By Alan Carasso
The annual Hokkaido Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training, the sale which produced reigning Japanese Horse of the Year Maurice (Jpn) (Screen Hero {Jpn}, ¥10.5 million) in 2013, was held Tuesday on the northern island and featured turnover of over ¥1 billion for the second year in a row while the average of ¥7,359,631 rose by 12.1% over the 2015 event. The buyback rate was 36.9%, a result which is in line with years past.
A May-foaled filly from the first crop of Rulership (Jpn) (King Kamehameha {Jpn}), a three-time group winner on home turf and victorious in the G1 Audemars Piguet Queen Elizabeth II Cup in Hong Kong, was knocked down for a final bid of ¥49.6 million–the second-highest price in its history–to top the single-session auction. Representatives of JS Company Ltd signed the winning ticket. Consigned by Oiwake Farm, lot 80 is out of Salvador (Jpn) (Sunday Silence), herself a daughter of Brazilian MGSW Curitiba (Sheikh Albadou {GB}). This is also the extended female family of French GSW Reine Mathilde and Irish 1000 Guineas placegetter Lotus Pool.
JS Company was the name on the docket for the afternoon's second highest-priced offering, a colt by Maurice's sire Screen Hero (Jpn) (Grass Wonder) that sold for ¥32.4 million. A May 26 foal catalogued as lot 188, the Takayama Bokujo-consigned chestnut is a son of the winning Jungle Pocket (Jpn) mare Pharma Penny (Jpn) and is inbred 4×4 to Wishing Well (Understanding), the dam of the sensational Sunday Silence.
Three juveniles from the first crop of 2012 GI Kentucky Derby and GI Preakness S. winner I'll Have Another (Flower Alley) went through the ring Tuesday on Hokkaido. The most expensive of the trio was lot 199, a daughter of 1995 GII Sorrento S. winner Bully Bones (Hesabull), who was hammered down for ¥15.1 million. Lot 69, a colt out of the Thunder Gulch mare Water Moon (Jpn), realised a bid of ¥8.6 million, while lot 124, a filly out of Chap Up (Langfuhr), was knocked down for ¥5.4 million.
Click here for the full results.
($1 = ¥110.17; £1 = ¥162.11; €1 = ¥122.88; A$1 = ¥79.32)
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