Last week I made a couple of trips to Newmarket sales where I marvelled at the seemingly never-ending stream of - mainly overseas - buyers keen to pick up second-hand UK and Irish thoroughbreds, writes Tony Stafford. Not just pick them up, but happy to pay handsomely for them.

The Australians set the pace and it was just two days after the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training sale ended with record receipts that the penny finally dropped.

As I waited for the afternoon’s high-class jumping at Ascot and Wetherby and Newmarket’s final day’s action of 2022 with a couple of Listed races, to begin, I had a quick look at the early results.  Two Australian venues had been in operation, Flemington in Melbourne and Rosehill in Sydney as far as the newspaper was concerned – there are umpteen tracks going on Down Under all the time at a lower level of course that we never hear about.

There were results for nine races at Flemington, many of them Group events including two at G1 level, with the Victoria Derby and its first prize of £736k leading the way. The total of winners’ prizes alone, in Racing Post monetary calculation, was an eye-watering £2,360,000 so the total value of the races as the Spring Carnival continued, with the highlight being the Melbourne Cup tomorrow, would have been nearer £5 million.

The Post carried only three results from Rosehill, but the main race of the day, the XXXX Golden Eagle over seven furlongs, carried a full field of 20 runners. It comprised 18 Southern Hemisphere four-year-olds and two Northern Hemisphere three-year-olds having their first runs in Australia and accompanied to ride them by Jamie Spencer and Frankie Dettori.

The winner was a gelding called I Wish I Win (wishes can come true!), trained by Peter Moody, who had bought into the horse after his first three races (no wins) and ridden by Luke Nolen. The jockey, of course, is best known here for his narrow Royal Ascot win on Black Caviar ten years ago when he gave the great mare’s many backers a scare before getting the verdict, and he was again enjoying the best of a desperate finish at Rosehill Gardens.

Second, a nose behind, was the filly Fangirl, trained by Chris Waller and ridden by Hugh Bowman, the team behind the great Winx, who had by all accounts a successful birth recently after some difficult experiences at stud since her retirement from the track.

Talking about Royal Ascot, I had sat next to Waller at lunch a couple of hours before his outstanding sprinter Nature Strip obliterated the opposition in the King’s Stand Stakes on the opening day of the meeting. This was the 21^st victory of his then 40-race career. He has won and been third in two more big sprints at home since returning to action this Australian spring.

The difference between victory and defeat has rarely been as stark as in this race, especially considering the cigarette paper thin margin. The winner’s prize was a massive £2,833,333 – second got £1,075,268, not bad but almost £2 million less than the winner! As to how Messrs Spencer and Dettori got on, Jamie will have been content with his sixth place, beaten barely two lengths on the former David Simcock-trained Light Infantry. Sixth prize was £94,086 for the colt now trained by the team of Ciaron Meyer and Englishman David Eustace.

Third to fifth were respectively £537,634, £268,817 and £134,408. Dettori was seventeenth on Welwas, previously with Jean-Claude Rouget in France. He and the trio finishing behind him, still picked up £5,376, more than the winners of the opening two-year-old maidens at Newmarket on Saturday and comfortably more than any of the seven Wolverhampton all-weather contests that evening.

Total money for the one race was a remarkable £5,270,000. The winner got almost half a million quid more than tomorrow’s Melbourne Cup hero, but there are umpteen European connections in the race that stops the nation. I make it that half the horses in the 24-runner line-up have emanated from the UK mostly, France or Ireland, and the favourite at 5/2 is trained by James Ferguson, son of former Godolphin king pin and now agent, John, and in just his third full season with a licence.

Ferguson’s representative is Deauville Legend, winner last time out of the Great Voltigeur Stakes at York. Again, one of only two three-year-olds in the field, he will be trying to emulate the 2018 winner, Cross Counter, trained by Charlie Appleby, who beat Hughie Morrison’s Marmelo after running a close second in the same York race that Deauville Legend won.

