Darling View Thoroughbreds stud manager Brent Atwell has described the Magic Millions Perth Yearling Sale as being akin to a "grand final" for breeders in Western Australia. If recent form is any guide, buyers look set to make the operation's gun sire Playing God the MVP at the Swan Valley sales complex Feb. 20-21.
The reigning champion sire in Western Australia has 37 entries across the 350-lot catalog, including 10 in Darling View's own consignment, which also features eight members of the stud's first-crop sire Splintex.
"It's massive," Atwell said of the two-day sale. "It's probably my favorite week of the year. It's our grand final, which I'm sure is the case for most vendors. For us in WA, we get one premier sale for the year. While you might not like throwing all your eggs into one basket, this is our number one sale, so there's a lot of anticipation and excitement around."
Plenty of that excitement is on account of Playing God. Despite standing for as little as AU$4,400 in his early seasons, which were spent at Mungrup Stud before a transfer to Darling View in 2020, he has come up with a whole host of high-class performers. These have come at an exceptional stakes horses-to-runners ratio of 15%, and include two group 1 winners to boot.
His debut crop contained just 29 starters, but five of those won stakes races to set in motion a meteoric rise up the ranks. That momentum was maintained when his second crop contained three more stakes winners, including 2019 Kingston Town Classic (G1) scorer Kay Cee.
This will be Darling View's first sale trading under the operation's own banner, having spent the last 10 years selling as the Western Breeders Alliance, a partnership that also involved Einoncliff Park and Westbury Park. This year each member of the triumvirate will go it alone, with Atwell explaining the decision was essentially a practical consideration.
"It was mainly a numbers thing," he said. "The first year that we sold under Western Breeders we had 15 yearlings in total. This year, if we'd stayed together, there'd have been in the vicinity of 60 yearlings, so it was getting a little bit big. But we also had the opportunity of selling the first crop of Splintex under our own name, so we thought it was good timing with that."
Atwell said he expected the market to follow the trends witnessed elsewhere this sales season, with a lively top end but increasing selectivity in the tiers below.
Those sentiments were echoed by David Houston, manager of Magic Millions' Perth operation. "I think a good horse is always very hard to buy, no matter what sale you go to," he said. "Luckily here in WA we have the best horses the state produces, they haven't been picked through and sent off to other sales; essentially the best we produce are here on the ground. You have to find people to take them away at the lower end, which is probably difficult at any sale, but the locals do support this sale very strongly and we have some interstate people to have a crack too."
Selling begins Thursday at 11 a.m, with Book 2 following Friday at 10 a.m.
