The Emirates Park sales team arrived on the Gold Coast earlier this week meaning to do business with its first Magic Millions weanling sale draft since 2017 and they have a headline horse as they will offer the only Snitzel in the sale this year.
Lot 223 is a lovely Snitzel filly, the first of unraced I Am Invincible mare Enjaaz, a daughter of Group I winner Peggy Jean.
Emirates Park will also offer a handful of youngsters by the uber-fashionable sophomore sire Capitalist, so the long-established Murrurrundi breeding operation of the Lootah family is taking the exercise of selling its bloodstock this week very seriously indeed and wants the ‘pinhooking fraternity’ to do likewise.
As the group’s General Manager Bryan Carlson explained, “This is a very significant draft of weanlings we are offering and we’d like to make it clear that it’s a golden opportunity for concerns looking to secure potential six-figure prospects for next year’s yearling sales up and down the Country and even across the Tasman.
Carlson explained that Emirates Park’s draft is full of quality individuals, but due to the expansive nature of the stud’s breeding operation, inclusion in the outfit’s expected select yearling sale drafts for 2023 would make them top heavy.
Consignors of three individual $1 million-plus Lots during this year’s sales series alone, quality and not quantity is the outfit’s modus operandi — with it’s 2022 Magic Millions Weanling Sale draft likely to prove its largest single consignment of any description until this time again next year.
“We’re selling a handful of Capitalist weanlings on the Coast because we simply have some exceptional individuals from the same foal crop to offer as yearlings next year. Same with the only Puissance de Lune colt in this week’s draft — he’s a terrific type but we have a couple of even better ones at this stage of their development back in Murrurrundi.
“I need to stress, these weanlings are being offered based on our opinion at this stage of their development and not with total conviction that we know for sure where they will be as physicals in four, six or eight months time.
“Furthermore, they are the offspring of mares from female families we have been developing for more than three decades, including close relations to our celebrated racemare Shamekha; to such outstanding gallopers we have produced as Fat Al, Mutawaajid, County Tyrone, Almalad and more recently Lightsaber; as well as direct descendants of ‘blue hens’ Canny Lass, Helen Street etc.”
Emirates Park’s weanling draft also includes a healthy contingent of first-crop weanlings by Tassort, and once again these are all quality individuals from an exciting new breed.
“As you probably already realise, we purchased Tassort from Godolphin as we believed that he had untapped potential to offer as a sire and we have supported him with big numbers. The half-dozen we have to offer on the Gold Coast this week are a good example of the stock he is producing, and we had no hesitation including them in this draft with so many other outstanding types left back at home already in our successful breed-to-race system.”
Other stallions to be found represented in the Emirates Park weanling draft include the likes of Coolmore’s Pride of Dubai, Darley’s Blue Point (Ire), Rosemont’s Starspangledbanner and Arrowfield’s Dundeel (NZ) in one of the most eclectic consignments to be found on the Bundall complex this week.
Click here to see the full Emirates Park draft of 19 entries.