ThoroughBid, the online sales platform, concluded its first-ever auction on Sunday, which was headed by eight-year-old mare Jolie Comtesse at £60,000.
The daughter of Evasive is a half-sister to this year’s Goodwood Cup winner Trueshan and is from the family of Irish St Leger hero Flag Of Honour.
She was offered in foal to Chapel Stud’s Planteur by Dunraven Stud and it was AK Stud who struck the winning bid for the mare.
Mark Gichero of MG Bloodstock, who acted as agent for Jolie Comtesse, said: “I am delighted with the sale of Jolie Comtesse and the overall experience using ThoroughBid was great.
“It was exciting to see the bids fly in throughout the day and I even ended up buying one for myself!”
Kilbarchan was the second most expensive lot to sell on Sunday as the daughter of Jukebox Jury, offered by JD Moore, was purchased by Richard Burton for £21,000.
The five-year-old, who won three times when trained by Mark Johnston, produced a Sea Moon colt as her first foal earlier this year and was subsequently covered by Blue Bresil earlier this year.
Burton added: “I have recently set up a small business called Longner Bloodstock to run a few mares and foals from the farm at home. Will [Kinsey] suggested I take a look at her as she is by a very popular stallion in Jukebox Jury and has a very commercial cover by Blue Bresil.
“I liked what I saw and was delighted to get her. All being well, the plan will be to sell the stock either as foals or as stores.”
“I am delighted with the sale of Jolie Comtesse and the overall experience using ThoroughBid was great”
Reflecting on ThoroughBid’s first ever auction, the company’s Head of Consignment James Richardson said: “Whichever way we look at it, it’s a mammoth achievement to get this far to actually launch to the world, conduct a sale and transact horses.
“We were very conscious we wanted to get the product out to market and show the world. It’s one thing saying ‘we’re coming’ and going to do x, y and z. You actually have to go and do that. Now having done so, we want to sure we’ve learnt from our first experience, implement any minor changes or tweaks that we will feel make things much better.
“I was pleased as punch that our first catalogue had horses from France, Ireland and England – that was quite a feat in itself. To then have the same sort of representation in the purchasing gave us the same level of satisfaction.
“Everybody, whether they participated in the auction as bidders, vendors and purchasers were very positive with feedback.”
The team at ThoroughBid plan to evaluate Sunday’s sale and are already thinking looking ahead to when they will stage a second auction.
Richardson added: “We will announce the next sale imminently. Whilst it is super flexible and gives people the ability to bid and transact from anywhere and anytime, it would be naïve of us to not respect the face that October is an absolute mammoth month for bloodstock sales.
“What we don’t want to do is squeeze in somewhere and get completely overlooked. From our perspective once the National Hunt season kicks in that gives another string to our bow.
“Therefore, I don’t think we’d be as concerned as about the busy sales calendar when we get into the end of October onwards. We’re very conscious of not trying to run before we can walk, it is most likely we will hold a sale just after [Tattersalls] Horses in Training.
“We’re hopefully here to stay and we have every intention of being a regular part of the furniture within bloodstock sales.”