Goffs UK’s two-day January Sale starts at 10am each session and is devoted to foals born last year plus mares on Tuesday, and to horses-in-training and point-to-pointers on Wednesday. The sales company have put up a £100,000 bonus for any horse that has run in bumpers or point-to-points this season, sells in the ring and then scores at one of the next two Cheltenham Festivals.
A group of four such horses are eligible for the bonus, including the Andrew Pennock-trained five-year-old Taita Hills (Lot 296), who won a maiden race at Ampton on Sunday. The five-year-old son of Workforce was placed twice in the spring before scoring in a quick time, just a second behind the card’s two open-race winners.
Other interesting lots heading to Doncaster include yearlings who are close relatives of Gr.1 winners Honeysuckle, Bravemansgame, Nube Negra, Lalor and Thyme Hill, the Gr.2-winning mare The Glancing Queen, who is a racing or breeding prospect, and the dual Listed winner Cap Soleil, who is carrying her first foal, a son of exciting Jump stallion Crystal Ocean.
On Saturday the action heads to Cheltenham for an evening sale taking place after Festival Trials Day and dominated by point-to-pointers. The majority are trained in Ireland, but at least four British pointers will be in the line-up, including a trio from Tom and Gina Ellis’s G&T Racing.
They comprise Whosmydaddy (Lot 1), who landed a restricted race at Alnwick when making his racing debut earlier this month, I’m Ravenous (Lot 29), who won at Chaddesley Corbett just after Christmas (pictured above, with Jack Andrews in the saddle), and Big City Roller (Lot 33), who was fourth at Larkhill in November and then won at Sheriff Hutton on Sunday.
The runner-up in that race, the Fran Poste-trained J’Habite En France, who was making his racing debut, is also entered at Cheltenham (Lot 37).