Smart Missile tops Ready to Run Sale

Arrowfield’s first season sire Smart Missile headed the stallion averages at the New Zealand Bloodstock Ready to Run Sale which concluded at Karaka on Thursday.

All four of the Smart Missile 2YOs offered were sold, with a top price of $275,000 paid by Dennis Yip for Lyndhurst Farm’s colt from Dashie Diva (by Dash For Cash). That’s $75,000 more than Mark & Shelley Treweek paid for him at February’s Inglis Classic Sale, where he was offered by Andrew & George Ferguson’s Bell River Thoroughbreds. 

The colts out of Venetian Lady & Zabelka both fetched $260,000, bought respectively by Hong Kong trainers Manfred Man and Ricky Yiu.

The Hula Here gelding, sold for $200,000 by Anzac Lodge to New Zealand Bloodstock as agent for a Malaysian client, completed the quartet which averaged $248,750 – 2.7 times the record average achieved by the Sale.

The strong demand for Smart Missile’s first crop 2YOs follows his first stakeswinner, the unbeaten filly Sassy ‘N’ Smart, successful for Te Akau Racing in last Saturday’s CJC Welcome S. LR at Riccarton in Christchurch.

Smart Missile has also had two impressive trial winners in Australia, Triple Crown Syndications’ colt Jericho (ex Advance to Go by Red Ransom) in Sydney, and the Prime Thoroughbreds’ filly Strike for Victory (ex Reve De Victoire by Anabaa) in Tasmania.

Smart Missile has 32 yearlings catalogued for the 2016 Magic Millions Gold Coast Sale, ten of them to be offered by Arrowfield.