‘That’s giving yourself the chance to make a margin’: third anniversary for WBF Thoroughbreds at Riverside

Cover image courtesy of WBF Thoroughbreds

Young Will Forrester is the brain behind WBF Thoroughbreds, an equine education facility based in the Southern Highlands, a little way down the road from Bong Bong Racecourse.

Two years ago, he assembled his first breeze-up draft for the 2021 Inglis Ready2Race Sale and, ever since, it’s been a sale he has targeted specifically as part of his business model. Last year, it returned a handsome dividend when he sold a Justify (USA) colt to Anton Koolman for $300,000.

“That was the best result I’ve had yet in terms of price,” Forrester said, speaking to The Thoroughbred Report. “That colt was a good story. He’s an example of when it can go really well for you, and you can’t always rely on it but it feels very good when it happens.

“I bought him for $50,000 at the Easter Sale. It was a good pedigree that probably got a little bit missed in the sale because Justify was a first-season sire and Easter is very much focused on those big-pedigreed colts. It’s fair to say he made a good return on investment for me.”

It would be easy to get drunk on success like that. Forrester’s Justify colt was a taste of how good the pinhooking game can be, but Forrester isn’t about to kidded at this time of year.

“If it happens again, all well and good, but I’m not going to expect that to happen every year,” he said. “Since I started pinhooking 2-year-olds, I’ve told myself to enjoy it when it goes well because it probably won’t happen, more often than not. You’ve got to stay grounded.”

Forrester will head into next week’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale with a draft of 10. They are all colts, which isn’t unusual for this catalogue (or any breeze-up catalogue), and next week’s sale has just 14 fillies on offer out of the 226 catalogued.

“Sticking with colts is very much aimed at the Asian market,” Forrester said. “Obviously, Hong Kong is racing male horses up there, and even domestically, if you do have an early 2-year-old type of colt that’s coming up quick, it’s a marketable commodity.

“In the past, the sale has always been colt-orientated, but I’m seeing more fillies come through the system and they’re getting to the track through the Ready2Race system, so it might be something that has scope to develop more and more.”

At the time of writing, the last of the Inglis breeze-up sessions was ongoing at Hawkesbury. Forrester had three horses galloping, after which they were heading to Riverside to bunk down ahead of inspections and selling next Tuesday.

Forrester has had five withdrawals from his original draft, but let’s take a look at a few smart ones in the WBF Thoroughbreds draft.

Returning the investment

Earlier this year, Forrester dug deep for six colts to sell at this sale. One of them was Lot 95, a Pierro from the Savabeel mare Galway (NZ), who has already logged a gallop time of 10.61s.

This colt is a half-brother to Kirwan’s Lane (NZ) (Charm Spirit {Ire}), who won the G2 The Ingham last year (formerly The Villiers) and the G3 Hawkesbury Gold Cup. He is also a half-brother to the Kiwi stakes winner Johny Johny (NZ) (Charm Spirit {Ire}).

Forrester went to $150,000 to buy Lot 95 at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale back in April. The colt was sold by Little Avondale Stud. However, of the six colts he owns in this draft, the remaining were all bought at this year’s Inglis Classic Yearling Sale back in February.

They range from the $50,000 he paid Lime Country Thoroughbreds for Lot 99, a colt by The Autumn Sun from the O’Reilly (NZ) mare Gogoreilly (NZ), to the $200,000 he paid for Lot 163, a Deep Field colt from New York Lights (Manhattan Rain) sold by Cannon Hayes Stud.

Lot 163 has the Deep Field aspect all over him. He galloped in 10.79s and he’s by a sire that has worked again and again in Hong Kong. The dam is a three-quarter sister to the dual Group winner Moonovermanhattan (Manhattan Rain), and this is the family of the proven Hong Kong speedster Lucky Bubbles (Sebring).

But stretching to $200,000 is just about the ceiling for Will Forrester, who admits that it’s not a concrete formula when working out how much might return his investment in the Ready2Race Sale.

“At the end of the sale, I’ll reflect on my own results with these horses and see how it’s panned out in that respect,” he said. “A few of those horses I’ve spent decent money on because I felt like that’s what they worth, but also that it will be reciprocated come the sale because they’re good prospects.

“In the current market, and I could be wrong about it, I was spending a cap of $200,000 on the Deep Field (Lot 163). $150,000 was the Pierro from Easter, and then $100,000 for the Dundeel (Lot 206), which is probably the higher end of the pinhooking range for this sale, I would say.”

Traditionally, Forrester’s average yearling spend is $50,000 to $100,000.

“That’s giving yourself the chance to make a margin,” he says. “If you’re spending $200,000 on a yearling, you’re hoping for $250,000-plus back in the sale ring. A lot of things have to go right to get that.”

At last year’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale, the sale average was $103,210. The year before, $109,241. Whether this will be reflective of what vendors can expect next week is anyone’s guess and, as Blake Ryan told The Thoroughbred Report yesterday, no one will know until 50 horses into the sale.

“I made the call on those particular horses earlier this year to extend my budget so I could shoot towards that high end,” Forrester said. “But I’d say probably $50,000 to $150,000 is the range that most people would be focusing on for yearlings for this sale because you’re giving yourself a better chance of getting some return in the ring.”

The WBF draft has horses by Street Boss (USA), Preferment (NZ), Brazen Beau, Magna Grecia (Ire), Ocean Park (NZ) and Dundeel (NZ).

The latter, Lot 206 by Dundeel, was bought by Forrester for $100,000 at this year’s Inglis Classic Sale from Newgate Farm. He is the third foal from the Group 3-placed Stroak (Real Saga) and, as such, is a half-brother to the Capitalist filly Shihonka, who was second in the G3 Vo Rogue Plate.

The Dundeels in the catalogue will invite a degree of discussion next week because the Arrowfield sire surprised almost everyone last year by turning out some very impressive 2-year-olds, and few expected that of Dundeel. They were supposed to be like a fine bottle of Grange, improving with time.

The Ready2Race catalogue has just three by Dundeel, albeit it’s looking likely that only two will make it to Riverside.

Narrowing the focus

For Forrester, the last two years since he’s had a presence in the Ready2Race Sale has taught him a lot about how to do the draft better. It’s like anything; the more you do it, the better and more efficient it gets.

He’s worked out what his personal investment needs to be each October, and his brand has grown considerably. From WBJ Thoroughbreds near Bong Bong, such good horses as Magic Time (Hellbent) and Carif (So You Think {NZ}) have emerged. Forrester is now an equine educator of considerable note.

“I’ve put a lot more focus on the Ready2Run each year,” he said. “I’ve grown the number of horses in the draft, but I’ve also tried to raise the bar as far as quality and class is concerned. I’m taking experiences away from the sale each year, and there have been some considerable challenges that everyone has faced these last few years, like COVID and now maybe the economic situation that everyone is talking about.”

We asked Forrester about what he’s expecting next week at Riverside, and he echoed the same thoughts as many...costs of living, syndicators going quiet, the absence of Singapore. There is a buoyant mood around but there are plenty of concerns.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of people and they’re all saying the same thing,” he said. “There’s a lot of noise about the state of Australia’s economy at the moment, and I think domestically things are pretty tight as regards the middle to lower end of people buying into the market.

“Trainers and syndicators may not be as active, we’re thinking. And then there’s the Asian situation in mind, with Singapore shutting down and Macau up in the air. It’s restricted some of our avenues up there.

“But it’s also one of those things where there are a lot of factors suggesting it might be tough, and it may well be, but the racing and sales scene in Australia has proven itself to be very resilient across all adversity, be that financial or things like the pandemic.”