The Darby Racing team is spending the back end of this week scouring Inglis’s Riverside Sales Complex in search of more Classic Yearling Sale stars and if its 2025 team turns out as good as last year’s cohort it will have done well.
The Scott Darby-led operation is inspecting the 800-plus lots that make up this year’s Classic Sale, which is the offering that put Darby Racing on the map.
Darby paid just $10,000 for Golden Slipper runner-up and two-time Group 1 winner Yankee Rose at Classic and $20,000 for She Will Reign, who went one better than Yankee Rose in the Golden Slipper.
He bought eight horses at Classic last year, three of whom are in this Saturday’s $2 million Inglis Millennium at Randwick.
Lucky Vega filly Within The Law cost $30,000, Cool Aza Beel colt Cobra Club $70,000, which is also what Darby paid for Crown The King, a son of Time To Reign.
Even before the Millennium is run, it is an achievement of sorts for Darby after last year making a concerted effort to reapply the strategy that made it successful.
“We’ve been known for our two-year-olds but I think in the last few of years we’d veered a little bit away from that, not by design, and I said at the start of last year we need to really hone in on those sharp horses again,” Darby said.
“They’re not easy to find because they’re the types – especially if they’re by the right stallions – that make the big money, those the early, forward, sharp-looking horses that everyone’s looking for.
“That’s why the Classic Sale suits us well. We’re looking for that athlete whose pedigree is not quite everyone’s cup of tea, which you can get at a cheaper price.”
This year’s Classic Sale starts at 10am Sunday and continues on Monday and Tuesday.
Within The Law, who is trained by Bjorn Baker, has been the star of the Inglis Sale Series to date, winning the $500,000 Inglis Banner at Flemington on November 9 before claiming the $500,000 Inglis Nursery at Randwick on December 14.
Those wins ensured she is the only horse in the running for the $2m Inglis Triple Crown bonus, which is for any horse who can win the Banner or the Nursery, the Millennium and the Inglis-sponsored Group 1 ATC Sires’ in April.
The Yulong-bred filly, who is out of the Dundeel mare Contract Signed, drew the third-widest alley in the field of 16 plus four emergencies for the 1100m event, but Darby is not willing to put anything past the surprise packet.
“We’ve labelled her the Yankee Rose-type, more so on the front that she doesn’t really show you a huge amount in trackwork,” Darby said.
“If you watch her trials, she’s a bit unassuming but come raceday, when the pressure goes on in that last 200 metres, that’s when she comes to the fore.
“That was the hallmark of Yankee Rose and that’s where I compare them.
“I’ve had a lot of bad luck lately drawing inside gates – not that I really wanted to draw near the carpark – but I envisage she might get in the three-wide running line with cover and if she does happen to get that run I think she might just peel to the middle and be too strong for them.”
Within The Law defeated Cobra Club in the Inglis Nursery, which has been the only start for that Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained colt, who is from the So You Think mare Venom, and he too has taken Darby by surprise.
“His trials were OK, he’d drawn poorly in the Nursery and he was fighting a little bit of shin soreness going in – it was 50/50 whether he even went there – so his effort was huge,” Darby said.
“Adrian said, off his work, it’s hard to get too enthusiastic but he was kind of like that last time in, so he might just be a raceday horse.
“From the gate – he’ll come into eight if there are no scratchings – he might be able to topple the filly if she gets into trouble out there.”
Cobra Club is a stablemate to Crown The King, a son of Time To Reign, who won the 2019 Group 2 Silver Slipper Stakes under the Darby Racing colours and finished fifth in the 2019 Golden Slipper.
Crown The King has not started since finishing second over 1050m at Doomben on October 5 but has trialled twice in the past fortnight, including Monday this week when sixth in a Rosehill workout in which leading Golden Slipper fancies North England, Bel Merci and Pallaton filled the trifecta.
