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Daughter of I Am Invincible set to visit Justify.
The Group 1 winner Invincibella (I Am Invincible) was one of the standout lots on the first day of the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale and she did not disappoint, creating fireworks early in the day when Coolmore's Tom Magnier went to $1.3 million for the daughter of Yarraman Park's I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) and she will be another high-class mare set to visit Justify (Scat Daddy).
Catalogued as Lot 12 and offered as part of the Glenesk Thoroughbreds draft, the mare won 12 times including last year's Tattersall's Tiara (Gr 1, 1400m) and four times at Group 2 level which saw her amass $3,075,103. The mare also completed the rare feat of landing three consecutive runnings of the Magic Millions Fillies and Mares Plate (1300m) at the lucrative race day in January.
Purchased for $185,000 by Denise Martin's Star Thoroughbreds at the 2015 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale from the Sledmere Stud draft, Invincibella is out of the unraced Galileo (Sadler's Wells) mare Abscond.
James Bester was effusive in his praise for the daughter of Yarraman Park's I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit). "She won $3 million on the track, so her race record speaks for itself as a Group 1 winner, but beyond that she is such a great individual. She has a great head, so typical of the I Am Invincibles with a great hindquarter on her, a wonderful shoulder and girth and she is truly a queen.
"With that awesome outlook, she always stops and looks out into the distance and she had that real look of eagles about her. More importantly, she's also out of a Galileo mare and a good Galileo mare who produced a Listed winner by Sizzling.
"As far as we're concerned she's the perfect mix of pedigree, physique and race performance. What more could you want?
"Justify is a stallion who we've been buying the very best mares in the country for and we're obviously delighted to get her for Justify.
"Justify is getting, in both hemispheres, the best book of mares of any stallion in history. He's getting a lot of them and of the highest quality and John Magnier's commitment to him is 100 per cent - it's absolute - and this just continues on that path."
Of the price-tag, Bester continued: "Last year, I sold a mare to Coolmore for Justify in Global Glamour who made $1.5 million and, in a stronger market with more international participation, we figured she might have made up to $1.5 million and we thought $1 million was the bottom line. We suspected she'd fall somewhere in that bracket."
The mare is half-sister to Listed winner and Group 2-placed gelding Secret Blaze (Sizzling). Abscond herself is a half-sister to Group 1-placed Light Up Manhattan (Manhattan Rain).
Further back the mare's third dam is Listed scorer Taciturn (Noble Bijou) and she produced eight winners, headed by Group 1 winner The Hind (McGinty) and Oregon Star (Oregon) - who was successful at Listed level.
Martin said she was delighted with Monday's result and was encouraged to see Coolmore acquire the six-year-old, especially given she is out of a mare by operation's superstar stallion Galileo.
"We are delighted she is going to Coolmore Stud," said Martin. "I think there was a feeling within the group that she would be of interest to a number of breeders and we would have been delighted to learn that she was going to any number of studs throughout Australasia, but when we were informed that Tom Magnier had successfully bid for the mare we were extremely delighted.
"She is a beautiful horse. She is a lovely big mare out of a Galileo mare, so they have an understanding of the significance of the Galileo mares and we have a biased belief that she will be a wonderful broodmare."
Martin said that given the economic uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, it was difficult to know how much Invincibella was going to make at the auction.
"I think it is too difficult to go into a sale like this with a firm belief that you are going to secure any particular sum for the horse," said Martin.
"You can have in your mind what you think the mare might be worth, but at the end of the day we understand that the breeding industry is the same as any industry in Australia at present - it is a little bit unknown and the climate for all sorts of investment right now rather subdued, so to sell her for $1.3 million in this particular economic climate right now is very satisfying.
"She was $185,000 purchase here, so for the owners to earn from her $4.3 million is not bad at all!
"When I bought her as a yearling, she was bred off a $11,000 service fee and at the time I Am Invincible hadn't reached the stellar heights he has now, but throughout the years she just got better and stronger as she got older and remarkably her best racing year was when she was six.
"She was wonderfully handled by Chris Waller and his team and she won the Magic Millions here six months ago, she won Tattersall's Tiara just over 12 months ago and a second Dane Ripper just over 12 months ago.
"You can go into any auction, bloodstock or something else and your expectation might be X and the market might only be prepared to buy Y, so we think it is a realistic price of her, maybe we would have liked a little bit more, but at the end of the day that's what the buyers were prepared to pay and we are very elated overall with the mare."
