Te Akau Thoughts - Karaka Day 1

Well on his way to becoming leading buyer for the 14^thconsecutive year at the New Zealand Bloodstock National Yearling Sales Series, the ‘King of Karaka' Te Akau principal David Ellis secured 12 lots during the first 92-lot session on Sunday. 

Ellis enjoyed good buying conditions on a range of lovely Book 1 quality yearlings, colts and fillies, from $57,500 for an Iffraaj colt to $475,000 for a Written Tycoon colt earmarked for his Colts Syndicate.

“We've put a lot of work into this sale,” Ellis said. “We've been on the road for the last ten weeks looking at all the horses and we've been saying for sometime it's the best line-up of yearlings that we've seen at Karaka, for probably twenty years.

“I think it reflects the fantastic growing season that we've had in New Zealand. These yearlings, as foals were weaned on the best grass possible as a result of the unbelievable rainfall that we had from January to April, and I really think it's showing through in the individuals. They've got terrific bone, just well developed, mature, yearlings. 

“We've been spending a lot of time on Facebook and our overall promotion of the sale and we've got a lot of new owners investing.”

After claiming their third successive $1m Karaka Million (Restricted, Listed 1200m) with Probabeel (Savabeel) a night before the sales started, following wins by Champion Two-Year-Olds Melody Belle (Commands) and Avantage (Fastnet Rock) in 2017 and 2018, respectively, Ellis said part of the job during the sales week was to try and find the winner for 2020.

“It's obviously a race that everyone strives to win and we've been lucky to have scored a hat-trick in the race last night. And it's not as if we've won the race with out and out two-year-old as Melody Belle has gone on to win two Group One races as a four-year-old this season, Avantage is already a Group Three winner as a three-year-old, and Probabeel really has the makings of classic three-year-old and older horse,” he said.

“We want to be active and support the New Zealand breeding industry, which in turn supports us, and we've made a conscious effort in that our Minister of Racing (Winston Peters) is going to announce some significant new initiatives that will flow through to really good stake increases for next season and we want to be a part of the next stage that New Zealand racing will go through.

“Jamie Richards, our trainer, is having a fantastic season and a lot of people want to invest with him.”

Commenting on the sale strength at the conclusion of the first session, Ellis said: “I think the good horses are making their money, but I still think it's possibly, if anything, just a buyer's market and no more. The prices are a little bit better than what I thought they'd be”.

“This year I'm putting another Colts Syndicate together,” he said. “The first colt from last year's Syndicate (Equinox) had his first start at Trentham on Saturday and he won very impressively and we've got two more colts from that syndicate that are both showing a lot of talent. 

“The Written Tycoon I see as a Karaka Million horse next year and we hope we can have a horse that can go on to the Golden Slipper, the Sire's Produce, Champagne Stakes, in Australia at Randwick and we think this is the type of colt that could do that.”

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