Karaka hosts rare dual-code weanling sale for thoroughbreds, standardbreds

This Satono Aladdin filly topped last season’s Karaka weanling thoroughbred sale at $170,000. Photo / NZB

The crossover between New Zealand’s two equine codes will go to a whole new level with a rare dual-code weanling sale at Karaka tomorrow.

Participants in either thoroughbred or harness racing investing in what used to be seen as the rival code is nothing new, with plenty of owners having shares in both gallopers and harness horses.

The crossover goes right to the top of the two codes too, with one of our most decorated thoroughbred trainers Graeme Rogerson having a long-term, successful standardbred training operation that he has dragged plenty of his galloping mates into.

Most recently, champion harness trainer Mark Purdon has been seen training gallops winners at Ellerslie and Waikato Stud boss Mark Chittick bought a trotting yearling this year, while numerous harness trainers like Mark Jones, Todd Mitchell and, with a winner last week, Jason Teaz also train at least a few gallopers.

The voice of northern thoroughbreds George Simon was a co-breeder of New Zealand’s most exciting harness horse, Marketplace, while Lincoln Farms have been enormous dual-code investors.

But while the crossover in investment is nothing new, selling both breeds of horse on the same day at Karaka, as will happen on Thursday, is.

The radical move is made far more seamless now New Zealand Bloodstock runs both the thoroughbred and standardbred sales and by the fact Thursday’s sales are for weanlings, so horses born last spring.

While thoroughbred yearlings on the whole look more refined and bigger than a standardbred yearling, most weanlings of either code still look very babyish, equine kids rather than teenagers.

Therefore the physical disparity won’t be anywhere as pronounced as it would be if yearlings were sold on the same day, which would be a step too far for thoroughbred purists.

Weanling sales give breeders the chance for a winter cashflow boost as well as an opportunity to reduce the numbers they will prepare for next year’s yearling sales, which is a more expensive process.

For buyers, it is a chance to purchase horses far cheaper than they could next January or February while there are obvious opportunities for pinhooking, meaning a weanling purchased this week could be given time to mature and head back to the yearling sales in summer and make many times its purchase price tomorrow.

Regardless of the motivations or opportunities, a weanling sale provides a worldwide rarity of seeing babies from both breeds being sold at the same complex just hours apart, thoroughbreds in the morning and the standardbreds in the afternoon.

New Zealand Bloodstock managing director Andrew Seabrook says while there are economic benefits in the two numerically smaller sales being combined, tomorrow’s test case goes further than that.

“We are seeing a lot more cross-investment between the two codes, which can only be good for racing in New Zealand,” says Seabrook.

“Racing is strongest when both codes are strong and we have so many owners, breeders and trainers in both codes who are investing in the other.

“We expect that to continue this week. There will be a lot of good judges from both codes on the sales ground at the same time and it is only natural they will be talking to each other.”

The thoroughbred weanling sale market across the Tasman has been strong in recent months and while buyers, particularly pinhookers, can afford to be selective at a weanling sale, there is still money to be made.

Last year’s top price at the Karaka weanling sale was a $170,000 Satono Aladdin filly sold by Brighthill Farm and there is plenty of stallion power in tomorrow’s thoroughbred catalogue, with most of New Zealand’s elite stallions represented.

The standardbred weanling sales tend to be cheaper but are well supported by two of the industry’s biggest studs in Woodlands and Alabar, because they simply can’t take all the horses they breed through to the yearling sales.

Respected Australian breeding operation Yabby Dam Farms will also be selling at tomorrow’s sale.

All weanlings purchased tomorrow will also be eligible for each code’s sales series races, the Karaka Millions for the thoroughbreds and Harness Millions for the standardbreds.

The thoroughbred sale starts at 10am, while the first standardbred will go under the hammer at 2.30pm.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.