A record-breaking sales price at Goffs for his daughter Whistle Dixie and a Listed-winning chaser on the track.
Overbury stallions enjoyed a good week at the races and in the sales-ring, with a particular highlight being the record-breaking sale of a National Hunt mare at Goffs for €230,000.
Whistle Dixie, a daughter of Kayf Tara and a half-sister to the Gold Cup winner Kicking King, was sold by Gigginstown House Stud after winning over hurdles and in two bumpers and a point-to-point, as well as being Grade 3-placed behind the top-class mare Limini.
Trainer Henry de Bromhead had originally bought the mare as a three-year-old at the Derby Sale from her breeder Sunnyhill Stud for €100,000 and she has a pedigree that has continued to go from strength to strength as her dam’s half-sister Fairy Lane is the dam of rising star Kalashnikov as well as the Listed-winning hurdler Kalane.
Among Kayf Tara’s winners of last week was another promising mare, Atlanta Ablaze, who won the Listed Lady Godiva Mares’ Novices’ Chase at Warwick for Henry Daly and The Last Man Standing. The seven-year-old, bred by E R Hanbury, has now won three of her last four starts to add to a previous novice hurdles victory at five, and has risen in the ratings to a mark of 143.
Kayf Tara is not the only one knocking in the winners, however, as his fellow Overbury resident Schiaparelli has also enjoyed a good start to the season. His daughter Indefatigable scored by 15 lengths over hurdles and, the winner of two of her four starts for Paul Webber, looks to have a very bright future in staying contests. Meanwhile he has also been represented by Schiehallion Munro – whose only four starts have seen his finish fourth, third second and, finally, first – as well as by winning hurdler Ronald Pump in Ireland.
