MAGIC Millions managing director Vin Cox has given Vinery Stud sire Congrats a ringing endorsement as the countdown begins to the 2014 sales series.

Cox has just recently returned from Kentucky for the early part of the mammoth Keeneland September Yearling sale where several Congrats’ youngsters sold particularly well.

Congrats is a very well established sire in the USA having been crowned Champion USA First Season Sire in 2010.

“He is a very highly regarded and very consistent stallion. He got onto the map from a very low base and has done a very, very good job,” Cox said.

“Buyers who look at his yearlings will like what they see. I saw a bunch of them in America last week and he is a horse that gets good sized, good framed, good boned yearlings and at the end of the day, that’s what buyers like here.

“I’d be surprised it they are not well liked.”

Congrats certainly boasts a set of numbers that buyers will be impressed with starting with a phenomenal 71.4 per cent winners to runners.

The son of A.P Indy has so far produced 145 winners from his 203 starters including 31 stakeshorses (> 15% black type performers).

Congrats added a 13th stakeswinner to his growing tally when two-year-old filly Holiday Magic streaked away to a 41/4 -lens in the Listed Brave Raj Stakes in Florida.

The William Kaplan-trained bay is the second two-year-old stakeswinner to emerge from Congrats’ 2011 crop alongside the unbeaten Courgarville who ran out an easy 2-lens in last month’s Listed Bird of Pay Stakes.