Posts Tagged ‘dubai’

By Ray Paulick
Gulf Coast Farms, the Florida-based operation of veterinarian Jerry Bailey and Utah horseman Lance Robinson, is known more for its pinhooking of yearlings to 2-year-old sales than for breeding. However, 10 weeks into the 2010 racing season, Gulf Coast is one of two breeders in North America to be represented by a pair of American Graded Stakes winners (the other being the Overbrook Farm owned by the family of the late W.T. Young).

Both of Gulf Coast’s AGS winners are on the road to the Triple Crown. The first is Conveyance, a two-time AGS winner in 2010, having captured the San Rafael Stakes at Santa Anita and the Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park—both Grade 3 races. Conveyance, originally purchased by Legends Racing for $240,000 at the 2008 Keeneland September yearling sale, is now owned by Zabeel Racing, an entity owned by a son of Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai. The Indian Charlie colt was produced from a mare by Holy Bull, who ran the worst race of his life in the Kentucky Derby but went on to be the 1994 3-year-old champion male and Horse of the Year.

The second, of course, is 2009 juvenile champion Lookin At Lucky, who made his season’s debut last week at Oaklawn Park in the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes—a race that attracted two other Grade 1 winners, runner-up Noble’s Promise and third-place finisher Dublin. Lookin At Lucky, a son of Smart Strike out of Private Feeling, by Belong to Me, races for the partnership of Mike Pegram, Paul Weitman and Karl Watson. He was purchased by Baffert on their behalf for $475,000 at last year’s Keeneland April sale of 2-year-olds in training. Six months earlier, Bailey and Robinson entered Lookin At Lucky in the Keeneland September sale but bought him back for just $35,000 because the veterinary report on him showed several “minor” physical issues. (Click here <http://www.paulickreport.com/blog/american-graded-stakes-standings-brought-to-you-by-keeneland-lookin-at-a-bargain/> to learn more about those issues, which obviously have not prevented the colt from compiling an outstanding record of six wins in seven starts, including three Grade 1 wins, and earnings of $1,423,000.)

Though they may be known better for their pinhooking acumen, Bailey and Robinson have a large broodmare band in excess of 100, and it’s no surprise they are successful in this end of the business along with getting horses ready for 2-year-old sales. Both are consummate horseman, Bailey having years of experience running his own business along with a stint as farm veterinarian and manager of E.K. Gaylord’s Lazy E. Ranch in Oklahoma, and Robinson plying his trade as a professional rodeo cowboy for more than 15 years.

If you want to call someone an “accidental” breeder of an American Graded Stakes winner, that description might be more fitting for two trainers who have produced AGS winners of 2010: trainers Bob Baffert and Mike Machowsky.

Baffert is the breeder of Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap winner Misremembered, co-owned by his wife Jill and their good friend George Jacobs. Baffert probably didn’t envision winning the Big ‘Cap and more than $1 million with the offspring of the mare, Beyond Perfection (by Quack), when he bid $7,000 to buy her at the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale in 2005—but that’s exactly what Misremembered has done. In this business, you can be good, but it also helps to be lucky.

Machowsky is the breeder, co-owner and trainer of Grade 2 Robert B. Lewis Stakes winner Caracortado. The 3-year-old gelded son of Cat Dreams was produced by Mons Venus, by Maria’s Mon. Machowsky bought Mons Venus for $45,000 on behalf of some clients at the Keeneland 2002 September yearling sale. After the filly kept having ankle problems, Machowsky told the owners she probably would never race and suggested they breed her. When they said they weren’t interested, the trainer contacted a friend in California who was standing the young Storm Cat stallion Cat Dreams and bred Mons Venus to him. Caracortado went on to win his first five races, including the Lewis, before losing for the first time in last Saturday’s Grade 2 San Felipe.

Mons Venus is the second mare Machowsky ever bred.

This only proves there are many ways to breed a winner of an American Graded Stakes race. You can cultivate the best bloodlines, do all the planning and research in the world, but sometimes the most important ingredient is good fortune.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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We are pleased to introduce a new weekly feature today, the Paulick Report Forum brought to you by Breeders’ Cup. Every Wednesday, we’ll talk with a Thoroughbred industry player about the game we all love, trying to get a better understanding of where we’ve been and where we may be headed. One thing I’ve learned throughout my years in this industry is that nothing comes easy. We are a sport and a business fraught with divisiveness, incoherence and confusion. But at the same time we are blessed to have many participants with great intelligence, insights and dedication. In short, we never know where the next good idea may come from.

We hope you will read each week’s Forum, offer your thoughts on the subject being discussed, and suggest to us other areas where we can advance the discussions that need to take place to get our industry moving in the right direction once again. Thanks to the Breeders’ Cup for their sponsorship of this process. 

