Australia: Sharp Susan tops first session of Inglis sale

American graded winner Sharp Susan helped Australia’s Inglis Easter broodmare sale kick off with a strong “super select” session Tuesday when she topped the three-day auction’s opener at about $1,092,000.

Sharp Susan, whose price was $1.05 million Australian, sold to Britain’s Badgers Bloodstock and was in foal to Street Cry. Sharp Susan won the Grade 2 Lake Placid and Grade 3 Herecomesthebride Stakes in 2007 and placed in three other graded races, including a third in the Grade 1 Garden City in 2007. WinStar Farm and IEAH Stable sold her to Australian breeder Paul Fleming for $2 million at Fasig-Tipton’s 2008 November select sale. Her current 2-year-old by A. P. Indy brought $425,000 from Mark Casse at last month’s Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s March select auction.

The 8-year-old Touch Gold mare was one of two to fetch a seven-figure bid at the Sydney sale. The other was Australian group winner Mimi Lebrock, an 8-year-old Show a Heart mare in foal to Exceed and Excel. She sold to Baramul Stud for about $1,066,000.

This year’s Easter broodmare sale featured a new “super select” session, a reformatting that made year-to-year comparisons difficult. Tuesday’s session sold 133 horses for about $18,776,680, for an average price of approximately $141,178 and a median of about $67,600. The buyback rate was 28 percent, and there were 30 outs from a 235-horse catalog.

Gross, average and median more than doubled from last year’s opening session, which sold 128 horses. The 2011 Day 1 buyback rate was 39 percent after 11 horses were withdrawn from the 200-horse catalog.