Prominent owner Gary Harding’s secured the top lot of New Zealand Bloodstock’s National Weanling Sale with a $170,000 purchase of a Satono Aladdin filly.
Offered by Brighthill Farm and catalogued as Lot 25, the attractive bay filly surpassed the $150,000 price paid for last year’s sale-topping colt by Per Incanto. She also set a new record weanling price for Rich Hill Stud’s high-flying shuttle stallion Satono Aladdin, beating the A$145,000 price tag for a filly in Melbourne just last week.
Thursday’s headline-grabbing filly is the second foal out of the Rip Van Winkle mare Henley Road, who placed on the racetrack and is a half-sister to the multiple Group One-winning Karaka weanling graduate Callsign Mav.
Bloodstock agent John Cameron withstood a spirited bidding battle to secure the filly, who will be retained by Harding to race in his familiar white and orange colours.
“There were a few things that drew me to her today, just not so much the price,” Harding said. “She’s a very nice filly. We also bought a weanling filly in Australia the previous week, so I thought we should pick out a mate for her from this sale as well.
“We had a good look at quite a few of the weanlings in this catalogue, and she’s the one that ticked the boxes for us. She’s the one that we wanted.
“She’s a lovely filly with a good walk and a bit of presence about her, and she’s by a stallion that’s doing a good job, so she has a bit going for her.
“We’ll be keeping her and taking her through to race. Hopefully she’ll come up well. Buying weanlings is a higher-risk venture than yearlings, so we’ll just have to wait and see. But she was the one we particularly wanted today and I’m pleased that we’ve got her.”
“She’s a lovely filly with a good walk and a bit of presence about her, and she’s by a stallion that’s doing a good job, so she has a bit going for her." - Gary Harding
Brighthill Farm sold the sale-topping filly on behalf of Laura Day, who bought Henley Road for just $1850 on Gavelhouse.com.
A total of nine weanlings sold for $100,000 or more at Karaka on Thursday. The first of them came only a few minutes after the 11am (NZST) start time, with Lot 3 bought by GTS Bloodstock for $140,000.
Offered by Curraghmore, the colt is by this season’s outstanding first-season sire Super Seth and is out of well-related Pierro mare Drama Series. Herself the dam of talented three-year-old filly Raptylight, who finished fourth in stakes company this season, Drama Series is out of a half-sister to the Group One winner First Seal.
That $140,000 price was later matched by Lot 36, a Proisir colt from the Curraghmore draft. Renowned pinhookers Riversley Park secured the colt, whose unraced dam descends from a top-class European family featuring Group One stars Hellenic, Islington, Greek Dance, Mountain High and Fiorente.
That was the first of four six-figure yearlings for Proisir, who later had fillies sell for $130,000 and $105,000 and a colt for $110,000.
