Racing
Stretan Angel’s brother makes Classic impact
Harry Angel colt stars on the second day at Inglis Classic
A brother to Group 1-performed sprinter Stretan Angel readjusted the benchmark price at this year's Inglis Classic Yearling Sale after selling for $540,000 on Monday.
The son of Harry Angel and Bernardini mare Sretan was knocked down to Equine Growth Fund's Stefan Pardi, who was not shocked there was strong competition on the youngster.
"It was a no brainer for me, but I really didn't want to have to stretch myself that far at this sale but it only comes around once a year that you try and find horses like this at a particular sale," Pardi said.
"I just had to go a bit stronger and I'm happy that I got him.
"This colt is a stallion prospect and this is what Equine Growth Fund is trying to do...we're trying to buy these horses to make stallions basically and he was my number one colt, my number one horse out of 800 at this sale.''
The Harry Angel colt, who was offered by Kirks Bridge Farm, claimed top price honours from the filly by Extreme Choice who sold for $425,000 on Sunday's opening day.
Pardi's buy headlined a strong day that saw the clearance rate rise to 84 percent with a tick under $40 million changing hands at an average of $97,556.
That is fractionally up on last year, hen the gross was $36.2 million at the same stage.
"The sale had a particularly good feel to it today,'' Inglis Bloodstock CEO Sebastian Hutch said shortly after the hammer fell on the day's final lot.
"The clearance rate is the most pleasing aspect so far. To be at 84% for the sale at this point is excellent, particularly in the context of it having been 77% at the equivalent stage 12 months ago, during what was a good sale.
"We set ourselves the objective of working to facilitate the best market that we possibly could and it has been very pleasing to see so many vendors achieve excellent results to this point of the sale."
Monday's second top lot was a colt by Castelvecchio out of Panzerfaust from Arrowfield Stud, who sold to trainer Bryce Heys and Ellerslie Lodge for $390,000.
The four next highest-priced lots of the sale to date were also offered on Monday; a Zoustar colt who sold for $375,000, colts by Too Darn Hot and Justify who sold for $350,000 and a Pierro colt who sold for $325,000.
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