Thrice the appetite – Waterhouse-Bott in Tattersalls triple play

Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott returned to the scene where they sourced future Group 1 winner Sir Delius 12 months ago to purchase three more horses on the second day of the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale.

All three purchases, made in conjunction with McKeever Bloodstock, were by the late sire Wootton Bassett, as the training partnership spent 780,000 guineas, the equivalent of A$1.64 million.

That didn’t get near the 1.3 million guineas the same connections paid for Sir Delius at the sale last year, who won both the Underwood and Turnbull Stakes this spring to claim Melbourne Cup favouritism before being ruled out of his main target races by Racing Victoria’s scans.

Two of the purchases on Tuesday, Thrice (320,000 guineas) and Swagman (260,000 guineas), were, like Sir Delius, from Coolmore, while the third, Tribal Nation (200,000 guineas) was from the Castlebridge consignment. All three are northern hemisphere three-year-olds.

They were signed for by McKeever and Waterhouse-Bott’s bloodstock representative Claudia Fitzgerald.

“We will take them straight to Australia,” Fitzgerald said. “We will let them acclimatise, they are young horses and lightly raced, and have the exact profile of a horse that we come here to target. They are incredibly sound, they are lovely and fresh and we love progeny by Wootton Bassett.”

Thrice is a winner of the Group 3 Gallinule Stakes, while Swagman won the Group 3 Classic Trial at Sandown in May. Both were part of Aidan O’Brien’s stables.

Tribal Nation, who was trained by Joseph O’Brien for Teme Valley, who raced Cox Plate winner State Of Rest, has won one of his eight starts.

Stay True, third in the St Leger, will also head to Australia, having been purchased by Blandford Bloodstock for Annabel and Robert Archibald for 360,000 guineas.

“He is a perfect Cup horse – he is already Melbourne Cup qualified and he has got the rating to get in. He finished third in the St Leger and he is from Galileo’s final crop. He ran a top race in the Great Voltigeur when fourth and he has a great pedigree,” Blandford’s Stuart Boman said.

Lindsay Park purchased Frankel colt Galveston for 100,000 guineas, while Paul Moroney and First Light Racing/Tony Gollan were also busy buying Nova Centauri and Chicago Fireball, respectively.

The top-priced lot of the day was the 950,000 guineas Wathnan Racing paid for recent Group 3 runner-up Gladius, via Blandford Bloodstock. McKeever was the underbidder on the colt.

Gladius will be aimed at the Qatar Derby.

“This is exactly the type of horse that fits the brief for Olly Tait and the powers that be at Wathnan. He’s had only six starts and he can climb again so the plan will be for him to go back to Andrew and hopefully he can give Wathnan a big day,” Blandford’s Richard Brown said.

Turnover dropped by 12 per cent on day two to 12,170,000 guineas while the median fell by 6 per cent to 22,000 guineas and the average by 5 per cent to 49,472 guineas.