THE TALKING $3M COLT ONE TO WATCH

Sydney, April 21 NZPA - The precocious colt may have had an inkling of future expectations when the auctioneer's gavel thumped down at the three million dollar mark.

He pooped in the sale ring.

It's odds-on the poor bloodstock employee who scooped up the dung silently cursed, wishing that it was him who was buying -- or even better, selling -- rather than shovelling.

Instead, it was South African Charles Laird who put in the winning bid at this week's Easter yearling sales in Sydney, on behalf of reclusive billionaire and Freedom Furniture boss Marcus Jooste.

The $A3m ($NZ3.56m) was an Australasian record and the feature of a phenomenal three-day sale, in which 403 horses were sold for an average of just under $A290,000.

Fourteen sold for $A1m or more, five of them reaching the $A2m mark.

To some, buying an unraced horse in the hope that he will be a champion on the race track and then in the stallion barn is madness.

It's not the ultimate gamble. That has to be Russian roulette. But many consider this bloodstock buying lurk a close second.

For every Redoute's Choice, Australasia's hottest sire and daddy of the A3m colt, there are thousands of horses who don't live up to their sale price.

But there's a romance about the business. It's fuelled by dreams -- and most of the thousands attending the Inglis sale dreamed of owning Redoute's Choice or buying one of his offspring.

Unfortunately for them, they didn't come cheaply.

While business tycoons took on sports stars and the major studs battled out the bidding for the best horseflesh on offer, others more worried about petrol prices took a back-seat and watched in awe under the Morton Bay fig tree outside the sale ring.

"No way," said David Haworth, horse trainer from Foxton, when asked if he was buying at the sale. Haworth has a dour Kiwi stayer, Three Chimneys, in tomorrow's Sydney Cup.

Three Chimneys is worth a few million less than Redoute's Choice, but he has a chance of taking home a major part of the $A800,000 prizemoney in the Sydney Cup and that is part of the appeal of the racing game.

A horse from the styx in New Zealand can still line up at Royal Randwick and show where the best stayers come from. It just doesn't happen very often these days.

So what was was so appealing about the three million dollar boy?

"He's like an attractive woman on the street -- he talks to you," successful buyer Laird told reporters, many of whom in the male category were trying to remember the last time an attractive woman in the street talked to them.

Redoute's Choice was a potential champion on the track. He won five races, including the group one Blue Diamond Stakes, before sent to the stud barn.

There he performed even better. He was rookie sire of the year in Australia in 2003-2004, but that was just the first course.

In the past two seasons he has sired the winners of the Golden Slipper Stakes, the world's richest two-year-old race, run at Sydney's Rosehill course. His offspring have won more than $A14.6m

His service fee is $A220,000 -- so he's probably the highest paid gigolo in the southern hemisphere -- and his owners are considering raising it to $A300,000.

Little wonder then that he was the buzz of the sale, which attracted strong international interest particularly from Dubai, England, South Africa and New Zealand.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa bought a Redoute's Choice colt for $2.3m, while Sir Patrick Hogan, from Cambridge Stud, paid $A1.2m for another colt by the same sire.

In all, 35 of Redoute's Choice's progeny went through the ring, fetching an aggregate $A24.88m, at an average of $A710,817.

While those prices were mostly out of the reach of New Zealand buyers, a couple of the colts are heading across the ditch.

Hogan bought his colt on behalf of the syndicate that owns his champion sire, Zabeel.

He said it was time to introduce new blood to his broodmare paddock and Redoute's Choice was the obvious choice.

He has amazing success with Sir Tristram and Zabeel as stallions and is hoping that his new colt will perform on the racetrack and then at stud.

"Maybe lightning will strike three times," he told NZPA.

It wasn't all Redoute's Choice. Colts or fillies by eight other sires, including Zabeel, hit the $A1m mark.

There were some happy sellers.

Yarraman Stud, in New South Wales, sold the top three lots, fetching $7.9m for them.

"This might be just the happiest 24 hours of my life," the stud's Arthur Mitchell told reporters.