The vast number of Golden Slippers winners to come out of the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale is verging on being ridiculous, writes Renée Geelen, but it's a tag that the Queensland-headquartered sales company will happily accept.
When Phelan Ready won in 2009, Magic Millions took their tally of Golden Slipper winners to five in seven years. And that’s not counting the winners they sold prior to 2003. Just take a moment to reflect on that. There are 15,000 foals born every year in Australia. This sale catalogues around 6% of them. And from that small pool have emerged a continual flow of winners of Australia’s most lucrative and respected juvenile event.
Since then, Magic Millions have sold three more; including the last two years – Capitalist and Vancouver – and both for under $200,000.
But this sale is about more than just one race. Magic Millions have made it easy to talk about the Golden Slipper; the results speak for themselves. In the time the Magic Millions Gold Coast Sale has produced Pierro, Vancouver and Capitalist; their vendors have offered a total of 16 Gr1 winners and 129 stakes winners. Gold Coast graduates include horses like Horse of the Year Winx, Global Glamour, Awesome Rock, Lasqueti Spirit, and Stratum Star. That’s just for the 2016/17 season so far – we still have the Magic Millions carnival, Sydney Autumn and many more big races to come.
And is it any wonder that this sale provides racehorses of such depth and class? A simple look at the catalogue highlights how much vendors believe in this Summer auction as a source of top horses. The 2017 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling sale includes 210 yearlings out of Group or Listed-winning mares, and for those buyers who like to see a proven broodmare, to dip in the pool of success, so to speak, there are 194 siblings to Group and stakes-winners, including Stay with Me, Sebring, Capitalist, Buffering, Japonisme, and Awesome Rock.
In this year's Gold Coast Sale there is just so much choice, with options galore for buyers trying to pick the eyes out of the catalogue. Without a doubt, many of these horses will write their way into racing’s history books. The question, as always, is which ones?