It surprised me when Christophe Clement said that he has spent half of his 44 years in the United States. Maybe it’s the heavy French accent he still retains, or simply the blur of the years going by so quickly. But the third-generation horseman has made America his permanent home since 1991. He’d spent a couple of years here in the 1980s, working for Taylor Made Farm and trainer Shug McGaughey, before returning to Europe, where he served for four years as assistant to Luca Cumani in Newmarket, England. Earlier in his life, he had apprenticed for the master horseman Alec Head in Chantilly.

Clement, coming off an outstanding year when Gio Ponti won two Eclipse Awards for the Ryan family’s Castleton Lyons as turf male and older male champion, is preparing the 5-year-old son of Tale of the Cat for a possible run at the $10-million Dubai World Cup. He’s looking at a prep race at Tampa Bay Downs on turf in February prior to taking on the world’s best over the Tapeta Footings surface at the new Meydan racetrack in Dubai. Gio Ponti is coming off a second-place finish to Zenyatta in the Breeders’ Cup Classic over the Pro-Ride synthetic track at Santa Anita.

In this, our first Paulick Report Forum brought to you by Breeders’ Cup, Clement provided some insights about the sport of Thoroughbred racing and how it’s changed during his lifetime.

What is it about international racing that is important to you?
First of all, with the Dubai race I can give you 10 million reasons. If it was a million-dollar race, I wouldn’t be going. I would be going instead to the Santa Anita Handicap. In the case of the Dubai World Cup, the purse has a lot to do with it.
 
But international racing is important. I’m just a trainer, but if I was a breeder or an owner, I would say it is very important for the breed to know which horse is the best and which sires are better. I saw an article in the TDN that said, as recently as 20 years ago, 80% of the world’s leading stallions stood in the United States. Today that number is 50%. The United States does not permeate world breeding the way it was 20 years ago.

From a personal standpoint, I don’t get as many fillies or mares sent from Europe to race here and then be bred to American stallions. Their owners are keeping them in Europe.
 
Why the shift?
A couple of things. First there is medication. People refuse to talk about it, but a lot of people in Europe still don’t want to breed to U.S. sires because those horses raced on medication. A lot of Europeans do not understand why we continue to allow medication while the rest of the world is doing OK without it.

That’s one of the factors. It is an issue for some people. There are two things I would like to see changed. I am convinced Grade 1 races should not be handicaps. It’s not healthy to use weight to try and beat the best horses. Allowance conditions are fine. This is something Bobby Frankel and I talked about, and Bobby was against handicaps in Grade 1s. I also believe there should be no medication in Grade 1s because we use these races to improve the breed.

So why do we continue to permit it?
I don’t know. Every track is different. There is no federal authority. No racing commissioner. The Graded Stakes Committee took grades away from Pennsylvania because they failed to do the proper testing, but there is limited means to enforce national rules. I’m just a trainer. These are some of my thoughts. I’m trying to win a race tomorrow.

You said there were two major reasons for the shift in stallion power away from the U.S.
Right. Secondly, the two groups, the Maktoums and Coolmore, have given European breeders access to some very good stallions because they are retaining some of the best racehorses. Twenty or 30 years ago the world’s best horses came to Gainesway—horses like Lyphard, Riverman, and Blushing Groom. This year, apparently no American farms bid for Sea the Stars. 20 years ago an American farm would have. Aside from Giant’s Causeway and Kingmambo, it’s been quite a while since an exciting European horse came to the United States as a sire. The top milers in Europe are no longer coming here, either.

What training methods have you adapted from your European background?
I am more American than European. I’m 44 and have spent more time in this country than anywhere else. But I’ll say this. When Sir Michael Stoute or Andre Fabre wake up in the morning they have a choice of tracks on which to train their horses. Here it’s the main track or the training track. Those guys have a much wider choice for their horses.

We should have access to all surfaces: dirt, turf and Polytrack.  If you have a good dirt track, like in New York, a good turf course, and a good Polytrack surface to race or train over on days when it’s very wet, it would be very popular. But the problem is who pays? It would be very expensive. In an ideal world, that’s the way it would be. A dirt track should be safe if maintained the right way. Turf is safe, and off the turf races could be run on a Polytrack.

You recently cut back on the number of horses you have in California. Is it because of the problems with Santa Anita’s surface?
It’s Mother Nature. I’m not against Santa Anita. They did everything they could. Wherever you are, you have to deal with Mother Nature. It’s been very wet out there. One reason Gio Ponti came back East is I found that the flight to Dubai will be easier from Florida than California.

In the United States all trainers think they are track superintendents, but the track superintendents know their job. There is no ideal surface 365 days a year. Bob Baffert was really negative on Polytrack, but he’s such a smart guy and a good trainer he’s really adapted. He’s doing great on that surface.

What can American trainers learn from others around the world?
When you work for the people I’ve worked for, you learn that change is not always negative. People in racing don’t like change. Change is not always a bad thing. We should be more open minded about change. A typical thing is the synthetic tracks: trainers should be more open minded. Of course it will not be perfect from day one, but it is ridiculous to be so against it, just as it is ridiculous to be against dirt racing. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. The Kentucky Derby is on dirt and should remain on dirt, and the Belmont Stakes is on dirt and should remain on dirt. But we shouldn’t exclude Polytrack from our racing because it represents change.

