Segenhoe’s Peter O’Brien chats to Jessica Owers about the ups and down of the yearling market, Winx’s much-anticipated filly and the recipe for success at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale.
“You can quote me on this story if you like,” Peter O’Brien tells The Straight. “It’s probably the worst memory I have of any Easter Sale.”
In 2003, when Inglis’s famous Easter Sale was still at its old Newmarket headquarters in south Randwick, one of the last crops of Danehill was on the agenda.
Two colts, both by the Coolmore stallion, had gone unsold through the sale ring, and in the Coolmore tent nearby were the Irishman O’Brien and his closest ally, John Camilleri.
Camilleri was looking for a Danehill colt. It was a month before the death of the champion stallion, but he’d already stopped shuttling to Australia, meaning that this was the penultimate crop of Australian-conceived Danehills to the market.
“John asked me to choose between the two colts that had passed in, and they were both nice yearlings,” O’Brien says. “I chose the one from the mare Enlightenment, who was later named Matador, and the other one was Fastnet Rock.”
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