Zoustar share tops Inglis Digital sale at AU$850,000

A share in reigning champion sire Zoustar fetched AU$850,000 and went to Richard Pegum’s Red and Green Bloodstock, a price that again showed how fiercely buyers will pay for access to elite stallion economics. The share was offered by Qatar Bloodstock and landed in the Inglis Digital Australia April (Late) Online Sale, where the top lot was not a horse in training but a piece of breeding-time leverage tied to one of the Southern Hemisphere’s most valuable sires.

What Pegum bought was not simply an asset to trade later. It was a seat in Zoustar’s commercial engine, with mating rights and proximity to a stallion whose offspring continue to dominate the marketplace. Pegum had already spent AU$875,000 on the mare Dancing Alone at last year’s Inglis Chairman’s Sale, and the Zoustar share gave him the kind of stallion access that can shape a breeding program for years. In a market where proven sires are scarce and their best books are crowded, that access is what carried the premium.

The sale also strengthened the case for digital trading as a serious bloodstock venue. Inglis said the April (Late) catalogue carried 554 lots and became the first of its Digital online sales to close across multiple days, broadening the rhythm of the auction beyond a single finish line. The format handled a wide mix of stock, from broodmares and racehorses to yearlings, weanlings, stallion interests and racehorse shares, and the market responded across categories rather than treating the sale as a niche clear-out.

The broodmare session had its own headline when Atlantic Emerald (IRE), in foal to Shinzo, topped that section at AU$410,000. Justin Carey secured the mare and confirmed she was bought for a client of Coolmore, with the appeal centered on the mating with Shinzo. The day before, the companion April (Early) sale was headed by a breeding right in Anamoe that sold for AU$450,000 to Bangaloe Stud’s Julia Ritchie, underscoring how well the online platform has been handling high-end breeding stock.

Zoustar’s result fit a larger pattern. Inglis said the stallion had six AU$1 million-plus yearlings at the 2026 Easter Yearling Sale, and his progeny averaged AU$680,962 there. The AU$850,000 share came after a AU$1.3 million Zoustar share sold through Inglis Digital in June 2024, which Inglis described as the most expensive stallion share ever sold at public auction in Australia, while another share reached AU$1.1 million in the April (Late) sale a year ago. For the market, the message was clear: when a sire keeps producing blue-chip yearlings, his equity trades like blue-chip stock.