This spring Winx reigned supreme, and Magic Millions joined Australia in cheering our glamour mare home in her (tight) victory to collect a third Gr1 WS Cox Plate, writes Renée Geelen.
The Queen Joins The King, many enthused, after Winx became only the second horse in history to achieve a Cox Plate treble (after Kingston Town).
But there was much more to the spring than the Cox Plate for Gold Coast-based sales company Magic Millions. The world’s richest turf sprint was run in Sydney, won by Magic Millions Gold Coast graduate Redzel, while the time honoured VRC Derby was won by Ace High, another quality Magic Millions Gold Coast alumni. Ace High also won the ATC Spring Champion Stakes, while Winx picked up the George Main and Turnbull on the way to her Cox Plate. Just for good measure, the Caulfield Cup winner, and Australia’s representative in the Japan Cup, Boom Time, was catalogued at Magic Millions Gold Coast.
That’s just for the 2017/18 season so far – and we still have the Magic Millions carnival, Sydney Autumn and many more big feature races to come.
In the 2016/17 Australian racing season, Magic Millions sold 112 individual stakes-winners of 165 stakes races, an extraordinary effort for the sales company and their vendors.
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 and buyers alike believe in this sale as a source of top horses. The 2018 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling sale includes 21 yearlings out of Gr1-winning mares, including Lot 624, a colt by I Am Invincible from Commanding Jewel, Lot 269, a Snitzel filly from Samaready, and Lot 240, an Exceed and Excel colt from River Dove. A further 67 yearlings are out of group-winning mares and another 91 are out of Listed-winning mares.
For those buyers who prefer to buy where good fortune has already struck gold, there are 28 siblings to Gr1 winners in the catalogue, including Lot 767, a Snitzel half-brother to Starspangledbanner, Lot 635, a Time for War hal- brother to She Will Reign, Lot 480, a full-brother to Sizzling, Lot 435, a I Am Invincible half-brother to Sepoy, and Lot 229, a full-brother to Single Gaze. There are a further 122 yearlings that are siblings to group and stakes-winners.
Magic Millions always puts on a great show for the clients, with vendors and buyers gathering at the Gold Coast for several weeks of entertainment, great racing and, naturally, plenty of athletic yearlings with mouth-watering pedigrees and accompanying physiques to inspect and purchase. History supports the suspicion that many a future racing star is likely to be among them.
