New York, New York

By Jack Davison

There was a real buzz around town at the weekend ahead of next week’s yearling sale at Saratoga. The question, are you going to Saratoga, echoed through the local watering holes as those lucky few who are travelling to the leafy suburb endeavored to set the tone for what is a typically fun-filled and crazy week, with a horse sale thrown in. In my opinion Saratoga is the main course when it comes to the yearling sales in the US. The two day catalogue vouches for the old adage ‘quality not quantity’ as the select yearling sale is short but sweet. Yes, indeed, by all accounts, the Keeneland September yearling sale is a monster and the most globally recognised yearling sale but it is a two week sale and a bit of a slog as it mixes the very good with the bad, whereas, in Saratoga, it is only the crème de la crème of the yearling crop, who attend.

The July Sale at Fasig–Tipton kicked off the sales period and offered itself as a mere appetiser to what lies ahead next week, thousands of miles away. The trade there was solid enough but there was always that cloud of unpredictability that rained with insistency, on many a seller’s parade, over the two day selling period. Big strong colts seemed to be the flavour, that the buyers acquired, as a Medaglia D’Oro (sire of Rachel Alexandra) colt topped the sale, just as the previous year, bringing a very respectable $450,000. On the second day the next top lot was also by the outstanding young sire Medaglia D’Oro as hip 245, a filly, realised $350,000. The overall average was $75,780 and the median was $50,000 as the figures showed no significant improvement to last year’s equivalent. The response from the sales company was that the market seemed to be solid as the quality horses were rewarded with good prices but those by unproven sires were a hard sell. As far as I could see most of them were a no sell. Buyers could afford to be choosey in this marketplace that has become scourged by the vulnerability that many finance stricken breeders face, as they picked through the weeds, hoping to find that flower. They acted cautiously and rationally which was bad news for consigners with stock by unproven sires.

My experience with this sale really hit home how tough this game is as only three out of our eight horses on offer were sold and a further two were scratched. Among our haul was a real quality filly with a cracking walk and a skin on her so shiny, that if ever there was to be an equine endorser for corn oil, she was a shoo in, and what’s more she was by Malibu Moon, who is a real hot sire at the moment- especially of fillies. To cut a long story short she failed to attain her reserve of $70,000. That is just one example of a really nice horse with a decent pedigree by a hot sire that didn’t tickle the fancy of bidders for God knows what reason.

Saratoga is the biggie though and I’m really excited ahead of it because our farm has a nice batch of 12 yearlings making the 16 hour journey, north to Saratoga, which is about a two hour drive from New York City. It is very desirable for most stablelads to work at the Saratoga sale as a chance to get out of Lexington, on a business trip, if you like. It’s not that you become institutionalised or anything but I like to compare travelling to Saratoga to my much anticipated school holidays when I was at boarding school. Freedom! At Saratoga last year, I accompanied two yearlings on the 16 hour long journey up north. As I squirmed, tossed and turned in a fairly confined area I did not have a breeze that the big brown colt just to my right, who insisted on dribbling water on my face, would top the sale at 2.8 million dollars, nor did I realise that the filly on my left would be purchased by Demi O’Byrne (buyer for the peerless Ballydoyle/ Coolmore operation) for 895,000 dollars.

Let me just say, that I have never felt so worthless in my whole life!

All joking aside though, it was a real treat for me to be working with horses of such value. I’m just hoping that there is a million dollar horse or two, among our batch and yes I’m also hoping that the 16 hours that I’m going to spend in the back of that horse van will be a little more romantic than the 16 I endured last year, with that big, noisy, water-dribbling fecker, with four legs at three quarters of a million apiece!

By Jack Davison