Half-brother to Black Caviar sold for £3.4m

A HALF-brother to champion sprinter Black Caviar was sold for an Australian record A$5 million (£3.42 million) at the Easter yearling sale in Sydney yesterday.

The as yet unnamed colt, who shares Black Caviar’s mother, or dam, Helsinge, was bought by Australian bloodstock firm BC3 Thoroughbreds for A$2 million more than the previous record.

BC3 Thoroughbreds purchased Black Caviar’s half-sister Belle Couture for A$2.6 million at the same sales last year, while a third Helsinge progeny, three-year-old colt All Too Hard, has already won three Group 1 races. Black Caviar, who was bought by trainer Peter Moody for A$210,000 at the Melbourne yearling sales in 2007, is scheduled to go for her 25th win in as many races on Saturday at Randwick racecourse, next door to the venue of the sale.

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Moody, who has said Black Caviar will not run in the TJ Smith Stakes if the going is heavy, was impressed by the six-year-old mare’s half-brother. “He’s like poetry in motion when you see him move,” he told ABC. “Every muscle moves at the right time with the next one. When you see Black Caviar when she moves, you can see he’s inherited a lot of that athletic ability that she’s got.”

Meanwhile, Hamilton Park have increased prize money for 2013, with more than £750,000 up for grabs at the Lanarkshire track’s 18 fixtures this coming season. Hamilton new Flat campaign gets under way on Sunday, 5 May with £763,750 available in prize money across its summer and autumn meetings, a 4 per cent rise on last year’s £733,100 budgeted prize money.

Despite last year’s challenging rainfall levels and weather conditions which forced officials to abandon four meetings and hit Hamilton’s finances by more than £200,000, the executive has committed to track improvements while yet again increasing its contribution to prize money for the 2013 season.

The course has also made £150,000 worth of improvements on areas of the track hit hard by last year’s unprecedented weather., including extensive drainage work to the entire racing surface and enhanced non-slip surfacing around the parade ring and walkways.

Highlights of 2013 include the running of the John Smith’s Scottish Stewards Cup and the £40,000 Glasgow Listed Stakes on the same card on Friday, 19 July.

Other standouts are the £40,000 Braveheart Listed Stakes on Friday, 17 May and the historic Ladbrokes’ Lanark Silver Bell racenight on 23 August. Hamilton chief executive Vivien Kyles said: “Despite the financial implications of those call-offs we were determined to increase prize money, as Hamilton Park always does every year, and also commit to a major investment in the track to minimise risk of abandonments this season.”