LAST year’s unprecedented top price of €315,000 may have been out of reach at yesterday’s first staging of the Goresbridge Breeze-Up Sale at Tattersalls Ireland, but there was still plenty of activity in the six-figure bracket and centre stage went to a €175,000 of the increasingly influential Lope De Vega.

The colt, who was picked up for just €28,000 at the September Yearling Sale, was sold by Norman and Janet Williamson’s Oak Tree Farm and he capped a memorable six days for the farm which began when their former breeze-up graduate War Of Will won the Preakness Stakes last Saturday.