Smooth Fella colt fetches $18,000

Press, 26 January 1988, Page 36

Smooth Fella colt fetches $18,000

By

JEFF SCOTT

Smooth Bert, a Smooth Fella colt closely related to the 1984 New Zealand Cup winner, Camelot, fetched the top price of $lB,OOO at the South' Island Select Yearling (Standardbred) Sale at the Addington Showgrounds yesterday. As expected, yesterday’s draft reached nowhere near the dizzy heights of the previous day’s New Zealand Premier Sale, however the auctioneers, Pyne, Gould, ■ Guinness, could feel well satisfied with yesterday’s average of $5400, the result of 74 lots selling for an aggregate of $398,050. Smooth Bert, offered by a New Zealand Metropoli-. tan Trotting Club committeeman, Mr David French, and his brother John, was the only purchase on the day by the publicly-listed Kenwood Stud company of Cambridge.

Smooth Bert is from the unraced Midshipman

mare, Betty Bromac, which comes from a family boasting the other good winners, Calablue (1:56.6), Hubert Campbell (1:57.8) and Swapzee Bromac (1:54). Stock by the Cambridge-based stallion, Smooth Fella, were again keenly sought, with four colts selling for a total of $63,000. Smooth Fella also provided four of the five top lots yesterday. Jointly the secondhighest were Smooth Jamie (Smooth FeliaCaithness colt), closely-re-lated to Classiebawn (10 wins), Montrose (1:57.4) and My Glengower (1:58.6); and Guy Melody, a colt by the 1984 Auckland Cup winner, Enterprise, from Cheeko Melody, thus a three-quarter brother to the promising three-year-old Metro Boy and closely-related to Royal Illusion (10 wins), Impresario (1:58.3), Rufus Young Blood (1:59.1), Cardinal Star and Our Maestro, both colts selling for $16,000.

Stock of first-season sires to fetch five-figure sums were Bo Regal (by Bo Scots Blue Chip), which sold for $13,000; Sergeant Hinto (by F. Troop), for $11,000; Mighty Jimby (by Jamie Hanover) for $13,500; and Striking Impulse (by My Striking Force) for $12,000. The highest-priced filly was $B5OO for Jill Eyre, a trotting-bred daughter of Game Pride and Courtechelle (from the same family as Jason McCord). The biggest purchaser at the sale was the Mel-bourne-based company, Inter Ag. Industries and Supplies, which bought seven lots for $41,700, including Striking Impulse, a close relative of the big Australian winners, Double Agent and Armbro Jodie. Aylesbury’s John Seaton also figures prominently, securing four lots for $38,200, including Bo Regal, a close relative of Master Regal (1:55) and Trio (1:55.4).