When you’ve driven a Ferrari, it’s reasonable to think that you’d go back to the same dealership when you’re in the market for a new car.
So it should come as no surprise that the Hayes brothers were keen to see what their Kiwi counterpart Fraser Auret was selling at last year’s NZB Ready To Run Sale at Karaka.
Auret, after all, is the man that sold them sprint king Ka Ying Rising, who was in turn sold to clients of their father David in Hong Kong.
The horse that caught their eye at the sale was a colt by Darley’s brilliant middle distance galloper Ghaiyyath, who Auret had paid $60,000 for as a yearling nine months earlier.
Unlike most of the horses for sale that had only been shown off in a breeze-up, this colt had been to the public trials and had easily dispatched his rivals by a big margin.
Will Hayes admits that while $425,000 might sound like a lot to pay, it could turn out to be a bargain if emerging three-year-old Romantic Encounter has a fraction of the ability of Ka Ying Rising.
He’ll find out soon enough, with the three-year-old set to chase Lindsay Park’s first Caulfield Guineas win since David Hayes won the race with St Covet in 1994 when he lines up in the classic at just his third start on Saturday.
“At the sale we teamed up with Rob Roulston to buy him,” Hayes said.
“He was a bit of an unusual ready-to-run horse because he’d breezed up but he’d also won a trial by 10 lengths and really put the writing on the wall that he was a serious horse.”
“There have been a handful of horses that we’ve bought from them (Fraser Auret) but obviously Ka Ying Rising and Romantic Encounter are the top two.”
“$425,000 is a lot of money but we were happy to get him for that price and it’s nice when they come out and justify your judgement.”
While Romantic Encounter has some way to go to recoup his purchase price, he’s made a promising start to his career with a debut win and a narrow defeat in the G2 Stutt Stakes.
It was that last start Stakes performance, in which the son of Ghaiyyath raced on speed and was only run down late in the race, that convinced connections to lift the bar again to G1 level.
A wide barrier has dented Hayes’ confidence but he remains somewhat bullish that the untapped three-year-old can measure up in an open Guineas, en route to targets over 1800m and 2000m.
Romantic Encounter is rated $26 in Bet365’s Caulfield Guineas market.
“He’s certainly risen to every challenge that we’ve put to him so far,” he said.
“It’s very much throwing him in the deep end to run in a Guineas at his third start but we thought he really put his hand up at Moonee Valley last start.”
“We do think he’s a genuine winning chance but the barrier has certainly dampened that enthusiasm a little bit.”
“One thing that he does have is incredibly good tactical speed, but from barrier 13 it probably takes that away and means we can’t insert ourselves into the race like he did at Moonee Valley where he was a hard horse to get past.”
“We might have to have a look at riding him with cover for the first time in his career and seeing how that looks.”
“We’ll have a chat to Stacky (Dan Stackhouse) about what he thinks as well.
“He is a horse that, as you would’ve seen, he does race in a cross-over (nose band) so we don’t want to set him alight and teach him bad habits by running a race upside down.”
“Being by Ghaiyaath, we think he’s going to be better over a little further and maybe that will be in the autumn and this time next year so what he’s doing now is a bonus.”
