$1,025,000 for Black Caviar Brother

With Black Caviar due in Sydney to burn the turf at Randwick this Saturday in the Group I ATC TJ Smith Stakes there was always going to be tremendous interest in her yearling half-brother by Casino Prince who was sold at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale on Wednesday afternoon for $1,025,000.

Consigned for sale by Makybe on behalf of his breeder Gilgai Farm, the colt from Helsingedrew many admirers but in the end it settled down to just two with the money to go all the way and with bids going up in $25,000 increments it was a duel to the death between Peter Moody and John Hawkes, the latter winning the day.

"The mare has had two foals and one is trained by Peter Moody and the other by John Hawkes... so even though we couldn't see them bidding and they couldn't see us...it wasn't hard to work out who else was on him,” Wayne Hawkes told TVN.

"He's an outstanding colt even without Black Caviar on the page.

"We spell quite a few horses at Makybe and when we were down there about six weeks ago we saw the Easter yearlings and in the time since then this colt has jumped out of the ground and improved and improved.”

The colt will remain in Sydney for the time being to be broken in and will race for a syndicate of Hawkes stable clients.

"Families as good as this are few and far between so we think he's good value,” Hawkes said.

"We also like to buy from farms that produce winners and Makybe does that...people go and buy the Winning Post to look at a trainer's strike rate and for us we like to look at a vendor's strike rate.”

The star colt is from the first crop of young Patinack Farm based sire Casino Prince, a Group I winning son of Flying Spur, who stood his first season at a fee of $38,500 and covered 143 mares.

Story: Tara Madgwick breednet