SHOOTOUT AT THE OK CORRAL

Shongweni Horses-In-Training and Ready To Run Sale
(Photo : Gareth du Plessis)

SHONGWENI
HORSES-IN-TRAINING
AND READY TO RUN SALE 2011

The international news channels are rather depressing at the moment, dominated day and night by the bloodbaths occurring in the Arab world. Yesterday we witnessed something similar at the Shongweni Horses-In-Training and Ready To Run sale. Top price of the day was the Galileo filly, Insasa, who fell to the bid of long-time Summerhill clients, Denis and Gael Evans, who will be retiring her to stud at the farm once her racing career is over. Beautifully bred, she’s a R1,5 million Emperors Palace Ready To Run sales graduate, and obviously retained a measure of residual value because of her illustrious pedigree. Her sire is regularly quoted as being the best in the world, while her dam is a sister to the Australian Blue Diamond Prelude (Gr.3) hero and leading first crop sire in South Africa last season, Way West, and she attracted a final bid of R360,000.

Next top price was the Summerhill entry in the Ready To Run section, the son of Silvano out of the Fort Wood mare, Icy Thunder, who made R200,000, while a Kahal filly out of Princess Sassi, also from our draft, made R180,000.

Otherwise, the news was somewhat bleak, with some horses selling at prices we last witnessed in the 1990’s. One thing’s for sure, there’ll be a number of customers this time next year, telling us what geniuses they were in picking these horses at the prices they paid. You need to be philosophical in these circumstances, and put it down to the school fees you pay when developing a new sale, and to the advertising value which they’ll represent for next year’s event.

Talking of sales, the Summerhill team, Mick Goss, Kerry Jack and Tarryn Liebenberg, depart today for the Melbourne Premier Sale, in the hope they can repeat the formula that gave us two of the best three-year-old fillies of recent times, Hollywoodboulevard and Igugu. There’ll be news from Melbourne in the days ahead.