Golden Sixty: The Jewel of the Magic Millions Yearling Sale

Every year, buyers at the Magic Millions Yearling Sale are essentially pursuing the dream of owning an elite racehorse.

It is a combination of desire and optimism on which much of racing is built … and the beauty of the game is that nobody knows who the next champion racehorse will be.

It could come from a bargain-basement buy like Takeover Target (bought for $1375, who went on to earn $6,348,650 in prize-money) or maybe even from the other end of the market, like the latest Magic Millions sales chart-topper, the I Am Invincible colt who sold for $2.7 million last week.

Nobody knows.

Here is a Magic Million’s Sales story worth telling … even if it roots do go back to 2017.

In that year a yearling bred by the Hutchins family and consigned by their Element Hill draft was purchased at the 2017 Gold Coast yearling sale for $120,000 by Riversley Park and Enigma Farm.

Later that year, the horse was offered at the 2017 New Zealand Bloodstock Ready To Run Sale at Karaka by Riversley Park where he was purchased by the Hong Kong based trainer Francis Lui.

It then took a while before the horse arrived in Hong Kong on October 26, 2018 and a further five months past before the horse, named Golden Sixty, stepped out for his first racing assignment in Hong Kong, which he won.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Golden Sixty is now a winner of twenty-two of his twenty-six starts, including six Group 1’s … having amassed HK$122,850,600 in prize-money … along the way having posted an unbeaten sequence of sixteen wins over two-and-a-half seasons (from September 1, 2019 to December 12, 2021) … and having been the Hong Kong Horse Of The Year twice (in both the 2020/21 and the 2021/22 seasons), just to mention a few plaudits.

It should also be mentioned that Golden Sixty holds the all-time prize-money earnings record in Hong Kong having gone past Beauty Generation’s previous record of HK$106,233,750 when winning the FWD Champions Mile in April 2022.

Golden Sixty’s current earnings stands at that HK$122,850,600 … and counting.

He also is only the second horse to complete the Hong Kong racing’s Triple Crown.

Another interesting set of facts is that all of Golden Sixty’s twenty-six starts have been at Sha Tin and he has only had one jockey … Vincent Ho … in the saddle throughout his career.

It’s mind-blowing statistics of the highest order, setting as high a bar for any Magic Millions sales graduate as you are likely to see.

But, then again, that is the dream.

If you haven’t seen him race, do yourself a favour and pencil in a date with the television on January 29, where Golden Sixty will line up in the HK$12 million G1 Stewards’ Cup.

Now a seven-year-old, the shifting tide of the passing years is starting to move against Golden Sixty as highly talented, emerging younger stars such as Romantic Warrior and California Spangle, who both were winners at the Longines International Races meeting in December, threaten to break Golden Sixty’s long-held superiority on the Hong Kong feature racing scene.

California Spangle’s latest win came at the expense of Golden Sixty when he beat the champion home by a neck in the Longines Hong Kong Mile … but there is no way you can count Golden Sixty out of it yet.

That rematch, in which these two runners will be surrounded by a host of other top-class runners, should make scintillating viewing.