Written Tycoon and Yulong end Book One on a high note

Written Tycoon’s uncanny knack of producing coveted yearlings and Yulong’s reputation for buying and selling quality stock both came to the fore before the curtain came down on book one of the Magic Millions Gold Coast Sale on Saturday night.

A day of high drama on the Gold Coast, where an unsafe racetrack forced the postponement of Magic Millions Raceday, continued into the evening as two Written Tycoon colts sold for a combined $1.45 million within the space of an hour, before Yulong sold the first foal by world-class sprinter In Her Time to Mornington trainer Matt Laurie for $800,000.

Having bought the Written Tycoon colt out of Graciousness (Lot 909) for $750,000, Yulong owner Mr Zhang effectively made a net profit of $50,000 on those two transactions and the farm’s Chief Operating Officer Sam Fairgray expressed immense satisfaction with their purchase, who will join the Price-Kent Racing stable.

“Obviously Written Tycoon is a sire of sires and this boy is a beautiful colt, so we’re really pleased to add him to our racing team.

“It’s a very good pedigree with stallions in the family, so hopefully he can perform for us on the racetrack and then end up in the stallion barn with us.

“He’s in the style of a very sharp Capitalist / Winning Rupert type of horse, so he definitely looks the part and we hope he’ll be up and going early.”

Well-bred colts were definitely the theme of the night and that trend continued when a colts syndicate put together by Laurie outlasted their rival bidders to secure Lot 965 (I Am Invincible x In Her Time).

Yulong purchased In Her Time, who was served by Written Tycoon in the last breeding season, for $2.2 million when she was in foal to ‘Vinny’ at the 2022 Inglis Chairman’s Sale. The resulting colt really caught the eye of Laurie, who has made a habit of winning big-money VOBIS races in recent years.

“We thought this was a really smart buy of a quality colt,” said Laurie.

“His mum [In Her Time] was an absolute star, and this boy really took our eye. When we first saw him we were pretty impressed, and we recently put a stallion group together so we thought he’d be a great place to start for that.

“He’s a very well-balanced colt, he’s got a lot of strength to him and is very well put together. He’s just a quality animal, which is what you would expect from his pedigree and from a quality farm like Yulong.

“We thought he was a very fair price. Maybe what happened with the races might have dulled the night session at the sales, but it all worked out pretty well for us.”