A season of superpowers: the headlines from the 2025 bloodstock sales in the UK

In British racing, the real power plays rarely happen under the grandstands. They unfold in the ring at Park Paddocks, where the currency is guineas, the bidders are billionaires and the raw material is one-year-olds who have never seen a starting gate.

In 2025 the focal point, as ever, was the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale Book 1, still the undisputed “Champions League” of the yearling market. And as the calendar rolled on, the December Mares Sale, concluded in Newmarket this week, underlined how far buyers will go for blue-chip broodmare prospects.
Together, they produced a handful of horses whose sale prices would not have looked out of place on a Knightsbridge property listing.

Tattersalls October Book 1: Godolphin, Amo and the year of the mega-colt
Book 1 remains the sale around which the entire European yearling season orbits. This year’s renewal only reinforced that status. Across three days, 395 lots changed hands for roughly 127 million guineas, almost matching last year’s record aggregate.

Once again it was a story of two superpowers: Godolphin, fronted by Sheikh Mohammed, and Amo Racing, headed by Kia Joorabchian, routinely pushing each other into seven-figure territory.

The top of the market – five lots that defined Book 1

1. Sea The Stars – Crystal Zvezda colt – 3,700,000gns
Buyer: Godolphin (Sheikh Mohammed / Anthony Stroud)

Vendor: Longview Stud, from the late Sir Evelyn de Rothschild’s Crystal Zvezda (Dubawi) family

Why it mattered:

The most expensive yearling sold anywhere in the world in 2025, and the dearest Sea The Stars ever.

Out of Crystal Zvezda, a Listed winner and half-sister to Prince of Wales’s Stakes hero Crystal Ocean, this colt sits squarely in one of the most reliable middle-distance families in the European Stud Book.

Stroud summed up the tone of the week: “You have to pay for the ones you really want, and he’s the one we really wanted.”

2. Frankel – Aljazzi colt – 3,600,000gns
Buyer: Amo Racing (Kia Joorabchian, advised by Alex Elliott)

Vendor: Newsells Park Stud

Pedigree angle: Third foal out of Aljazzi (Shamardal), a dual Group 2 winner and Group 1-placed mare who has quickly become a cornerstone of the Newsells broodmare band.

Backstory: Amo already own his sister Partying, the 4.4m-gns Frankel filly who topped Book 1 in 2024. The 2025 colt effectively keeps the family “in-house” for a rapidly expanding operation that clearly intends to build its own dynasty.

3. Frankel – Innevera colt – 2,200,000gns
Buyer: Godolphin

Vendor: Fittocks Stud (Luca & Sara Cumani, with partners Newsells Park Stud and Marmion Vauville)

Pedigree angle: Half-brother to Ottoman Fleet, a dual Grade 2 winner in the US, already in the Godolphin system, and to the promising two-year-old Ottoman Empress.

Moment: For Luca Cumani, who has swapped the training licence for a studmaster’s role, this was “my best day in the sales ring… the highest price we’ve ever had”.

4. Wootton Bassett – Luna Mare colt – 2,200,000gns
Buyer: Amo Racing

Vendor: Marlhill House Stud

Significance: One of the last crops by Wootton Bassett, whose recent death has injected a scarcity premium into his stock. Reuters reckoned his 25 Book 1 yearlings brought a combined 14.5m guineas, including this high-profile colt.

5. Night Of Thunder colt (Gigginstown House-bred) – 1,700,000gns
Buyer: Amo Racing

Vendor: Gigginstown House Stud

Colour: Joorabchian joked “give me a Gold Cup anytime” as Amo reached right into jumping royalty to secure a son of a stallion whose stock are proving as versatile as they are tough.

Godolphin’s Book 1: a 19.625m-gns statement

Across the three days, Godolphin signed for 23 yearlings at Book 1 for a total of 19.625 million guineas – five of them seven-figure horses.

That outlay does more than replenish the stable: it effectively underwrites the domestic breeding sector, a point not lost on Tattersalls or fellow consignors. Without Godolphin’s annual raid, the top of the market – and by extension, much of British Flat racing – would look thinner.

