BROTHERS Tony and Noel O’Callaghan scored a double at this week’s Goffs UK Doncaster Premier Yearling Sale, thanks to Darley’s Night Of Thunder.

On the first day, Noel’s Mountarmstrong Stud sold a colt from the breeder’s well-known ‘Alexander’ family to Avenue Bloodstock’s Mark McStay for a session-topping £230,000, but this was bettered, narrowly, on Wednesday with the purchase of Tally-Ho Stud’s daughter of the stakes-placed Thiswaycadeaux by Blandford Bloodstock’s Stuart Boman for £240,000. The yearlings were the only representatives of their sire at the sale.

The sale-topping daughter of Night Of Thunder was the icing on the cake for Tally-Ho, who ended the two days as leading consignors. They sold 24 lots for £1,544,000, and this was almost as much as the next two vendors, Baroda Stud (£793,000) and Highclere Stud (£780,000), combined.

Three more farms had aggregates that surpassed half a million, and all were Irish. They were Yeomanstown Stud (£695,000), Lynn Lodge Stud (£677,000) and Manister House Stud (£552,500).

Thiswaycadeaux was trained by Willie McCreery for his wife Amanda and she won five times in a 27-race career. She kept the best until last, and on her final outing was beaten less than a length in the Listed Knockaire Stakes at Leopardstown. Put in foal to Night Of Thunder, she was sold privately to the O’Callaghans.

Following the sale, Boman revealed that the filly was purchased for German owner Jürgen Sartori, who last October spent €1.2 million to acquire Penja, the sale-topper at the Arqana Arc Sale. Boman had a special interest in the family as he bought the Group 2 winner and Group 1 Prix Jean Romanet-placed Red Tea who appears under the second dam.

Mountarmstrong

The Night Of Thunder colt is a grandson of Noe O’Callaghan’s dual Group 3 winner Lady Alexander, and she in turn is the dam of two Group 1 performers in Dandy Man and Anthem Alexander. This is also the family of last year’s classic winner Mother Earth.

Mountarmstrong manager Rob Tierney produced the colt in fine order for the sale.

This is the third offspring of his winning Acclamation dam, Pious Alexander, successful in a six-furlong maiden at Tipperary in the hands of Pat Smullen. Her first foal, a juvenile winner last year for O’Callaghan and his sons Charles and Paul, is now racing in the USA, while Pious Alexander’s two-year-old Kodiac colt Tarlo, who sold for 230,00gns as a yearling, looks a winner in waiting, having been placed second twice.

SIRE of 30 individual winners already, and counting, Whitsbury Manor Stud resident Havana Grey was sure to feature among the top lots this week, and he did.

The second session was only minutes old when Ed Harper’s Whitsbury Manor sent their homebred daughter of the Group 1 Flying Five Stakes winner into the ring, and she exited with a £230,000 price tag, signed for by Jake Warren in the name of Highclere Agency. Clive Cox will take over the reins at first and train the filly for Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa.

The choice of Cox was easy as he also handles the filly’s juvenile full-sister, Katey Kontent, and she won her first two starts. The siblings are out of four-time winner Showstoppa, by another Whitsbury sire, Showcasing, and she has made the perfect start at stud, producing four winners with her first four foals. Two are stakes winners, and the best, El Caballo, winner of the Group 2 Sandy Lane Stakes this year, is by Havana Gold, the sire of Havana Grey.

There was a second daughter of Havana Grey among the leading lots. Eddie O’Leary’s Lynn Lodge Stud turned a 26,000gns purchase into a £100,000 sale for the first foal out of the three-time winner Enchanted Linda, and she heads to Archie Watson to race for Lone Star Investments. Alex Elliott is part of that group and he revealed that their 40,000gns yearling buy last year, The Bullion Bomber, a winner in July, has been sold to California.

Seven lots this week sold for £200,000 or more. Among the quartet to realise £200,000 was the only offering by the champion sire Frankel. He was the best of a draft from the Warren’s Highclere Stud, and he was sent to the sale to be a standout, and proved to be. His dam was a three-time winner, and Richard Hughes was thrilled to bag a son of Frankel.

Ten Sovereigns

Hughes had struck in the first hour of the sale for a daughter of Ten Sovereigns, represented by his first crop, and this was a half-sister to two stakes winners out of a winning daughter of the high-class racemare, Majestic Desert. The filly cost the trainer £110,000, was the first six-figure sale of the week, and Jamie Railton profited as he purchased her for 26,000gns.

