The most expensive colt ever sold at the Australian Weanling Sale topped today’s Day 1 action at Riverside as buyers’ thirst for quality young stock reached new heights.

A Capitalist x Speedboat colt (lot 271) – a brother to G1 winner Captivant offered as part of the Ashleigh Thoroughbreds dispersal – sold for $625,000 to the partnership of Newgate Farm, China Horse Club, Go Bloodstock and Trilogy Racing.

He became the equal highest-priced weanling ever sold at this sale, joining a More Than Ready x Milanova filly back in 2008.

Ashleigh Thoroughbreds’ Senga Bissett was thrilled with the outcome.

“That was a really great result, I couldn’t be happier. I didn’t expect that much, it’s just so exciting,’’ Bissett said.

“The horse has just been an absolute superstar all week, he’s a beautiful colt and I just hope he goes on and does a good job for Henry and the team.

“I wasn’t expecting that price, I really was hoping for $450,000, possibly $500,000 but nothing like that.’’

When asked if it had been an emotional week as she and her partner Ivan Woodford Smith enter retirement, Bissett said: “Yes but I’ve been so busy, it makes you not dwell on those things.

“I’ve never been busier. I’ve been doing sales for a long, long time and I’ve never been this busy, ever.

“Parades, it was about 130 per horse over the few days.’’

Newgate Farm’s Henry Field confirmed the colt had been purchased to race for the partnership, describing him as a “very special colt’’.

“It’s not something we do that often, to buy a weanling colt for our racing syndicates, very rarely, but when a special one comes up you’ve got to look at them and take them seriously and he was very special,’’ Field said.

“They’ve got to be really out of the box to buy them as a weanling…but with this particular colt, we obviously had a lot of luck with Captivant, who we’re still in partnership with our great friends at Kia Ora and he was a really good horse for our partnership.

“When they come up, these special ones, it doesn’t really matter [about the price]. We’re end users buying for a racing partnership that’s producing G1-winning colts to stand at stud. It’s a dispersal, you very rarely see colts of that calibre at public auction at a weanling market, and he was that horse.’’

Story from Breednet