Horse Overview

After all of the cash that gets splashed at the Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand sales early each year it’s often refreshing to head to Tasmania for their annual Magic Millions Sale. Here, we find yearlings a lot more natural in their appearance, not prepped as hard and with a lot more improvement to come. Obviously the pedigrees aren’t as flashy as the bigger sales however there’s always nice horses that emerge from the sale and it represents a good opportunity to try and fish out a ‘bargain’. In the Alpine Eagle x Detonation colt, we really feel we’ve done that.

While Alpine Eagle has had a few handy enough horses, it’s really his female pedigree we were interested in. Physically, he looks far less an Alpine Eagle/High Chaparral type as opposed to his damsire Fastnet Rock. He’s a big, strong, powerful colt extremely typical of a Fastnet Rock, atypical of Alpine Eagle and his sire High Chaparral. This can only be a good thing as if, as his physique suggests, he’s thrown considerably more to the female side of his pedigree we’ve got a fair bit to work with. This colt’s second dam was Australia’s Champion 2yo Filly in 2008/09 winning the G1 Coolmore Stud S and the G3 Sweet Embrace S as well as a narrow second in the G1 Golden Slipper. As so often happens Champion fillies/mares don’t produce much at stud and that’s the case here with the colt’s dam, Detonate, being extremely limited. What generally happens however is the genetics remain strong, despite the lack of racetrack ability, and the ability so often skips a generation. Hopefully that’s the case here.

The mare has produced two foals to race for two winners as far, most notably this colt’s full brother Atomic Eagle, who ran a good second on debut before winning his Maiden second time out. Sadly, he fractured a shoulder in trackwork not long after and was humanely euthanised after just the two starts however seemingly had a lot more to offer. He too went through the same sale for $30k, two year’s ago.

By all reports from Tasmania’s leading breeder, Armidale Stud, the colt has become very fond of himself, and the fillies in recent times and would benefit from being gelded. Physically, he’s big and strong already so it will obviously help on that side of the equation also. He will be transferred to Victoria this week and gelded prior to heading to Brad Pearson to be broken in.