Recent point-to-point winner Lets Go Champ (Ire) (Jeremy) led a lively first day of the Goffs UK Spring HIT/P2P Sale after Roger Brookhouse went to £375,000 to secure the gelding from Donnchadh Doyle's Monbeg Stables.
Offered as lot 479, the 4-year-old was bought for €90,000 as a store last year but a winning performance in a smart time on debut at Bartlemy was enough to spark a flurry of interest which led to a clutch of wild-card entries commanding the highest prices of the day.
The next lot through the ring, Mister Coffey (Fr) (Authorized {Ire}) (480), emanated from an English bumper rather than an Irish point-to-point but the price wasn't far off when the eight-length Huntingdon winner, who was a vendor buy-back at €48,000 at the Goffs Land Rover Sale last June, realised £340,000 to a bid from Tom Lacey, who will take over his training from Harry Whittington.
“He's a lovely horse and Harry would have done a good job bringing him through his 3-year-old year,” said Lacey. “He's very athletic and a big, tall frame of a horse. You're paying for the potential, but I liked the look of him and I like the sire. I think Authorized is a super sire.”
In total, seven 4-year-old geldings and a filly of the same age, all with recent winning updates, left the ring with a six-figure price tag on their heads, bringing about a 21% rise in aggregate to £4,756,100, while the average of £29,977 and median of £15,000 both dropped slightly. Following on from the store section on Tuesday, Wednesday's clearance rate was again encouraging, at 82% for 170 horses sold from 208 offered. The sale concludes today.
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