Fastest breeze, highest price as Nolen’s Showtime colt shines at Magic Millions

Agent Apollo Ng couldn’t help but see similarities between Showtime’s consistent Hong Kong sprinter Crimson Flash and the $400,000 colt by the same sire who topped the Magic Millions Horses in Training Sale.

The highest-priced of 16 lots to sell for $100,000 or more on the Gold Coast on Monday, the Showtime colt was on the radar of major Hong Kong buyers after stopping the clock in 10 seconds flat in his Gold Coast course proper breeze-up on September 22.

Prepared and sold by renowned breeze-up sale exponent Tal Nolen, the colt had Ng “caught on the wrong leg” as the bidding reached $360,000.

From there, he stretched his budget straight to $400,000, enough to dissuade his competition from bidding again.

“He’s got the look of Crimson Flash, who is a very good sprinter in Hong Kong. He can handle both Happy Valley and Sha Tin,” Ng told The Straight.

“I reckon that Crimson Flash, in the long run, will probably graduate to become a Group horse – at the moment, he’s in class 1, class 2. 

“And I like this colt’s action. One thing for sure, he wasn’t pressed hard to get that 10 seconds.”

Five-year-old gelding Crimson Flash, a winner of seven of his 19 starts who started his career in Australia with Blake Ryan at Hawkesbury, is trained by Mark Newnham.

“With Showtime progeny, they’re not exactly two-year-olds, but three and four-year-olds, so I reckon there’s still scope of improvement with this colt,” Ng said.

“That’s one of the reasons why we had to dig deep into the pocket and secure this horse for $400,000.”

Ng plans to send the colt to Muskoka Farm near Sydney to continue his education before being sent to Hong Kong mid next year.

Ng also bought a Hellbent colt from Nolen for $140,000 earlier in the sale, with the Victorian vendor selling all six of his two-year-olds on offer at the Gold Coast for a combined $1.040 million.

Nolen’s attention turns to Thursday’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale where he has 15 two-year-olds set to go under the hammer.

While Nolen split up his team of breeze-up horses across the two sales, the decision by Kenmore Lodge’s Cameron and Kellie Bond to commit solely to the Magic Millions Horses in Training Sale was rewarded.

They prepared and sold the sale’s second highest-priced two-year-old, a $320,000 son of Admire Mars, and a colt by Stronger for $280,000.

Accomplished Queensland horsepeople, the Bonds are already associated with one of the bargain buys of the past decade, but they hit the jackpot with their own relative rags-to-riches success story on Monday.

The couple behind the Darling Downs’ Kenmore Lodge were responsible for the early education of star filly Sheza Alibi, Fred Noffke’s $10,000 online weanling buy who progressed from country Queensland to Group 1 wins at Randwick and Flemington.

At the Gold Coast on Monday the Bonds turned their own $11,000 Inglis Digital weanling pinhook punt into $280,000 with the sale of a two-year-old by first-season sire Stronger.

“He was a nice horse. We thought a lot of him and we were vindicated in the sales ring, but I really think he can go on and (reward the buyer’s) judgment,” Kellie Bond said.

The equal third-highest-priced lot of the sale, the Stronger-Urban Jewel colt was bought by Magic Millions’ representative Amy Feng, who was assisting a cohort of buyers from mainland China.

By the Group 1 Hong Kong Centenary Sprint Cup winner, the Stronger colt breezed up in 10.37 seconds at the Gold Coast, the sixth-fastest 200-metre gallop of the sale.

Kenmore Lodge’s Admire Mars colt was an $80,000 purchase by Adrian Hancock at the Magic Millions Yearling Sale in January, with China’s Linsheng Zhang signing the iPad on Monday to make him his.

Zhang also bought Yulong’s Kingman colt out of the Starspangledbanner mare French Dispatch for $280,000.

Bridle Bloodstock’s Ng described the sale as “patchy” and he expected that pattern to continue at Thursday’s Inglis sale.

“For some of those horses who simply just didn’t have clean x-rays or were a little bit too small or didn’t breeze up in good time, nobody wants to buy them,” Ng said.

“But for horses who’ve got good x-rays, who’ve got a good action and ran fast time, they did fetch a bit of money.

“For instance, the Admire Mars colt … who made $320,000, which is a lot of money for an Admire Mars. I didn’t think he would be that expensive, but he did breeze up quite well. 

“I’d say that will probably be the trend, not only here, but also in New South Wales (at Inglis).”

Ciaron Maher’s bloodstock manager Will Bourne was also active on the buyers’ sheet, signing for three two-year-olds including a Nolen Racing-sold son of Russian Revolution for $250,000.

The Selangor Turf Club bought seven horses, while Filipino owners Jun Almedia and Bing Tecson bought four horses each.

The Horses in Training Sale generated $6,327,500 in turnover at an average of $72,741, on par with last year’s auction.