Well bred but lower class

Van Nistelrooy cost $6.4m (£4.4m) as a yearling

By Sophie Brown BBC Sport Online

The success of super stallion Sadler's Wells is well documented.

He has now fathered over 50 individual Group One winners and has been champion sire for the last 10 years.

With his covering fee believed to be in the region of £200,000 a mare, he has proved a veritable money-spinner for the Coolmore Stud.

But there is another side to the breeding coin, as the Irish-based outfit has also recently experienced.

High Chaparral: Another Coolmore success story

A visit to the stud

It has revealed that two horses it paid millions for as yearlings in the hope of then making more millions when they went to stud, have been gelded and sold to be raced in Hong Kong.

The colts in question, Tasmanian Tiger and Diaghilev, were bought in 2000.

The former was the most expensive yearling to be sold that year, costing $6.6m (£4.4m).

Diaghilev, a son of Sadler's Wells, set a European record of 3.4m guineas (£3.6m) when he was bought.

Diaghilev was the more successful of the pair, winning three races, including a Group Three race at Chantilly, and then coming seventh in the French Derby.

Tasmanian Tiger also won once but neither colts turned out to be the top-class performers needed to command a high stud fee.

In contrast, double Derby winner High Chaparral cost the Coolmore outfit just 270,000 guineas (£283,000), and is sure to command high fees when he is sent to stud at the end of the season.

Paying out huge sums of money for untried yearlings is a risky business.

  Most expensive yearlings

$13.1m Seattle Dancer (1985)

$10.2m Snaafi Dancer (1983)

$8.25m Imperial Falcon (1984)

$7.1m Jareer (1984)

$7m Laa Etaab (1985)

The buyers are basing their hopes purely on the pedigree of the yearling involved and well-bred does not always mean high-class.

Indeed, many of the priciest yearlings in the record books have not performed on the track.

None of the seven most expensive yearlings ever bought in Europe and the US managed to win a Group One race between them.

There may be some hope, however, with the eighth in the list, Van Nistlerooy, who was bought by Coolmore for $6.4m (£4.2m) last year.

He has won all three of his starts to date and is the current favourite for next year's 2,000 Guineas.

Having to dispose of Tasmanian Tiger and Diaghilev will have hurt Coolmore's pride and pockets.

But with the likes of Sadler's Wells, Danehill, Giant's Causeway and Galileo currently on their books, the Ballydoyle brigade will not be going short just yet.

And as breeding flops go, it is still not on the scale of Snaafi Dancer.

The second most expensive yearling ever bought, costing $10.2m (£6.7m) in 1983, Snaafi Dancer was deemed too slow to be raced.

To add insult to injury, he then also proved to be infertile.