Sledmere Stud might not have been an active vendor at this week’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale at the Riverside Stables in Sydney, but we still managed to leave our mark on proceedings — figuratively speaking.
One of the highlights of the 2-year-olds in training auction was the sale of a quality Vancouver colt produced by the Exceed And Excel broodmare Seeking Attention. Offered by Baystone Farm of Victoria as Lot 155, the very impressive looking individual was to be secured by Ardross Bloodstock for $250,000, a sum that proved to be the fourth highest realised in the sale.
The first-crop son of Vancouver carries the proud brand synonymous with Sledmere Stud. Furthermore, he had been consigned by our sales team for the 2019 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale where he’d fetched $100,000.
To their very great credit, Baystone Farm had clearly done a very good job breaking and educating Lot 155 in the interim, evidence of which was the manner of his stylish Cranbourne breeze-up.
The Vancouver colt is the seventh foal of the multiple stakes-placed mare Seeking Attention, a five-time winner that saluted in both metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne. Already the dam of a stakes winning juvenile in South Africa in the form of Buckinghamshire (by Lonhro), Seeking Attention is also a half-sister to BRC BTC Classic (Gr.3) winner Stryker, and hails from the celebrated ‘Joy’ family immediately associated with the late-great TJ Smith.
And speaking of industry legends, Ardross Bloodstock — buyer of the Vancouver colt — is the rapidly growing worldwide business of Jamie Piggott, a young bloodstock agent based in Newmarket, England, with an extensive background in the thoroughbred industry on a global scale.
If Jamie’s surname sounds familiar, it is due to the fact that his father is the one and only Lester Piggott, a nine-time winner of the Epsom Derby during one of the all-time great riding careers.