Trophy Hunting

The $5 million Convert This Price!Milanova sale, plus those others at Inglis’s last weekend, are not a relevant indication of the state of the thoroughbred market.

Milanova and the likes of Lucida, Shindig, Peruzzi, Valourina and Sydney’s Dream, are at the apex of Australian thoroughbred breeding in terms of pedigree, performance and production. The relatively rare opportunity to acquire mares of that calibre via open competition is always going to be seized upon by people fortunate enough to be isolated from the realities of the world the rest of us inhabit.

There is seldom any reasoned critique or debate in the reportage of events by the mainstream media who survive on the PR handout and doctored spin of industry power blocs. One welcome exception to this is Tara Madgwick on Breednet who knows her onions but is going to have to be careful as it’s those power blocs who financially support the website.

It may have escaped me but I’ve yet to read who were some of the other participants in the various bidding sprees. It would be just as interesting to know. I wasn't watching, I was out the back by the parade ring, in the sunshine. In the case of Milanova can I speculate that either or both of her part owners, Tyreel interests and Swettenham, could have been in there bidding with their 50 cent dollars? They acquired her for $700,000 as a yearling and, fortuitously, her little brother Holy Roman Emperor breathed new fire into the family five years later.

I don’t have any quibble with the price but breeders will be making a mistake if they use these top-end sales to ratchet up the values of their own, lesser, stock. The market is trending the other way. Milanova has a pedigree which resonates in every thoroughbred nation and with a mare like her economics flies out the window and it becomes a trophy hunt amongst people who have the means to collect trophies.

Of course Milanova’s three-quarter brother, Mount Olympus, famously made $3 million at Easter last year but I for one can’t accept that as a fair market valuation. I remain unconvinced there wasn’t some engineering involved in reaching that bid. On the one subsequent public glimpse we have had of Mount Olympus, at a barrier trial, he looked more like a molehill than a mountain; let’s hope he finds several lengths between two and three. He is a 13th foal and I can’t ever remember Gai being desperate to buy one of those.

Milanova’s More Than Ready weanling filly was also dispersed by Tyreel at last week's sale, the hammer falling at $625,000 with Coolmore also signing the docket. This was a good-bodied filly, incorrect in front leg conformation like her dam, and she had a non-displaced fracture of the off fore sesamoid just to complicate matters.

In the grounds of where I live in Sydney is the gallery of art dealer and racehorse owner Rod Menzies who held an auction of notable artworks the week before the four-legged pieces-de-resistance went to Newmarket.

Star of the show at the art auction was a Picasso. Curiosity got the better of me so I wandered down to look at it. Reportedly, the Picasso sold for $6.8 million, all add-ons included. The philistine in me scoffs at how people ascribe a value like that to some randomly daubed paint blotches lacking in any particular graphic merit. Apparently, the meaning of life is in there somewhere, though it obviously escapes me. But unlike Milanova I guess you don’t have to feed a painting and if it’s well cared for it will not, also unlike the mare, perish. I’m reminded of the story of the king’s new suit of clothes; this painting will probably be trundled out in another art auction in 10 years’ time and the pseudo-intellectual elite will once again convince themselves it’s something the universe can’t live without.

Which also reminds me of the thoroughbred equivalent of the king’s new suit of clothes, that of the one-time Coolmore imported mare Prawn Cocktail, a daughter of the noted sire Artichoke. She and her daughter Marigot Bay between them have produced 16 foals of racing age. Between 1998 and 2007, 12 of them went through Australian auctions as yearlings for a cumulative $8,255,000, an average of $687,916. Not a single one has won more than two races. Only four of them could be classed strictly as city winners. Until the advent of the bank known as Prawn Cocktail, I used to think the winning post counted for something in establishing and maintaining the value of pedigrees.

I thought Tyreel's Valourina was a sweet mare and I wish the best of luck to the purchaser of Asia which has never produced a live foal in six seasons at stud. My understanding of her problem suggests the bloke’s got the job in front of him but there were enough smarties willing to have a go that she made $70,000. The best of Sue Suduk’s mares, which unlike Tyreel’s draft was a dispersal not a strategic reduction, were exquisite. Lucida, empty, bought by Tyreel's Paul Fleming for $2 million, is high quality as is Fiammarosa ($950,000, Coolmore) and the older girls Peruzzi ($1,250,000) and Shindig ($1,600,000) are gems of the Stud Book - both New Zealand-bred I hasten to add. These two were knocked down to Inglis as agent; we mightn’t know publicly for some time but I wonder who was on the end of the phone? Bob Ingham?

Understandably, we all get off on the spectacle of these thoroughbred aristocrats being scrapped over by the super wealthy. But as I said at the outset, that’s not where the real market is.

The name Ingham brings to mind Ruapehu, lot 475 at the same sale. A lovely daughter of Flying Spur, three-years-old, city-placed but a maiden, sold for $10,000.

Two years ago the same filly was in the Easter Yearling Sale though on pedigree page she was damned lucky to be there at all. I discovered her on my inspections. I thought no one would be chasing her amongst all the heavy black-type fillies on offer and I harboured visions of being able to buy her for the average or less. But good types are seldom missed. Woodlands beat off the competition to pay $460,000 for her.

From $460,000 to $10,000, in two years. A Milanova in reverse. We don't read about that in the papers or press releases, do we?

P.S. A prediction - we've seen the end of the commission-free broodmare sales.