Sire power: Dubawi’s efficiency, Frankel’s fireworks

While the headlines belonged to Sea The Stars and Frankel, the underlying metrics were a reminder that Dubawi still sets the economic standard: across Europe’s yearling sales he achieved the highest average and median of any stallion in 2025.
Frankel, by contrast, is the showman of the catalogue: fewer lots, but two multi-million-guinea colts at Book 1, plus a raft of fillies headed for Juddmonte and Coolmore. For buyers who see stallion potential rather than just racehorses, the Frankel pages remain irresistible.

December Mares Sale: Sceptre Sessions and the four-million-guinea club
If Book 1 is about potential, the Tattersalls December Mares Sale – and in particular its Sceptre Sessions – is where hard evidence on the racecourse is converted into long-term breeding capital.

This week’s renewal produced a quite astonishing centrepiece: a single evening that delivered two fillies at 4.5 million guineas and above, and a record-equalling 11 lots at one million or more. Overall turnover hit just over 82.3 million guineas, with record average and median figures for the sale.

Barnavara – 4,800,000gns
Pedigree: Calyx – Alfea

Race record: Fast-improving three-year-old, crowned by victory in the Prix de l’Opéra on Arc weekend and the Blandford Stakes at the Curragh.

Buyer: Sugar Whiskey Trading (widely linked to Ace Stud, acting online)

Consignor: Baroda Stud on behalf of Jessica Harrington’s Alpha Racing syndicate

Context:

At 4.8 million guineas, Barnavara became the highest-priced filly sold at auction anywhere in the world this year, and the topper of a record session at Park Paddocks.

Harrington, who bought her as a relatively modest yearling, described the result as “more than my wildest dreams”, a nice understatement for a filly who cost £61,000 and has now been flipped, in effect, into a foundation broodmare for a major breeding entity.

Porta Fortuna – 4,500,000gns
Pedigree: Caravaggio – Too Precious

Race record: A multiple Group 1-winning filly whose CV includes the Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Coronation Stakes, plus high-class form at two and three.

Buyer: MV Magnier for Coolmore

Consignor: Taylor Made Sales (a rare but emphatic US consignor cameo at Tattersalls)

Aftermath: Coolmore have already floated a slightly left-field mating plan, hinting she may go to one of their more “underrated” stallions rather than the headline sires, a neat reminder that even 4.5m-gns mares are pieces in a longer strategic game.

For an hour or so Porta Fortuna held the mantle of most expensive filly in training sold anywhere in 2025. Barnavara’s late surge knocked her off the perch, but as problems go, that is a very high-class one for the Park Paddocks marketing department.

The rest of the million-guinea pack

Below the two 4m+ fillies came a deep supporting cast:

Tamfana (Soldier Hollow) – 2,600,000gns to MV Magnier, a Group 1 winner adding further German stamina and toughness into the Coolmore broodmare band.

A cluster of elite producers and siblings – including Suelita, dam of 2,000 Guineas hero Chaldean, and high-class racemares with in-foal covers to stallions like Frankel and Wootton Bassett – all sailed past the million-guinea mark.

What united them was not glitz but leverage: every one of these mares gives her new owner a realistic shot at breeding colts who themselves might one day be standing at £40,000–£100,000 a cover. Against that backdrop, even 2–3m guineas can be made to add up.

Two markets, one sport

Strip away the drama and the 2025 British sales season boiled down to a few clear themes:

At the very top, the market is ferociously strong. Godolphin’s 19.6m-gns Book 1 spree, Amo’s willingness to give 3.6m for a Frankel colt, and Coolmore’s 4.5m-gns play for Porta Fortuna all point to a small cadre of global operations comfortable deploying eight-figure budgets each autumn.

Pedigree and performance are converging. The most expensive Book 1 yearlings are not vanity projects but potential stallions; the most expensive December Mares lots are proven racemares with the ratings and pages to justify standing their sons for serious money.

Beneath the seven-figure glare, the rest of the market – British owner-breeders and mid-tier trainers – is more cautious. Tattersalls chairman Edmond Mahony has been quite open about his worry that the wider industry risks being “eroded through neglect” even as headline figures surge.

Still, judged purely on the numbers, the 2025 season delivered what sellers dream of and accountants rarely see: record or near-record turnovers at both the flagship yearling and broodmare sales, and a small group of horses whose prices will be quoted for years.

Whether they justify those sums on the racecourse – and, in time, in the stallion yard – is a story for another season.

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