DANSILI PUTS SPRING INTO O'GORMAN

A small Newmarket-based consigning team were responsible for the first significant sale of the session,
a 120,000gns Dansili colt (Lot 118) out of a sister to Champion Filly User Friendly. Run by former jockey Emma O’Gorman and her partner, Armando Duarte, Seven Springs Stables hit the jackpot when Hong Kong-based clients of agent Anthony Stroud signed for the youngster, a 17,000gns purchase at the October sale. 

The same vendors had one of the key successes at last year's breeze-up when selling the subsequent Gr 1 winner of the Criterium de Saint-Cloud Paita for 32,000gns. O’Gorman, whose father Bill is a trainer in Newmarket, rode 150 winners on the Flat until her retirement from the weighing room six years ago. She said: “I’ve always looked at yearlings, but the only way to get into them was to go through the Breeze-up route. “I didn’t have orders from trainers, so I had to look for cheap yearlings I could prepare and ride myself. The aim is to prove we can select a good horse.” O’Gorman shares a yard on the Hamilton Road with her brother, P J, who is close to taking out his own trainer’s licence. Her boyfriend, Duarte, is an amateur rider who comes from Portugal.

Of the Dansili colt, O’Gorman said: “We’re putting eight horses through this sale, six that I own and two for other people, and we always thought he was our best hope. He was really correct and very handsome. The pressure’s off now.”

Date: 15 April 2005