Treasure in Te Aroha

A Te Aroha breeder is likely to pay more attention than most to the blossoming Australian career of  imported galloper Index Linked (Danasili-Fully Invested by Irish River). The five-year-old gelding, who won impressively at Rosehill last Saturday to record his third consecutive Australian win, is a relation of the broodmare Snazzy Lass(Viscount - Na-Ayim by Shirley Heights) whom the Te Aroha breeder purchased for just $4,500 at the National Weanling and Broodmare Sale which concluded the day before the Rosehill race.

The background of Snazzy Lass is contained in a posting on this blog back in December 2012.

Index Linked, whose best effort in five starts over three seasons in France was a fourth placing over 1600m at Deauville, cost agents for Sydney trainer Chris Waller 26,000 Euros at the 2012 July Sale at Newmarket, England. Once again Waller's tutelage looks to have worked the oracle with an imported galloper; placings at his first two starts have been followed by wins at Newcastle, Sandown in Melbourne and then the Rosehill effort over 1500m, where he showed a turn of foot associated with a decent stakes horse, and not what you usually expect to find in a benchmark 75 event.

Shirley Valentine, a Shirley Heights mare and the mother of Index Linked's dam Fully Invested,  is a three-quarter sister to Na-Ayim, the dam of Snazzy Lass. The common denominator is the Raise a Native mare Where You Lead, the third dam of Fully Invested and Snazzy Lass.

The latest sale price for Snazzy Lass is an interesting reflection on how our industry has become so shaped by the yearling sale market.

When Snazzy Lass sold at the same sale four years ago for $70,000, she was a four-year-old maiden mare from an international black-type family in foal to One Cool Cat. Given the disappointing career of her sire it should be a reflection of the mares ability that the resulting foal, a now three-year-old filly named Flower Bomb, can actually gallop - two wins from three starts to date.

Allowing for the promising start with her first runner, by rights better things should be in store for the mare, especially when you consider she has an O'Reilly two-year-old filly and a yearling Savabeel colt, both of whom have been retained by the breeder, to race. She is without a weanling but was sold with a late service to Nadeem.

Apparently, to date anyway, Snazzy Lass has not left a type of yearling sale quality, at least not one to do their pedigree justice. This may have had something to do with none of her progeny been offered for sale and the latest decision to quit her.

While her progeny may lack the yearling sale touch, Snazzy Lass still looks an inspired purchase. It's not everyday a young mare from one of Juddmonte's better families with potential for direct and indirect pedigree upside can be bought for $4,500. The expression one mans junk is another mans treasure has never been more appropriate.