The Castlebridge Consignement | Horse Racing Free Tips

First Ambition (GB), a colt by Invincible Spirit (Ire) and the first foal of the six-time Group 1 winner Laurens (Fr) (Siyouni {Fr}), is among a sizeable number of horses owned by John Dance's Coverdale Stud to be catalogued within the Castlebridge Consignment draft for an extended Tattersalls Guineas Breeze-up and Horses-in-Training Sale.

A record number of 195 lots in the horses-in-training section means that the auction will now start with an evening session on Wednesday, May 1 at 5pm. The sale continues on Thursday morning at 9.30am with the breeze-up section to follow.

Around 50 horses from the Castlebridge draft are from Dance's operation, with some of them having raced last year under the names of Coverdale Stud or Titanium Racing Club and others still unraced.

Andrew Mead, a director of the Castlebridge Consignment, said, “The Castlebridge Consignment have 71 entries in the Tattersalls Guineas Horses-in-Training Sale, now scheduled for the 1st and 2nd May, a number of which are being sold by Coverdale Stud. Whilst several of the horses are proven high-class performers, none of the horses have raced recently due to the personal circumstances of the owner. The majority are well-bred, unraced or lightly-raced horses with considerable untapped potential and all from this owner will be sold as 'out of training'. Castlebridge will be consigning from the Highflyer barns at Tattersalls and welcomes inspections and vettings at the sales.”

Owner and breeder John Dance was arrested last April and is involved in an ongoing Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) investigation into allegations of fraud and money laundering involving his company WealthTek LLP. Under the name of an associated company, Vertem Asset Management, Dance sponsored the G1 Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster between 2018 and 2022.

Following his arrest and the subsequent freezing of his assets, Dance's horses were initially not allowed to be entered for races, but in May the British Horseracing Authority granted permission for them to run under the name of Coverdale Stud or Titanium Racing.

First Ambition (lot 151) is among the unraced three-year-olds for sale at Tattersalls, while Tribal Rhythm (GB) (Ulysses {Ire}) (lot 118), a half-brother to Group 1-winning sprinter Bradsell (GB), was placed twice in three starts for Dance's former trainer James Horton last year and is also entered for the sale.

Among the 202 juveniles catalogued for the breeze-up section is a Mocklershill-consigned colt by Wootton Bassett (GB) out of the former champion three-year-old filly Peeping Fawn (Danehill) (lot 353). The mare's four winning offspring include September (Ire) (Deep Impact {Jpn}), who was beaten a nose by Laurens when runner-up in the G1 Fillies' Mile.

Willie Browne's Mocklershill operation will also offer a Quality Road colt out of treble Group 1 winner Alice Springs (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) (lot 232).

Among the leading graduates of the Guineas Breeze-up Sale is the top-class stayer Trueshan (Fr) (Planteur {Ire}), who was bought by Highflyer Bloodstock for 31,000gns and went on to win three Group 1 races for Alan King.

The catalogues for the Tattersalls Guineas Breeze-up and Horses-in-Training Sale are now available online.

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Fresh off yet another productive Tattersalls December Mare Sale, where they have led consignors there for the past eight years, The Castlebridge Consignment embarked on somewhat of a less familiar journey to Deauville to hang up their well-known banner for Arqana's December Breeding Stock Sale.

The Castlebridge Consignment, which has bases in Newmarket and at Castlebridge Stud in County Meath, Ireland, has been absent from the Arqana sales grounds since 2017, but this week they returned with a group of nine fillies in training, broodmare prospects and mares in foal that will sell in Saturday's select session.

Castlebridge co-director Andrew Mead was on-site early Thursday morning to oversee setup in cour C.

“We've tended to focus on the Tattersalls and Goffs sales in Ireland,” Mead said. “Those have been going very well for us, but we reached a point where we thought it was time to come back to Deauville in December. The sales have been steadily improving and we had enough horses this year to go to Goffs, Tattersalls and Arqana.”

Mead said that as buyers descend upon the sales grounds, he expects to see a mix of both familiar faces and new ones.

“You'll see some of the same faces arriving in Deauville to try to buy the horses that they didn't manage to buy at the previous sales, but there also is very much an element that you'll see different faces here that didn't attend Tattersalls in Newmarket or Goffs in Ireland,” he explained. “To some degree, we're putting our horses in front of a different audience, but at the same time, there are many of the same faces attending all the sales. So you're perhaps getting the best of both worlds at Arqana.”

The Castlebridge consignment includes several promising fillies that could go on to further their racing success next year.

“Of the fillies in training, we've got two from Germany that are very attractive,” Mead said. “We have a filly called Libre (Ire) (Exceed and Excel {Aus}) (lot 118), who is a lovely black-type filly, and we have a filly called Goldana (Galileo Gold {GB}) (lot 141) who won a stakes race in her last start. We also have a lovely filly from Italy who is a wildcard, Romagna Mia (GB) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}) (lot 190). She won her last [black-type] start in Italy. She looks to have plenty of racing still in her and she'll make a lovely broodmare as well.”

The consignment's group of broodmare prospects includes lot 93, Vouchsafe (Ire) (Kingman {GB}), a three-quarter sister to four-time Group 1 winner Moonlight Cloud (GB) (Invincible Spirit {Ire}); lot 151, Loch Lundie (Ire) (Shamardal), a stakes-placed filly from the immediate family of G1 Fillies Mile winner Lyric Of Light (GB) (Street Cry {Ire}); and lot 179, Thunder Beauty (Ire), a 5-year-old listed stakes-winning daughter of Night of Thunder (Ire) who ran second in this year's G2 Duke Of Cambridge S.

Lot 56, Sweet Mademoiselle (Fr) (Free Eagle {Ire}), a half-sister to Group 1 winner Zellie (Fr) (Wootton Bassett {GB}) in foal to Almanzor (Fr), and lot 171, Boyne River (GB), a winning daughter of Kingman (GB) in foal to Night of Thunder (Ire), both represent the consignment as in-foal mares.

A perennial leading vendor, The Castlebridge Consignment was the leading seller at the Goffs November Foal Sale and a top three consignor at the Goffs November Breeding Stock Sale. They celebrated a successful Tattersalls December Mares Sale as they led the auction with 28 sold for a gross of over 5.4 million gns, headlined by the sale of Group 3 scorer Tranquil Lady (Ire) (Australia {GB}) for 2.7 million gns.

“We've been very lucky over the years and we seem to keep rolling along in terms of having good sales at Castlebridge,” Mead said. “I think what's behind it all is the staff at the sales, who are amazing, but also we've got a marvelous backroom team who work extraordinarily hard leading up to the sales for about four months and through the weeks of the sales. We owe all our success to the people who work for us because without them, it just wouldn't happen.”

Mead shared his thoughts on the market ahead of the final breeding stock sale of the season.

“We arrived here in Deauville straight from a very strong sale in Newmarket,” he said. “I think anybody from the horse industry following sale results would say it was a remarkable sale. We had horses selling in both the Sceptre Sessions and the non-Sceptre sessions, and we found that the market was equally strong across the board for whatever part of the sale we were selling in. Prior to that, we had come straight from a very strong Goffs sale where we had a lot of foals and they sold extremely well. I think all sale companies at the moment are riding something of a crest of the wave. They're all doing well, they're all having great sales and let's hope Arqana equally finishes the season in the same style.”

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