The power of Winx has been felt at the Easter Yearling sale in Sydney where the champion mare’s younger half-brother has fetched $2.3 million during the first session.
After spirited bidding on Monday from three parties, Gai Waterhouse got in with the final bid on behalf of Hussain Lootah, the son of Emirates Park boss, Dubai businessman His Excellency Nasser Lootah.
His sale price is 10 times that of six-time Group One winner Winx who is being sent for a well-earned rest after winning the Doncaster Mile on Saturday.
On the same day, her two-year-old brother El Divino claimed his first stakes win in a dead-heat to the Kindergarten Stakes.
“There was much discussion after El Divino won and Hussain said we must have him,” Waterhouse said.
“The moment his brother hit the line he said `let’s buy it’.
“My job now is to get him to the Slipper next year.”
For his breeder John Camilleri, the result was well beyond expectations.
“I was hopeful he might get to $1.5 million,” Camilleri said.
“He had a reserve of $1 million but to get to the price he did is much more than I thought.
“The mare is in foal to Snitzel again and I think I might hold onto it.”
Camilleri sold Winx, who is by Street Cry, at the Magic Million sale for $230,000 but retained El Divino, the only other of her five foals to race.
Waterhouse will also train a Fastnet Rock colt out of Rose Of Cimmaron from the family of multiple Group One winner Criterion who defends his Queen Elizabeth Stakes crown at Randwick on Saturday.
A group headed by Coolmore’s Tom Magnier paid $1.2 million for the colt.
Criterion’s trainers, David Hayes and Tom Dabernig, will take care of a $1.5 million colt by Snitzel’s sire Redoute’s Choice out of Top Cuban which was sold to Shadwell Stud.