Highclere had a second six-figure lot in their draft, one of the last lots sold. This was a son of Showcasing out of a juvenile winner by Exceed And Excel, and the colt’s grandam was the Group 2 Flying Childers Stakes winner Imperial Bailiwick. She later became a successful broodmare, her 10 winners including the dual Group 1 winning sprinter Reverence and the Royal Ascot-winning two-year-old Helm Bank.

Alex Elliott was acting for Willie Browne and signed the purchase docket at £140,000 in the name of JB Bloodstock. The colt will be heading next spring to the breeze-up sales.

BREEDER and owner Peter Gleeson paid €11,000 as a yearling for Isole Canarie, a Rip Van Winkle filly he raced and won with in Italy. Her three victories included listed races at two and three and on Tuesday her second produce, a son of Acclamation, sold through Trinity Park Stud for £200,000.

Rathbarry Stud’s Acclamation is one of the best stallions about, now a noted sire of sires, and this year his Irish-bred son Romantic Warrior is a champion in Hong Kong. No wonder that this yearling was on the shortlist for Michael Kinane, representing the Hong Kong Jockey Club, and the new purchase will eventually be resold at the international sale there.

Acclamation’s sons include Mehmas, and two lots earlier the sire’s half-brother to five winners sold from Tally-Ho Stud to SackvilleDonald for £130,000. He was not a homebred though, rather he was purchased as a foal for €70,000. The profitable colt will join Hugo Palmer, now operating from Michael Owen’s stables, and the trainer was with Ed Sackville when the hammer fell.

Maria Ryan is racing manager for John Dance’s Manor House Farm, and Ed Sackville is an advisor. The team bought no less than four of the week’s 23 six-figure lots. Alice Fitzgerald consigned the most expensive of the purchases, a Kodiac colt out of a half-sister to Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes runner-up Princess Noor, who sold for £160,000.

Luke Barry’s Manister House Stud sold a filly from the first crop of Ten Sovereigns for £150,000, the winning Holy Roman Emperor dam having been purchased carrying the filly for €50,000. Also costing Manor House Farm £150,000 was a Ulysses half-brother to this year’s Group 2 Coventry Stakes winner Bradsell, while another purchase made from Manister House was their Bated Breath filly out of the stakes-placed Bounce. She cost £120,000.

RICHARD Hannon was animated, while Ross Doyle remained cool, but they eventually secured one of the stars of the opening session of the sale, a son of New Bay for £200,000.

The colt was the highlight of the Baroda Stud consignment, and is the first foal of a New Zealand stakes-winning daughter of Lope De Vega. She was one of three winners from her dam and this is the family of Group 1 Haydock Sprint Cup winner Cherokee Rose.

Doyle and Hannon matched that purchase price on day two, much to the delight of Guy and Serena O’Callaghan of Grangemore Stud.

The object of desire was a colt by Dark Angel, pinhooked after he was bought for only 40,000gns last year. The half-brother to four winners is out of a half-sister to the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes winner Mail The Desert.

There are not too many Galileo Gold yearlings about, but they have a star among them. The Tally-Ho homebred son of the Kodiac mare Thrilled is the dam’s second living offspring, and the first is none other than The Platinum Queen, who came so close to a Group 1 success in the Nunthorpe Stakes, a great achievement by a two-year-old.

Richard Spencer and his principal owner, Phil Cunningham, paid £170,000 for the colt whose sire is already responsible for the Group 1 winner Ebro River.

Pinhook

A 70,000gns foal purchase at Tattersalls, and from the first crop of Too Darn Hot, The National Stud in Newmarket consigned the colt out of the wining Galileo mare Whispering Bell, and he doubled in value to £150,000.

Other sires with their first offerings included Inns Of Court, whose first foal out of a winning mare sold for £125,000, Soldier’s Call who had a half-brother to the listed winner Sardinia Sunset sell for £105,000, a colt by Phoenix Of Spain who colt Brookhouse Racing the same amount, while a Magna Grecia colt realised £100,000.

A highlight of the week among the pinhooks was the €38,000 February purchase of a Kuroshio colt out of a winner-producing Pivotal mare by Violet Hesketh and Mimi Wadham. He will join Fozzy Stack after Mark McStay’s Avenue Bloodstock signed for him at £120,000.