: 146 (174) 

Clearance: 72% (70%) 

Average: $73,204 ($53,838) 

Median: $50,000 ($30,000) 

Gross: $10,661,500 ($9,367,750)