When You're Hot, You're Hot

It surprised no one to see a yearling by Exceed And Excel make the top price at the Melbourne Premier Sale despite the whitewash of his juveniles in the G1 Blue Diamond Stakes eight days previously. Temporary setback only – Sugar Babe took up the slack at Rosehill today.

His only serious opposition at the sale was Hussonet (USA) who sired the G1 Blue Diamond/Oakleigh Plate double and he did indeed come up with the second top priced lot. The three Redoute’s Choices in the sale were designed by a committee – unworthy of a place in a ‘select’ sale – I doubt there was a live bid on either of his colts.

What was surprising, however, was the value - $750,000 paid by Darley – placed on the top lot, the colt out of Gentle Call (NZ), sold by Peter and Pauline Liston’s Three Bridges Thoroughbreds.

It’s been well documented that the Listons bought the colt alongside his dam, who was in foal to Choisir, paying $140,000 for the 3-in-1 package at last year’s Sydney Easter Broodmare Sale. You’d have to say, with 20-20 hindsight, that John Muir’s Neapean Stud Farm moved them on one year too early. Moral of the story – never sell a weanling from a sire’s second crop.

The $750,000 price tag more than doubled the amount paid for any yearling member of this family, the next closest being $360,000 for the colt’s three-quarter sister Unfinishedbusiness (by Redoute’s Choice) at Easter 2005. Before that, $150,000 was the best paid, for a Postponed (USA)-Tough Call (NZ) colt at Melbourne 2005, and before that $135,000 for a Zabeel (NZ)-Aggressive (NZ) colt at Easter 2004. To date, these three horses have won a total of two races.

Despite a superficially impressive catalogue page, the reason why this family has been a modest seller is because virtually all of them have been dedicated wet trackers, racing almost exclusively in New Zealand. This family eats mud.

Of the 51 New Zealand wins clocked up by the horses mentioned on the catalogue page, 33 have been on tracks registered as ‘slow’ or ‘heavy’. Bear in mind that’s New Zealand slow and heavy – New Zealand ‘heavy’ often means ‘abandoned’ in Australia.

Gentle Call and her two Listed winning half-siblings Call Spades and Tough Call won 15 races, 12 of them in a bog. The sting has also been out of the ground when Gentle Call’s two winning progeny have scored. (One of them is named Tough Call, the same name as its auntie - go figure).

Classic Fame (USA), the sire of the dam of the top priced yearling, was a disappointing sire in New Zealand, getting just five stakeswinners of handicapping quality (1.5% of his foals). As a broodmare sire, he hasn’t yet produced a stakeswinner. The best of his daughters’ progeny so far, Venus Serena, was herself a swimmer, winning three of her four races on slow.

All of which goes to show the commercial pulling power of a sire like Exceed And Excel. When you’re hot, you’re hot. My bet is the colt stays in Melbourne where they produce wet tracks to order.