Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, was the top buyer at a spring sale of two-year-old thoroughbred racehorses in Newmarket, England.
Sheikh Mohammed, the world’s biggest racehorse owner, spent 500,000 guineas ($845,250) on a colt sired by Shamardal, the 2004 European champion two-year-old.
It was the third-highest price ever paid at the two-day Tattersalls Craven Breeze Up Sale for a horse ready to race.
The Sheikh, who was present at the sale, also bought a Shamardal filly for 160,000 guineas and a colt sired by 2007 Kentucky Derby runnerup Hard Spun for 80,000 guineas.
Horses at Tattersalls, Europe’s biggest bloodstock auctioneer, are still priced in guineas, an antique monetary unit that’s now equal to 1 pound, 5 pence ($1.69) and has otherwise disappeared from usage.
The sale saw “plenty of action” by buyers from Hong Kong and the Gulf region, Jimmy George, marketing director of Tattersalls, said in a phone interview.
The sale brought in 8.6 million guineas, 7.4 percent more than last year, and the average price rose almost 3 percent to 73,316 guineas.
“A lot of the strength of this can be attributed to buyers from parts of the world where they’ve either not been hit as hard or are beginning to emerge from periods of economic downturn,” George said.
“But it would be wrong to pretend that we all think everything is plain sailing at the moment because there is still a lot of economic uncertainty in Europe.”
The sale of the Shamardal colt handed seller Roger O’Callaghan at Tally-Ho Stud in Ireland a hefty profit. Tally-Ho had paid 53,000 guineas for the horse when it was a foal at Tattersalls in December 2010.
“He is easily our biggest sale,” O’Callaghan told the auction’s website. “We were hoping for 100,000 or 150,000 guineas, but this far exceeded our expectations. We have loved this foal from the day we bought him.”
Follow us on
