The countdown to this week’s National Weanling Sale at Karaka is well and truly on.
The sale, consisting 106 weanlings and two yearlings, will start at noon on Thursday. There will be seven vendors, with breeding heavyweights Alabar and Woodlands dominating the numbers.
Inspections will get underway beforehand including informal parades on Wednesday.
The B Barn Parade, starting with Alabar, gets underway at 1.30pm Wednesday, with the F Barn Parade, starting with Woodlands Stud, at 3pm.
“We have a quality catalogue of weanlings put together from some of the best families in Australasia by top-flight sires,” says NZB Standardbred Manager Cam Bray, “this sale has become a proven source for Group winners.”
Dual New Zealand Cup winner Copy That is the pin up weanling sale graduate. Sold for $7500, he’s a more than $2m earner while the now Australian-based Aardiebytheseaside is another success story. He sold for just $1500 and has already won 10 races and around $300K.
Alabar has 47 weanlings for sale. They include 16 out of black-type performing racemares headed by the Group 1 winners Veste and Daenerys Targaryen. There are also brothers and sisters to no less than 21 $100,000 winners.
In recent years Alabar has sold the likes of the multiple Group 1 winning Australian trotter Majestuoso, the $1 million Nullarbor winner Betterzippit, and Alta Meteor.
Woodlands Stud has 42 weanlings and one yearling for sale. Among their offerings is a Sweet Lou from the Group 1 placed mare Running on Faith who is a full sister to Jolimont and a Downbytheseaside filly who is a half sister to Spanish Armada.
Last year Woodlands had the sales topper, a Bettor’s Delight – Asabella filly, that sold for $52,000. The average price was $11,880.
This week’s sales will also see a first and a last.
Tate Hopkins will offer four well-bred youngsters under his Hopkins Stables draft. The sale comes after he recently he trained his first Group 1 winner when Cyclone Jordy took out the Breckon Farms Young Guns Cardigan Bay Stakes at Alexandra Park.
After a previous stint at Woodlands Stud, this is his inaugural weanling draft.
“I think we have ended up with a draft of four nice horses,” he says.
The sale will also mark the end for well-known breeders Graham and Judy Bowen.
The pair, who have been breeding standardbreds for nearly twenty years under their Brogden Lodge banner, are set to swap the horse float for the campervan as retirement awaits. They have two going under the hammer – a colt by Captaintreacherous from their Group 1-placed mare Juice Brogden and a colt by Downbytheseaside from the unraced Sportswriter mare Right on Serena.
“My Dad was a harness trainer in Cambridge, so I was involved for all my teenage years,” says Bowen.
“After he passed away, my wife Judy and I bought our first band of broodmares around 2004, and we’ve been breeding standardbreds and coming to the sales ever since.”
“It was such a thrill, but I’m 74 and I think I deserve to retire now,” he laughed.
The Sale will be streamed live on the NZB website and NZB Standardbred’s Facebook page, and on Freeview Channel 200.
To see more go to nzbstandardbred.co.nz
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
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