A Snitzel colt has provided a closing highlight to the Inglis Great Southern Sale, selling for a sale-topping $575,000 in Melbourne.
Offered as part of the Bell River Thoroughbreds draft on behalf of Sheriff Iskander and Suman Hedge, the colt was sold as Lot 499 to Newgate’s Jim Carey.
A half-brother to the two-time Group 2-winning filly Pure Elation, the colt is the seventh foal of the stakes-winning Hussonet mare Members Joy.
He is the highest-priced weanling colt sold at auction in 2024 and the most expensive ever colt to go through the Great Southern Sale ring.
Hedge described the result as “beyond all of our dreams’’ and it capped off a huge week for he and Iskander, whose Inglis Premier Yearling Sale filly Socks Nation won the Group 1 Queensland Oaks last Saturday.
“We all have a lot of difficult weeks in the industry so when you get a good week like this and things are rosy, you’ve just got to savour it and enjoy it,’’ Hedge said.
“It was a late decision to bring the colt here but the Fergusons did an amazing job with him, they’ve worked tirelessly, I mean the horse only had a four-day prep for the sale basically.
Over two days of selling at Oaklands Junction, the weanling section grossed $11,906,000 from an initial catalogue of 436 entries - a 19 per cent year-on-year increase and the second-best ever, just $200,000 shy of the record in 2022.
The 256 Lots sold returned an average of $46,508 for a median price of $22,250.
A daughter of Coolmore sire Acrobat was the second-highest priced weanling sold on Friday.
From the Exceed And Excel mare Spiced, a half-sister to richly talented but ill-fated sprinter Brave Mead, the filly was offered as Lot 361 by Ponderosa Park and fetched $170,000.
She was sold to New Zealand’s Hallmark Stud and Michael Kirwan.
Kirwan was in the ownership group of Acrobat – a highly talented 2YO who won the Inglis Nursery on debut in emphatic fashion before injury ended his racing career – and “just loved’’ the filly.
“She’s an absolutely gorgeous filly, a queen, and I just really liked her profile and pedigree, by Acrobat out of an Exceed And Excel mare,’’ Kirwan said.
The demand for the progeny of Darley stallion Too Darn Hot continued with a filly, Lot 358 from the Burnewang North Pastoral draft, fetching $130,000.
Bren O’Brien
She is the third foal from the Group 2-placed Wanted mare Sort After.
In the broodmares and racemares sale, Naiconi, a daughter of Nicconi who was a three-time winner and a runner-up in the Listed Twilight Glow Stakes, topped the sale at $160,000, selling to Mitchell Bloodstock.
