Roger James is already dreaming of Cox Plate victory with the high-priced The Autumn Sun colt that he bought on Wednesday’s third day of this year’s Karaka Yearling Sale.
The top New Zealand trainer went to $900,000 for the colt from the More Than Ready mare Pristino, which makes him a half-brother to former New Zealand Filly of the Year, Dijon Bleu.
That purchase price made the bay colt the second highest-priced lot of this year’s Karaka sale and the most expensive product to date of first-season sire The Autumn Sun.
Chris Waller bypassed the Cox Plate with The Autumn Sun after his Caulfield Guineas romp but James, who has enjoyed great success in Australia with the likes of Silent Achiever, Sixty Seconds and Giovana, left no doubt about the race he would like to set his colt for.
“It’s a silly thing to say at this stage of his career but I’ve said for a number of years now, and I have won some nice races in Australia, but I’d love to win a Cox Plate before I retire and that’s the sort of horse he probably is…that we think he is,” James said.
James, who prepared Silent Achiever to finish third in the 2014 Cox Plate, said he started formulating a plan to secure the Landsdowne Park colt at the earliest point of the inspections stage.
“We’ve been working on him from the day we first clapped eyes on him,” James, who trains his team in partnership with Robert Wellwood, said.
“I just could not pick a fault in him. I just think he oozed everything that any good horse I’ve had anything to do with had.”
James’s purchase was one of two big lots in the first half of Day 3 with Tony Fung paying $850,000 for a colt by Savabeel out of the O’Reilly mare Relentless Desire, who is a half-sister to multiple Australian Group 1 winner Metal Bender and a sister to the dam of Amarelinha.