Record prices at Royal Welsh sale

The four-year-old Welsh section C stallion, Uphill Tom Thumb, created a record at Brightwells Royal Welsh Sale when he sold on the second day for £14,500.

Tom Thumb, who has no show ring experience but staghunted with his Okehampton-based owner, Cathy Pearse, was offered with a reserve of £2,000, and was bought by St Clears-based Alan Pearce for an overseas client.

Dave and Cathy Pearse bought Tom Thumb’s dam, Balimou Bizzie Lizzie, for £100 and paid £200 for his sire, Windwillow Viscount, who has now been sold on.

Performance animals were in demand at the sale, where the top first-day figure of £6,500 – almost double the previous record price for a gelding – was paid for Lady Forwood’s six-year-old section D, Mowcastle More Magic.

More Magic, who was bred by the Machin family before being bought by Lady Forwood at this sale as a yearling for £700, was broken in by her husband, 77-year-old Sir Peter Forwood, and has been ridden to many successes this year by their daughter, Jane Waller.

Among their achievements in 2002 were winning the ridden gelding class at the Royal Welsh Show, the open class at the P(UK) Winter Championships and the Woodhouse M&M Championship and dressage competition at the NPS Championships.

Included in the prize for the latter were dressage lessons with Carl Hester, which will be taken up by More Magic’s new owner, Anna Ernsting, of Ross-on-Wye.

The top young cob was Jones Brothers and Gwyn and Nicola Jones’s black two-year-oldcolt, Fronarth Telynor-yr-Ail. He was bought for £6,200 by Ann Daunt of the Maestir Stud, Melton Mowbray, and will later be gelded as a riding horse for her granddaughter.

The Synod Stud’s section C consignment of one colt and seven filly foals fetched more than £22,000, averaging at £2,853.

Overall sales were encouraging, with 163 of the 216 animals offered on the first day selling for an average of £705, with the part-breds and geldings averaging £1,273, almost £400 up on last year. More than 40 lots went to overseas buyers.

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