Chad Ormsby has enjoyed plenty of racetrack success this year with pinhooks that he has been unable to sell at the Ready to Run Sale, but the multi-talented horseman had a very different outcome with the standout member of his 2024 Riverrock Farm draft at Karaka on Thursday.
Ormsby trained passed-in 2022 Ready to Run lots Pulchritudinous and Outovstock to win this year’s Gr.1 New Zealand Oaks (2400m) and Gr.3 Manawatu Classic (2000m) respectively, with Pulchritudinous subsequently sold to Australian-based powerhouse Yulong Investments.
On Thursday, Ormsby struck gold in another role. He secured the highest price of the Ready to Run Sale’s second day with the $775,000 sale of Lot 288, a colt by Churchill out of the unraced Pierro mare Bagitol. Ormsby had paid only A$25,000 to buy the colt from the Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale in March.
“We honestly couldn’t believe we were getting such a high-quality colt for that price in Melbourne earlier in the year,” Ormsby said. “We rated him so highly from the moment we first saw him, and he’s turned out exactly how we hoped he would. There’s so many stages where things can go wrong in this business, but all the way through his preparation, he’s just kept on developing. He’s really become the horse we always thought he’d be.”
The colt won a trial at Waipa on October 1, after which Ormsby took a big risk and turned down a significant offer to purchase him privately. Lot 288 subsequently impressed in his breeze-up at Te Rapa later that month, in which he clocked 10.42 seconds.
“He trialled really well before the breeze-ups, and we knew after that performance that we had a pretty special individual,” Ormsby said. “We turned down good money after that trial. It was a lot of money and not easy to say no to, especially for a small operation like ours with only about 10 horses every year.
“But we wanted to promote ourselves and our brand, and we thought the best way to do that was to take the risk, turn down that offer and carry on into the sale. This Ready to Run Sale is our home ground too, it’s our local sale and we believe it’s the best sale of its kind, so we wanted to support the sale as well.”
While Ormsby went into Thursday with high hopes of a price above $500,000, he admits to being blown away by the final price of $775,000. The colt was sold to Patella Bloodstock and is destined for Hong Kong.
“It’s an amazing result and it’s just a credit to the horse, he’s an absolute weapon of an animal,” Ormsby said.