Vinery Stud’s Ole Kirk has already sired two stakes-winners from his first crop of two year-olds in ill-fated King Kirk and O’ Ole, who runs in the Magic Millions 2YO Classic on Saturday, and the son of Written Tycoon had a sales highlight at the Gold Coast on Friday when his colt from Pop Girl made $700,000.
Consigned by North Bloodstock on behalf of his breeder Neil Werrett, the athletic bay is the third foal of metro winning Snitzel mare Pop Girl, who was also bred and raced by Werrett and is a daughter of Group III placed import Music Review.
The colt was purchased by Mark Player and Rob Roulston of PR Thoroughbreds and interestingly he has a full brother that made $200,000 at the sale last year and has been named Designer with Team Hawkes to train.
Pop Girl is married to Ole Kirk and had another colt last year by him and she is back in foal to him again.
“We have a great affiliation with Ole Kirk. A horse that is dear to us. Our partners really want to back Ole Kirk and we thought Pop Girl was the best example at the sale by the stallion,” said Mark Player.
“Lovely horse, comes off a really good farm and just a horse that we wanted to take home and hopefully the stallion can continue on the fantastic start so far.”
The price was a little higher than they expected to pay, but Player is happy to have the colt with a trainer still to be decided.
“The price is more a reflection of the quality of the horse. This market is a fantastic market and full credit to Magic Millions for having a market as strong as this. The ones you really want, you have to fight for. We spent a lot of time this week being underbidders and it is nice to get out on top of the market,” he said.
“The way we like to do it is that we like to buy our colts for the year and then we sit down with our partners and have lunch and we then have quite vigorous debates around the table as to who should go where, but we try and match the horse to the trainer.”
The Ole Kirk colt is the second purchase at this sale for PR Thoroughbreds, who also secured the Gun Runner colt from Golden Slipper winner Estijaab from the Emirates Park draft for $500,000.
“Absolute champion sire out of a Slipper winner and I think we all know how well Snitzel works with fast mares so we just applied the theory that a fast American sire working with a champion Snitzel mare had to be just a good a chance of success,” said Mark Player.
“We were very attracted to him and he was very high on the list of colts we wanted to get.
“Great walk, great attitude and he had that rich chestnut colour. Great head carriage and we went back again and again. He walked beautifully and had a great presence about him.
“His temperament seems bulletproof and has handled everything at the sales. He’s one of those horses that improved each day of the sale. That was another big tick for us.”
