SUCH is the overall quality of the sale of yearlings and foals by the Japan Racing Horse Association (JRHA) that the last lot in their two-day sale on July 8th and 9th is a son of Harbinger (Dansili), a multiple Group 1 sire, and is a March 15th foaled colt foal out of the dual Argentine Group 1 winner Life For Sale (Not For Sale).

The first three foals out of Life For Sale are all runners and winners, and they include last year’s best two-year-old filly Danon Fantasy (Deep Impact), winner of the Group 1 Hanshin Juvenile Fillies.

Almost 250 yearlings and over 225 foals have been catalogued for sale and I can wholly recommend going online to www.jrha-selectsale.com and feast your eyes on a mouth-watering collection of international pedigrees. There are simply too many sons and daughters of champions and Group/Grade 1 winners to list here, and siblings to many more.

The great Japanese champion Deep Impact (Sunday Silence) has 20 yearlings and nine foals catalogued, while other stars such as Heart’s Cry (Sunday Silence), Lord Kanaloa (King Kamehameha) and King Kamehameha (Kingmambo) are well represented.

Eye-catchers

While this group may not contain any of the sale toppers, they are lots that caught my eye when racing through the catalogue. The first hour will feature a yearling son of Deep Impact, a half-brother to Ger Lyons’ Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes winner Lightning Pearl (Marju) and the Japanese and Hong Kong Group 1 winner Satono Crown (Marju).

Twenty lots later and Northern Farm consigns a son of Frankel (Galileo) out of the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes winner Margot Did (Exceed And Excel). Her first foal and only runner to date is the Group 2 winner and Grade 1 runner-up Mission Impassible (Galileo). Hard to believe that Margot Did sold as a breeze-up lot for 10,000gns.

Eishin Farm paid €75,000 for the unraced Pivotal (Polar Falcon) mare Hazanama at Goffs two years ago, in foal to Sea The Moon (Sea The Stars), and her resulting filly is catalogued. Her grandam, the classic-placed Group 3 winner Hazarista (Barathea), is a half-sister to the dam of Harzand (Sea The Stars).

Shadai Farm spent €220,000 at Arqana for the Italian Group 3 winner Bugie D’Amore and the colt she was carrying, by Dark Angel (Acclamation), is offered, He is a full-brother to a winner. Group 1 sire Zoffany (Dansili) has a son of You Don’t Love Me (Teofilo), an unraced three-parts sister to the Group 1 winning stayer Allegretto (Galileo), for sale.

The dam sold three times for a six-figure sum, most recently at Arqana in 2017 for €140,000.

Two foals worth a special mention are a son of Frankel and a daughter of Dark Angel. The former is the first foal out of the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint winner Finest City (City Zip), rated the champion of her sex over a sprint distance in the USA. She was purchased at the end of her racing career by Katsumi Yoshida for $1.5 million and sent to England to be covered.

The daughter of Yeomanstown Stud’s Dark Angel is the second produce of Great Page (Roderic O’Connor). A Group 3 winner at two in France and a listed winner at Naas the same year, Great Page sold at the Goffs London Sale as a three-year-old for £300,000. Two and a half years later she was back at Tattersalls where John McCormack paid 550,000gns for her carrying her 2019 foal. The mare was sold in the week following the foal sale where her first offspring, a filly by War Front (Danzig), was bought by Justin Casse for 185,000gns.