BLACK Orange, formerly trained by Gay Kelleway, will continue to race in Qatar with trainer Debbie Mountain after he sold for £54,000 to top the 2017 Tattersalls Ireland Ascot July Sale on Tuesday. The two-year-old son of Pastoral Pursuits won over five furlongs at Ripon and has been in the frame on all his four starts. He was recently offered for sale at the Goffs London Sale and retained at £120,000.

Wild card entry Eneko, a French-bred son of Laverock, won over a mile and a half in late June at La Roche-Sur-Yon and comes from the family of leading National Hunt performers Neptune Collonges, Hussard Collonges and Nenuphar Collonges. He was the most expensive of agent Tom Malone’s buys at £40,000.

Nicely Indeed won a couple of bumper races at Fontwell and Stratford for Kim Bailey in August and September 2015, and in May of this year was placed in a couple of hurdle races. He cost Ownaracehorse Ltd £32,000.

This was £1,000 more than the price obtained for the three-year-old Pivotal colt Sufi, sold by Lady Bamford from Richard Hannon’s yard. The half-brother to Grade 2-winning hurdler Cliffs Of Dover was bought by John Pearl and will now be trained by Ken Cunningham-Brown.

Two Irish-trained geldings sold for £24,000 each. Shay Slevin’s subsequently disqualified Kinsale point-to-point winner O’Hanrahan Bridge is a five-year-old son of Gold Well and he was purchased by Gearoid Costelloe. Pat Coffey’s four-year-old Tikkanen gelding Touchy Subject was runner-up on his only point-to-point outing, a maiden at Tralee, and he was bought by trainer Jo Davis for her owner John Marriott.

Andrew Balding conjured a victory at Beverley recently out of the Casamento three-year-old gelding War Of Succession and this was enough to persuade fellow trainer Tony Newcombe to part with £22,000 in exchange for this half-brother to smart 2017 juvenile Mistress Of Venice.

Tattersalls Ireland director of horses in training sales Richard Pugh spoke after the sale: “It was always going to be challenging to produce a set of statistics comparable to 2016’s record breaking Ascot July Sale where 24 lots broke the £20,000 barrier [seven this year], a 75% increase on the year previous. However, today’s sale has produced a robust clearance rate of 78% and a top price of £54,000 and has again demonstrated the ability of this unique venue to attract a wide variety of overseas and domestic purchasers.”

The next sale at Ascot will be on Tuesday, August 22nd.