irish national stud
Sally Ann Grassick chats with...
Cathal Beale, CEO of the Irish National Stud, about sales, stallions, mare syndicates and selling Invincible Spirit foals for €330,000 SAG: The Irish National Stud had some good yearling results at the Orby Sale, and overall things were good for the yearling draft? CB: Yes, it was a good week, the same as everyone else – highs and the lows! Our Aimhirgin Lass colt by Invincible Spirit made €460,000 and went to Godolphin so we are delighted with that. He comes from a really nice family of our own and is a first foal out of the mare so it is great he’ll get a chance now with Mr Gosden or Mr Appleby; he’ll get off to a great start there. We also had a really nice Free Eagle colt who made €90,000 for a client. We had a home-bred Harzand, who was a lovely colt and who made €95,000. It was a very good start to the week, but it did get progressively more challenging as we went on! But we were happy to be able to say that we sold everything. We wish everyone well
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with their yearling purchases and hope they win plenty of stakes races next year!
How did you find the Orby Sale when you were talking to clients around the sales complex? I think everyone felt that all the buyers were there – Goffs and ITB had done a great job getting everyone here. Look, it is a challenging time at the moment in the wider world outside of our control, and I think that has to have a knock-on effect with the uncertainty that is going on geo-politically, so that is nobody’s fault. I think we proved that if you take a really nice horse to the Orby, it will sell well. We probably didn’t have enough really nice horses who ticked all the boxes and we were under no illusions with that.
Do you think buyers are being more choosy – they want the horse to have the page, the looks, they want everything there, they are not just buying a horse to fill orders? Everybody wants the best horse in the sale – it’s always been the same as that, there has always been a degree of polarisation, but I think it is getting more and more defined. The top 25 per cent seems to be selling even better than they ever have, while the bottom 75 per cent seems to be struggling more than they ever have. The Foran Equine and Irish EBF race series in Ireland, for any horse purchased as a yearling or two-year-old at auction for €72,000 or less, has been a huge success. There is the new Irish EBF median sires series which will have three levels of races, the majority of which will be for two-year-olds by a sire with an established median auction