One familiar name is the five-year-old gelding Serpentine, two years after his surprise Derby win for Aidan O’Brien and Coolmore. Now a gelding, he ran a good second in a minor prep race at Flemington on Saturday. He carries 3lb less than the favourite!

We mentioned the other three-year-old, Hoo Ya Mal, last week. The Derby second to Desert Crown was sold for £1.2 million at the boutique Kensington Gardens auction on the eve of Royal Ascot. From then until his dispatch to Australia, Hoo Ya Mal was in the care of George Boughey, tasked to handle the colt’s preparation after the sale until his departure.

Occupants of properties in a town with restricted accommodation can be a moving feast. I’m pretty sure though that eight of tomorrow’s field are trained by young men (including Boughey), generally assistant trainers at the time, who shared a house owned in Newmarket by George Scott a few years back.

Boughey, Ed Crisford, Ferguson and the brothers David and Harry Eustace were all at one time common tenants in Scott’s house. Harry Eustace, 22 winners on his card this year on only his second full season, is not involved tomorrow save cheering on his brother, but the others are.

Crisford junior trains, with father Simon, the other long-time former Godolphin mainstay. He, unlike Ferguson senior, still has plenty to say in that operation although none of the father-son duo’s horses are in Godolphin ownership. Their runner, Without A Fight, is a five-year-old gelding, winner of seven of his 17 starts. He is a son of Teofilo, as was Cross Counter.

That takes us to three, but step forward David Eustace, elder son of former dual purpose trainer James. He and his co-trainer, the extravagantly attired Ciaron Maher, have five representatives in the line-up, one more than last year when fourth and sixth places earned £275k for the stable’s owners.

One man determined to be there was Richard Ryan, racing manager for Teme Valley, fresh from the win of Bayside Boy, owned in partnership with Ballylinch Stud, at 33/1 in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on Champions Day at Ascot.

Requiring to be in Berkshire prevented Ryan’s presence in Australia for Numerian’s prep race in the Caulfield Cup in which he was a close fifth. Numerian, once with Joseph O’Brien, is now in the care of Annabel Neasham, one of the main buyers at last week’s sale. When asked whether she had an owner for one of her expensive acquisitions, she suggested there might be 200 potential owners champing at the bit! I bet some of her counterparts at Newmarket found that hard to take.

After Melbourne, of course, it’s off to the Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland, far from the favourite venue for my friend Harry Taylor who prefers some Californian heat at Santa Anita. Sorry mate, at least you have the chance to see the astonishing Flightline in the Classic. Baaeed’s fall from grace in the Champion Stakes at Ascot leaves the way clear for a coronation, US style, late on Saturday. It’s being shown on ITV 3 on both Friday and Saturday and will be well worth waiting up for. [The Classic is due off at 9.40pm, so not too late - Ed.]

The American horses trying, in vain most likely, to match Flightline in the Classic are being left to their own devices, and in the other dirt races, too, apart from some Japanese challenges. But in the turf contests they will hard pressed to keep the lid on what looks like a stronger European challenge than for some time. Kinross and Modern Games set a decent standard in the Mile, while Charlie Appleby looks to have a stranglehold on the Turf with Nations Pride and Rebel's Romance heading the market.

I pass on a humorous note about one rider going off to the meeting with an obvious chance. Jason Hart, who rode Safe Voyage at Keeneland in 2020, is pleased to take that experience with him for his ride on the remarkable Highfield Princess in the Turf Sprint. The three-time Group 1 winning five-year-old vies for favouritism with Wesley Ward’s speedball Golden Pal.

Hart won last week at Newcastle on the Wilf Storey-trained Going Underground, delighting owner Herbert Hutchinson in the process. When told Hart would be unable to ride him at Newcastle this Friday night as he was going to the US, Mr H asked can we not claim him? Afraid not Herbert, you’ll have to make do with Kevin Stott!

- TS