Galileo Filly Sells for 1.7 Million Guineas

Book One of the Tattersalls October yearling sale concluded Oct. 7 with a filly by Galileo selling for 1.7 million guineas ($2,770,000), the top price for a yearling filly in Europe or North America in 2011. The filly is out of Flaxman Holdings-bred Irish River mare Brigid, and is a half sister to Irish filly champions Listen and Sequoyah.

Book One closed with rises seen in gross, clearance rate, average, and median for both the session and the sale. The final day saw a total of 121 lots sold for 17,689,000 guineas ($28,826,000), a rise of 16% on the corresponding session in 2010, with the average up 37% to 146,190 guineas ($238,200), and the median up 27% to 95,000 guineas ($154,800). The final sale figures saw 364 lots sold for 51,634,000 guineas ($84,134,000) at an average of 141,852 guineas ($231,000), and a median of 100,000 guineas ($162,900). The final clearance rate was 82%, which rises to 86% when the 19 private sales totaling 947,000 guineas are included.

The best was definitely saved until last with Hip No. 502, one of the final lots left in the sale providing the headlines, when being knocked down to Charlie Gordon-Watson for 1.7 million guineas. According to sales officials, a cosmopolitan mix of buyers were making an effort to secure the blue-blooded daughter of Galileo.

Consigned from Mark Dwyer’s Oaks Farm Stables, the filly is a half sister to group 1 winning juveniles Listen and Sequoyah (both by Sadler’s Wells). Sequoyah was named Irish champion 2-year-old filly in 2000 after winning the Moyglare Stud Stakes (Ire-I), and Listen was the top Irish juvenile filly of 2007 after annexing the Meon Valley Stud Fillies Mile (Eng-I) and Balanchine Saoire Stakes in Ireland. The top-priced yearling is also a half sister to Liffey Dancer, who set a world record price for yearling filly ($5,333,000), when sold at Tattersalls in 2007.

Blandford Bloodstock’s Richard Brown made the early running to secure the filly, along with Kuwaiti businessman Saleh Al Homaizi and agent Charlie Gordon-Watson. Hong Kong-based Australian Paul Makin often makes an impact in the sale ring and took up the running for a short period with his bid of 1 million guineas. It soon settled down to a one-on-one bid between Brown and Gordon-Watson with the latter securing the filly on behalf of Nurlan Bizakov, the new Kazakhstani owner of Hesmonds Stud.