Laurel Oak’s Louis Mihalyka hasn’t been to Japan, but he now has an incentive to do so after the first foal out of his Golden Slipper-winning filly Fireburn sold for A$3.3 million at the Japan Racing Horse Association Select Sale.
The Sydney bloodstock agent and his partners, who bred and raced the Gary Portelli-trained Fireburn, sold the then four-year-old privately to Katsumi Yoshida’s Northern Farm in November 2023 in a deal brokered by fellow Australian agent Will Johnson.
Mihalyka, laid up in Sydney as he recovers from knee surgery, was inundated with messages about the sale result of the colt who is by Japan’s current leading sire Kizuna. He was purchased by Tesuhide Kunimoto.
The multimillion-dollar return for Northern Farm with Fireburn was bettered on Tuesday by the three other foals, including the sale-topping result of a first crop colt by Equinox out of US five-time Grade 1 winner Midnight Bisou who sold for about A$6 million to Nebraska Racing.
A Kitasan Black yearling colt out of Fastnet Rock mare Mosheen, who won three Group 1s in Australia in 2011 and 2012, sold on Monday for a sale-high $4.34 million while Yankee Rose’s colt by Saturnalia sold for $3.2 million. Yankee Rose is the dam of the late star Japanese mare Liberty Island.
By Rebel Dane, a now Widden-based stallion who was also raced by Laurel Oak and trained by Portelli, Fireburn won the 2022 Golden Slipper and the ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes a fortnight later as well as two Group 2 wins at three.
He has no regrets about selling Fireburn to internationally renowned breeder Yoshida for an undisclosed amount, although it’s a safe bet to assume the figure was likely multiple millions of dollars.
“(Johnson) rang up and said one day, in November, and I said, ‘no, she’s not for sale’, but as manager I was obliged to pass on any formal offers. So, he said, ‘do you mind if I have a look at her?’
“She’d just gone out for a spell and 48 hours later they came back with a formal offer and in the Australian market, just with her lack of fashionability of being by Rebel Dane, meant that you weren't certain that a Coolmore was going to be interested.
Tim Rowe
“Yulong probably would have been interested because she was a Group 1 winner, but we just wondered exactly how many people, it's not as though she was by Fastnet Rock from a famous family or something like that.”
The deal was done and Fireburn was on a plane in mid-December 2023 and served during the 2024 northern hemisphere breeding season by Kizuna.
Johnson has been Yoshida’s agent of choice in Australia, also helping facilitate the deals which saw Group 1-winning mares She Will Reign, Yankee Rose and Amphitrite sold privately to Northern Farm.
A Lord Kanaloa yearling colt out of 2018 Thousand Guineas winner Amphitrite sold on Monday for A$1.965 million.
On Tuesday, a colt foal from Funstar by Suave Richard sold for 120 million yen, or A$1.24 million, while a daughter of Single Gaze by Efforia fetched 58 million yen, or just short of A$600,000.
Mihalyka believes the mix of Australian mares’ speed with Japan’s stamina-laced stallions was possibly one of the reasons for their success.
“They've obviously got some outstanding stallions there and our bloodlines are probably the right blend of that speed, not just pure speed but that 1600 and below-type mares,” he said.
“We've got Mosheens and Fireburns, the quality mares go over there and mix it with their really strong staying stallions and they get the right combination.”
