WITH no fewer than 24 stallions represented by their first yearlings at both the Goffs UK Premier and Silver Sales this week, just five had stock that reached the upper echelons, namely the 35 that sold for £100,000 or more.

The five were Mehmas (Acclamation), Adaay (Kodiac), Shalaa (Invincible Spirit), Estidhkaar (Dark Angel) and Territories (Invincible Spirit). Adaay had three yearlings among this select group, while Mehmas and Shalaa had a pair each.

The sales leading consignor by aggregate, Lady Carolyn Warren’s Highclere Stud, sold a son of Mehmas out of Entreat for £260,000 to Oliver St Lawrence, and this colt had one of the best updates in the catalogue. Already a half-brother to the 2019 stakes winner Exhort, the colt’s two-year-old half-brother Golden Horde added a victory in the Group 2 Qatar Richmond Stakes and a third-place finish in the Group 1 Darley Prix Morny to his achievements after the catalogue was printed.

Entreat has been a money-spinner for James Cloney’s Clara Stud in Co Kilkenny since she was purchased for just 14,000gns from Cheveley Park Stud in July 2016, carrying Golden Horde. That son of Lethal Force sold for £65,000 as a yearling before Entreat produced this year’s yearling. The mare has a filly foal by Zoffany and is carrying to Zoustar. One of 10 purchases over the first two days by Oliver St Lawrence, the Mehmas yearling was purchased for Fawzi Nass, but training plans are undecided.

The colt by Mehmas out of Entreat, a half-brother to Golden Horde, who realised £260,000 \ Sarah Farnsworth

Owner Anoj Don, who has enjoyed group race success with Fighting Irish, paid £150,000 for a Mehmas filly from Tally-Ho Stud, home of the sire. The filly was not however sold by the O’Callaghans, rather by bloodstock agent Matt Coleman and his father Roger. The pair board the dam, Three Decades, at Tally-Ho and they failed to sell her first foal, Melbourne Memories, for £2,200 as a yearling. She subsequently became a stakes winner and her Muhaarar yearling sold this week for £130,000 from Barton Stud.

Offered in the first hour of the sale, the Adaay yearling colt out of In My Heart was led out unsold at £220,000. However, a private sale was soon concluded and the colt was the most expensive of this week’s buys by Angus Gold for Shadwell Stud. The deal was struck at £210,000 for the Whitsbury Manor Stud-bred who was consigned by Jamie Railton. Last December MV Magnier purchased the colt’s Group 2 winning half-sister Heartache for 1,300,000gns and she is one of three juvenile winners from the first three foals out of the listed winning Place In My Heart.

Another six-figure Adaay was Grangemore Stud’s son of the winning Dutch Art mare Flemish School and he too ended up among the 18 lots purchased by Sheikh Hamdan’s Shadwell. The Sheikh raced Adaay. The colt sold for £115,000, almost three times his foal purchase price of 38,000gns. The colt was bred by Michael O’Leary’s Plantation Stud.

Whitsbury Manor consigned a home-bred daughter of the dual Group 2 winner Adaay out of Satsuma. This half-sister to the 2019 listed juvenile winner Good Vibes sold to Clive Cox for £100,000, a great return on the sire’s first season covering fee of £7,000. Incredibly Adaay’s fee dropped in each of his subsequent years, commanding just £5,000 this year, but the future looks bright for him based on the demand for his offspring.

Shalaa’s popularity at the recent Arqana Yearling Sale continued and Yeomanstown Stud and Barton Stud sold yearlings by him for £130,000 and £105,000 respectively.

Al Shaqab showed their support for their sire when buying the former, a 50,000gns pinhook, while Cheveley Park Stud took ownership of the daughter of Vesnina, a Sea The Stars mare that they originally raced and then sold. The Shalaa filly is her second offspring, and the first is Nina Bailarina, an impressive five-length winner of a maiden at Newmarket recently.

Yeomanstown Stud sold a son of Tara Stud’s Estidhkaar out of Skelton for £110,000 to Shadwell, though the profit margin this time was less as he cost 80,000gns as a foal when bought from his breeder Brian Kennedy of Meadowlands Stud. Bought for 45,000gns as a foal, Mountain View Stud’s son of Territories and the stakes-placed Filona more than doubled in value when selling to Alex Elliott for £110,000.