An amazing second session of Tattersalls’ December Breeding Stock in
Newmarket Tuesday featured four seven-figure lots and, as many had predicted,
the nine-year-old mare Sumora (Danehill) proved the star turn when making 2.4
million guineas. Not only is she the dam of this year’s Group 1 Moyglare Stud
Stakes winner Maybe (Galileo), but she is also a three-quarter sister to Dancing
Rain (Danehill Dancer), winner of this year’s Group 1 Epsom Oaks.
Seamus Burns of Lodge Park Stud set the ball rolling for the mare, offered
from Denis and Joan Brosnan’s Croom House Stud, with a 500,000 guineas bid. John
Clarke, advisor to Christopher and Ling Tusi, soon joined in as Sumora’s price
rattled into seven figures.
Hong Kong-based Paul Makin, accompanied by the Badgers Bloodstock team,
joined in, but he had to settle for second best to M.V. Magnier, standing with
Paul Shanahan and the Coolmore team.
“She’s for Derrick (Smith) and Michael (Tabor), and we hoped we wouldn’t have
to pay that much,” Magnier said. “These sorts of mare are very rare, they don’t
come on the market very well, and you’ve obviously got Maybe and the Oaks winner
there on the page. She’ll be going back to Galileo next year.”
The Coolmore team finished runner-up for the day’s second-dearest offering,
the 10-year-old Reve d’Iman (Highest Honor), the dam of last year’s Group 1
Irish One Thousand Guineas winner Bethrah (Marju) offered by William Kennedy’s
Tullpark Ltd from Jackie Norris’s Jockey Hall Stud. Shunsuke Yoshida of Northern
Farm in Japan secured the mare, offered with a Montjeu covering, with a 1.7
million guineas bid.
“We own her (full) sister Reve d’Oscar, who has bred us two stakes winner in
Japan,” Yoshida said. “We’d been looking at this mare for a while and are
pleased to have got her. She’ll come back to Japan and is due to foal late so
will probably just have one cover next year. She could go to either Deep Impact
or Workforce.”
John Sikura’s Hill n Dale Equine Holdings consigned Pearling (Storm Cat), a
maiden full sister to Giant’s Causeway, through Lady Carolyn Warren’s Highclere
Stud, and the five-year-old, offered in foal to Galileo, was another to break
the million-guineas barrier. Paul Makin bid 1 million guineas exactly for the
Storm Cat mare while Tom Ryan of SF Bloodstock finished as the immediate
underbidder at 1.3 million guineas to Tony Nerses, acting for Kuwaiti-based
owners Saleh Al Homaizi and Imad Al Sagar, who own Blue Diamond Stud near
Newmarket.
“She is an exciting new addition to our broodmare band and had everything we
wanted — substance, a good page and great bloodlines,” Nerses said. “We need
this sort of blood on our stud, she’s higher end, and we’ll keep the Galileo
colt she is carrying to race.”
Big-spending Kazakhstani owner Nurlan Bizakov, who last year bought Hesmonds
Stud in Sussex, is set to race Group 1 Prix Vermeille runner-up and Group 2 Prix
de Malleret winner Testosterone (Dansili) after buying the three-year-old for
1.2 million guineas through Charlie Gordon-Watson. Andreas Putsch of Haras de
Saint-Pair bid up to 900,000 guineas for the three-year-old with Michel Zerolo
of Oceanic Bloodstock the underbidder.
“Testosterone will join Ed Dunlop and it’s also nice to buy a proven race
filly in case some of our expensive yearling purchases don’t live up to
expectations,” Gordon-Watson said.
The second day of the sale recorded the third highest ever turnover in a
session at any sale in European auction history. A total of 160 lots were sold
for 25,258,800 guineas, a rise of 31 percent on the corresponding session in
2010, recording a value that sits behind only the record-breaking sessions at
the December Sale in 2006 and 2007. The average rose 34 percent to 157,868
guineas and the median rose 10 percent to 55,000 guineas.
The sale continues Wednesday.