A Magic Millions blueprint used by Ciaron Maher with Icarian Dream will be employed on a filly by Anamoe, with the intention to bring her to the Gold Coast in 2026 and 2027.
Australia’s premier trainer, Maher struck early in the extended one-day Magic Millions Weanling Sale for a daughter of champion racehorse and Australian Horse of the Year Anamoe, paying $360,000 for the filly at the Gold Coast.
As was the case with Icarian Dream, a $310,000 weanling who was resold for $300,000 at last year’s Magic MIllions Yearling Sale before winning the Group 3 BJ McLachlan in Brisbane this season, the Anamoe weanling will be reoffered at Gold Coast next January.
Maher’s bloodstock manager Will Bourne noted the risks associated with putting the first foal out of Listed Debutant Stakes winner Kiki Express back through the sale ring next year, but he says the lucrative nature of the Magic Millions race series was too hard to ignore.
“I thought she was an early (two-year-old type), so we'll have to do the same thing as we did with the Blue Point filly, Icarian Dream, and qualify her (for the Magic Millions), so we'll have the risk of losing her if another trainer wants to buy her,” Bourne said.
To be eligible for the $20 million-plus race series, horses must be offered at a Magic Millions yearling sale and a nomination fee of $6,600 paid.
Anamoe, a nine-time Group 1 winner and Godolphin’s most successful racehorse, is one of the most popular first season sires, with the sample of foals from his first crop exposed to the weanling market so far this year leaving a strong impression with breeders and buyers.
Kiki Express, the dam of the Maher-bought filly, was bought by agent James Harron on behalf of G1G Racing and Breeding’s Gary Diamond and his partners at last year’s Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale carrying the filly.
“There’s a bit of hype around the stallion and Ciaron loved him as a racehorse and he actually sent mares to him, so he supported the stallion before he even had foals,” Bourne said.
“I mentioned to Ciaron that there was a very nice Anamoe filly (here at Magic Millions), so he said, ‘go ahead and buy her’, so he's got a lot of belief in the stallion.”
G1G Racing and Breeding, which has small shares in more than 100 two- and three-year-old colts including The Goodwood winner Reserve Bank and runaway Ken Russell-winning juvenile Beadman, bought Kiki Express to support Newgate Farm’s Coolmore Stud Stakes winner Ozzmosis in his first season at stud.
Maher is among an increasing number of trainers who are scouring the weanling sales to source more of their stock for racing purposes, electing to grow out the foals in what proponents say can prove more economical than buying them as yearlings.
Perth trainer Simon Miller has enjoyed much success buying foals to race, including current stable banner horse, the Listed winner Generosity who was purchased for just $9000 as a weanling at the Magic Millions in 20201.
Generosity has run third in The Quokka and fifth in the Group 1 Goodwood this preparation, earning more than $800,000 in her 22 starts to date.
The extra demand from “end users” has added to the competition faced by pinhookers and they too were out in force at the Gold Coast on Sunday.
Silverdale Farm’s Steve Grant, who pinhooked unbeaten filly Autumn Glow out of the Magic Millions sale into the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale, turning $600,000 into $1.8 million, paid $320,000 for a filly by the pensioned sire Exceed And Excel.
New Zealand traders Mark and Shelly Treweek’s Lyndhurst Farm paid $300,000 for a Too Darn Hot filly while fellow Kiwis Nick and Nicky White of Kaha Nui Farm had bought three weanlings by mid-afternoon.
Two of them were from the second crop of Coolmore’s Home Affairs, the sire of Australasia’s two-highest priced yearlings this year, the $3.2 million filly out of Sunlight and a $3 million colt out of Group 1 winner Shout The Bar.
They paid $290,000 for a colt out of More Prophets and $180,000 for a filly out of Glamour Girl.
The colt is the first foal out of Bell River’s Group 3 winner More Prophets, a half-sister to fellow stakes winners Prophet’s Thumb and More Prophets.
“He's definitely one that I thought was right up there for me. He's obviously by a popular stallion this year,” Nicky White said of Lot 117.
“It's not often you get them that align with the type as well as the pedigree and I think he's one of the better ones here to have certainly achieved that. He's just a big, strong colt without being too big for me.
“He's just a nice, medium, strong-boned, athletic, powerful type. We'll get him home to New Zealand and hopefully he'll come out the other side how we want him.”
