IT will be music to store sale consignors’ ears that Anthony Bromley was hugely positive ahead of the Highflyer Bloodstock team’s trip to the first Irish store sale of the year, this week’s Goffs Arkle Sale.

The bloodstock agency, which is made up of David Minton, Anthony Bromley and Tessa Greatrex, finished second in the buyers’ table at last year’s sale, spending €675,000 on 14 lots.

“We’ve got a solid book of orders, it will be comparable to other years, but it’s no different than normal,” Bromley told The Irish Field. “We haven’t done Part 2 for a few years, but we’re definitely going to do that as well this year. A lot of four-year-old point-to-point winners came out of Part 2 last year because we kept seeing them at the point of point sales after they’d won.

“We think that Part 1 is going to be pretty strong. It’s a really strong catalogue, with good pedigrees and some quite expensively-bought foals are in there. It looks like it’s a very strong catalogue on paper and I’m sure it will be when we get to see the individuals.

Figures fell at the first store sale of the year at Goffs UK last month, but Bromley doesn’t believe it should be seen as a prediction for the Arkle and Derby Sales. “We’ve only scratched the surface at the store sales so far,” he commented. “Doncaster [Goffs UK] was just the aperitif, as it were.

“This is the first of the two big sales and everyone always comes out of the traps sprinting. It’ll be a strong sale, I’m sure of that, though I’m not sure if the vendors will all agree. If they paid quite a bit for their young stock, I don’t know where their profit and loss margins will be, but it’ll feel like a strong sale.

“I certainly feel there was very little Irish presence buying stores in Doncaster, and they were all waiting for Goffs and the [Tattersalls Ireland] Derby Sale, so I would be expecting a very strong depth to the market.”

Changing focus

The Goffs UK Sale marked the beginning of a new venture for Bromley’s clients Simon Munir and Isaac Souede. Best known for their ‘double green’ silks, most recently carried to high-profile victories by (Goffs Arkle Sale graduate) Jasmin De Vaux, they are now buying store horses to run in point-to-points and resell.

These horses will race under the banner of Jet Bloodstock and carry 'double blue' colours.

Munir and Souede already begin many of their horses’ careers in Irish point-to-points, mainly with Stuart Crawford, but more handlers will be involved in their latest operation.

Bromley explained: “They’re all going to be trained in Ireland, either in the north or in the south. We had a winner with Pat Doyle last year as well but we’re going to expand that a bit more. There are a few more southern Irish trainers going to be included as well.”

This new venture coincides with another change in direction for the operation, Bromley added: “I’m only buying horses for Jet Bloodstock; I’m not buying them for the 'double green'. They’re not buying extra horses; the only horses they’re buying are for this project. It’s a new trading arm, and they’re not interested in buying new stores for themselves.”

On what drove the decision, the agent said: “It’s something that they found with their flat horses - you can have pleasure and sell them on and it feels nice to make a profit. Relief Rally was a big success on the flat.

“She was a 58,000gns yearling that we ended up selling for 800,000gns and she’d won over £300,000 racing. So, that certainly it opened up other angles, and we’ve got some nice flat horses with Joseph [O’Brien] this year that may be valuable and might be horses that get sold on.

“That’s sort of got them into thinking that they might just do a bit of that jumping. They have got a bunch of youngsters, they’ve got plenty in training at the moment, but there’s no desire to buy new horses, other than these stores for resale.

“Policies may change but that’s what we’re doing at the moment. We’re buying flat young stock to be flat racehorses that can be commercial and we’re now looking at Jet Bloodstock to be commercial jumpers.”

One of double green’s most recent success stories is Green Triangle, who won the €200,000 Irish Stallion Farms EBF Gowran Classic last Monday. “Green Triangle has had his moments, and he’s got huge talent,” Bromley reflected.

“I think Ronan Whelan gave him a great ride. We changed tactics and rode him cold and used his turn of foot and his class, and he enjoyed that.

“He’s been gelded since he was a two-year-old, and that has definitely helped him as well.

“He was a little bit quirky as a two-year-old, but he’s definitely getting better. He’s going to go to the Tattersalls July Sale. He’s rated 95 and I think there’s a lot of foreign buyers active at that July Sale.”