Good mix of business and pleasure in Deauville
It’s been fantastic to see the yearling sales season start with such a bang in Deauville and we were delighted to sell our Zamindar colt well on the opening night of Arqana’s August Sale. He travelled across well, behaved beautifully through the viewing days and was eventually bought for €200,000 by Bertand Le Metayer on behalf of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Thani.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve always thought the colt was something special so we’ll look forward to following his progress in the coming years and wish his new owner much success.
Deauville was the usual mix of hard work and lots of fun. There were plenty of new faces from all over the world buying horses. Let’s hope they bring their business to Goffs and Tattersalls.
For Clairemont Stud as vendors, our next big sale is Tattersalls October Book 1, in which we’ll be selling four colts and a filly selected by William and myself as foals last year. They include two Invincible Spirit yearlings so it was great to see him have a €1.1 million colt sell in France and also to see the mighty Kingman continue his excellent season in style in the Prix Jacques le Marois.
We have three more yearlings to sell in October Book 2, including an Equiano half-brother to my Spanish 1,000 Guineas winner Vallila, while Jenny and I will also be selling a full-sister to Heavenlyfriendship under the Norris Bloodstock banner at Book 3.
All of the above means that there’s still plenty of work to be done on the farm, and William and I will also be trawling the major yearlings sales as buyers too. It’s certainly a busy time of year for everyone involved in the bloodstock business but you can’t beat the thrill of looking at young thoroughbreds and trying to work out which ones are going to be the stars of the future. I’ve been lucky enough to be around racehorses and breeding stock all my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
