CURRAGH trainer Michael O'Callaghan spent £500,000 on a colt by Harry Angel at the Goffs UK Breeze Up Sale on Tuesday, setting a new sale record in the process.

The colt was sold by leading vendor Tally-Ho Stud, who bought him as a foal at Goffs for €38,000 from breeders Mark and Adrian Wallace of Grenane House Stud in Tipperary.

His dam Go Angellica (by Kheleyf) won a listed race for trainer David Simcock in 2012 and she is a half-sister to the dam of Twilight Jet, who O'Callaghan bought from Tally-Ho here in 2021 for £210,000. That colt went on to win two Group 3 races.

O'Callaghan also bought Steel Bull for £28,000 here in 2020 and within a month trained him to win a maiden and the Group 3 Molecomb Stakes.

Tuesday's sale-topper attracted an opening bid of £200,000 and the Harry Angel colt was the subject of bids from all around the sales ring before being knocked down to O’Callaghan.

The £500,000 price surpassed the previous record which was set by Al Raya who sold for £450,000 in 2019. The price also set a record for the highest price achieved for a flat-bred horse in Doncaster.

The next top three lots on Tuesday were fillies, all sold by different Irish vendors. Shane Power's Tradewinds Stud sold a filly by Twilight Son for £360,000 to Blandford Bloodstock. Power bought the filly, who clocked a very fast breeze, for just £30,000 at the Tattersalls Somerville Yearling Sale last September.

Brendan Holland's Grove Stud sold a homebred Starspangledbanner filly for £350,000 to the Stroud Coleman agency, and Longways Stables (Mick Murphy and Sarah O'Connell) sold a daughter of Dark Angel to Jake Warren's Highclere Agency for £340,000. She was picked up for €60,000 as a yearling at the Arqana August Sale.

The sale average price was up 29% to £63,396 while the turnover grew 54% to £10,016,500. The sale achieved a clearance rate of 86%.

A total of 33 horses sold for six-figure sums, up on the previous record of 17 last year.

Goffs UK managing director Tim Kent said: "When we started to visit vendors in the early part of the year, we knew they were planning to target this sale with some of their better horses and the fact that there was a healthy increase in their purchase price compared to last year was a positive way to start. We then began to hear many positive reports after vendors had started to work these horses and the momentum continued to Town Moor where some sensational breezes led to some breathtaking prices.

“But it’s not just the top end that has been a success. Indeed, the success of any sale relies on buyers at every level of the market, and we made a concerted effort to ensure that everyone was encouraged to participate at a sale which has a long history of winners being bought at all levels of the market.

"This obviously meant that we focussed on all domestic buyers, but we also worked closely with GBRI to ensure that we had an increased participation from overseas clients with many new faces visiting Doncaster for the first time including those from Australia, Denmark, Dubai, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Sweden."

SALE STATISTICS

Offered: 184

Sold: 158 (86%)

Aggregate: £10,016,500 (+54%)

Average: £63,396 (+29%)

Median: £40,000 (+11%)