Record sale in Australia

Australia's Magic Millions yearling auction, which ended its select selling on Sunday, set records for gross receipts and average price.

The four select sessions featured the final yearlings by Danehill, Australia's dominant sire until his death in 2003 at age 17. One of those, a colt out of the winning Diesis mare Silken Whisper, brought the auction's highest price of $950,000 Australian, or about $721,525 U.S. Coolmore agent Demi O'Byrne bought the Danehill colt from Strawberry Hill Stud and said the colt would remain in Australia for his early training.

Overall, the four select sessions sold 558 lots for about $49,715,235 U.S., for an average price of about $89,096 U.S. In Australian dollars, those figures represented a record gross of $65,432,000 and a record average of $117,262. Overall, the 2005 select figures gained 5 percent in gross revenue and 7 percent in average price.