For the second consecutive year, a daughter of Sioux Nation had Roderic Kavanagh and Cormac O'Flynn of Glending Stables celebrating a seven-figure windfall at the Arqana Breeze-up Sale when lot 82 was knocked down to Anthony Stroud for €1,100,000.
Twelve months ago, it was a similar story when Stroud struck the winning bid of €1,000,000 for a Sioux Nation filly from the Kildaragh Stud draft. Later named Zanthos, she returns to France this weekend as a leading contender for Sunday's Poule d'Essai des Pouliches in the Victorious Forever silks, having ended her two-year-old campaign with victory in the G2 Rockfel Stakes.
Saturday's first seven-figure lot at Arqana is also bred on the same cross as Zanthos. She is out of the Pivotal mare Porthilly, who won the Listed Westminster Fliegerpreis and filled the runner-up spot in the G3 Prix de Seine-et-Oise when trained by John Hammond.
“We didn't set out to find something like her [Zanthos]. We just found a filly that was really nice and bred on the same cross. The more you looked at her, the more she resembled her,” Kavanagh said of the filly who made her way to Glending Stables after being purchased for 98,000gns at Book 3 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale.
“If anything, she's a bigger and stronger model. Whether that means she's as good, I suppose time will tell. We're delighted with the result and, in the grand scheme of things, she was nearly good value.”
He added of the filly's breeze on Thursday, “I text my family straight afterwards and said I could have cried with pride with how well she breezed. She really put it in and the style of it was just class. We were very lucky to get our hands on her and, hopefully, they feel the same way this evening – and in a year's time.”
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