Hall of Fame trainer Gai Waterhouse to prepare first foal from her dual G1 winner
Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott prepared Shout The Bar to win two Group 1 races and the powerful training team was determined to make sure they got the chance to train her first foal.
So keen, they paid $3 million for her colt by Home Affairs at the 2025 Inglis Easter Yearling Sale, which started on Sunday.
It was the most paid for a yearling on Day 1 of the sale, surpassing the $2.7 million paid for the brother to Switzerland as Lot 76, and Bott said Waterhouse rallied the troops in an effort to ensure they would go home with him with John Singleton among the group of owners.
“We’ve been beaten a couple of times (today), but there’s just one or two horses in the sale we’ve got the asterisk next to them where we’re not wanting to get beaten and this was certainly one of them,” Bott said.
“It helped having John here and Gai was obviously very keen on this horse as well and we took all her strength into this lot.”
The sale continues a stunning first season on the yearling sale circuit for Home Affairs, who in January set a new Australian first-season sire record when his filly out of Sunlight sold for $3.2m.
THE RING IS HOT 🔥
LOT 158 – we have a new sale topper as @GaiWaterhouse1 / Adrian Bott & @bruceaslade go to $3 million for the HOME AFFAIRS colt out of super mare SHOUT THE BAR 🥂
The mare has proven a worthy investment for @CoolmoreAus having been a $2.7 million 2022… pic.twitter.com/XV5x7wJvgB
— ANZ Bloodstock (@anz_news) April 6, 2025
The result gave Coolmore an early return on its investment, after paying $2.7 for Shout The Bar at the 2022 Chairman’s Sale.
Her two Group 1 wins came in the 1600m Empire Rose Stakes and 2000m Vinery Stud Stakes but Bott expects her son to be more precocious than his dam.
“We want to see him featuring early in the two-year-old races, but he looks like he’s got plenty of scope and class to keep carrying it on throughout his career,” he said.
“Obviously he was a well-credentialled lot and was always going to be well sought-after and he was on our radar for a long time.”
The Home Affairs colt went through as Lot 158, which was part of a frenetic period to start the final hour of Day 1 with three youngsters selling for at least $1.4m in 10 minutes.
Extreme Choice had a colt sell for $1.7m as Lot 155, while the filly by Maurice from three-time Group 1 winner Shoals sold for $1.4m as the following lot.
The strong late results helped bump the Day 1 gross to $63,055,000, which was down on last year’s $68,335,000, but 2024 had 54 more lots sold on opening day, meaning Sunday’s $488,798 average dwarfed the 2024 figure of $373,415.