Finally, how do you feel about Rachel Alexandra’s owner Jess Jackson’s recent comments that the field for the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic was not nearly as good as the 2008 race when his Curlin was defeated?
I think it’s just another reason that he should have participated in the race.

Copyright © 2010, The Paulick Report

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In an article from the UK’s The Guardian, Greg Wood looks at the future of racing in Dubai and despite a recent financial problem for the Middle Eastern country, poses the idea that the Sheikh’s newest Meydan race course could be the site of a new world championship. He makes the claim that American racing moving back to dirt no longer makes the Breeders’ Cup a viable championship for horses in other parts of the world.

Click here for Greg Wood’s article in The Guardian

Then come back to the Paulick Report and let us know what you think

- Bradford Cummings

By Ray Paulick
“The best business in the horse industry right now is silks manufacturing,” someone said to me Tuesday afternoon as officials were tallying up the final numbers from the two select sessions of the 14-day Keeneland September yearling sale. “There are a lot of breeders out there who don’t have racing silks but are going to need them.”

Gallows humor comes in handy at times like these.

This industry player was referring to the high percentage of yearlings bought back by their consignors during the sale—137, or 38.2% of the 357 horses offered—the highest ever during these two days that set the stage for the marathon auction and define the “top end” of the yearling market (a top end that, by the way, had fewer million-dollar yearlings, three, than at any time September sale since two sold in 1997). The prices of many of the 222 yearlings that sold were tough to swallow: the average price of $264,667 was a 30.0% decline from the $377,857 average in 2008, and the median took a similar dive of 28.3% from $300,000 to $215,000.

In many cases, hammer prices were not enough to pay the stud fee breeders had invested to conceive the foal in 2007, much less help pay for their investment in the mare, the cost of raising a foal for 18 months, and getting it prepped for the yearling market.

But many of those breeders have been here before.

The last time the bottom fell out of the Thoroughbred bloodstock market with this severity was a little over 20 years ago, when cracks started appearing in a rapidly growing marketplace that had been fueled in part by new money from Dubai and increasing investment from Europe. Speculators saw Thoroughbred breeding as “easy money,” thanks in part to forgiving tax laws and generous bankers. The North American foal crop soared skyward with bloodstock prices, going from 28,809 in 1976 to 51,296 in 1986, an increase of 78%.

But tax reform in 1986 chased many of the speculators away, and a strong stock market correction in October 1987 took care of the rest, and the down cycle seemed to last forever. North American yearling sales that had generated $383.7 million in revenue in 1984 crashed to $181 million by 1992, a fall of 53% in funds going to breeders. The foal crop followed those bloodstock prices south, falling by 32% over a 10-year period, bottoming out in 1995 at 34,983.

But then, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, the bloodstock market had its biggest sustained rally in history. Demand, fueled again by broad international participation and unprecedented wealth generation in the business world and stock markets, increased in the latter part of the 1990s and into the 21st century. It wasn’t long before gross receipts from North American yearling sales more than doubled from the 1992 nadir, reaching $440.1 million in 1999, falling backwards slightly for a few years (remember the dot.com bubble bursting in March of 2000?), then hitting an all-time high of $579.4 million in 2006. It has stumbled the last two years and is expected to take a deep drop by year’s end.

The North American foal crop crept upward since the late 1980s’ crash, too, reaching 38,019 in 2006, a more sensible growth of 9% over the 11 years since it bottomed out in 1995. Supply almost always lags behind demand.

Now we find ourselves in a new down cycle, caused by both outside forces (the global economic crisis, stock market volatility, business failures) and greater uncertainty about the future of horse racing (greater competition from casinos, online gambling, falling pari-mutuel handle, shrinking retention of revenues by racetracks and purses from handle, lack of coordinated national programs to market the sport,  etc.). Breeders saw the writing on the wall last year, reducing the number of mares bred in both 2008 and 2009, to the point where the Jockey Club predicts a 2010 foal crop of 30,000, a significant drop of 18% in just two years.

That 18% reduction is probably not enough. Demand for Thoroughbreds seems to be dropping faster, and with tracks in California, Illinois, Florida, Kentucky and other states running fewer days, there will be even less need for racehorses in future years (not that the tracks will have to order starting gates with more stalls). Supply must come down further.

The big question among breeders when I first came to Kentucky in 1988 and started covering horse sales was, “Have we hit bottom yet?” The truth is, no one knew the answer then, and no one knows the answer today. There are different forces in play now; a disconnect between the racing and breeding markets existed during the run-up in bloodstock prices during the 1990s and 2000s, and that disconnect appears to be gone.

In the meantime, breeders, at least those who are able to weather the current storm, might want to order their racing silks. In the good old days, it was the racehorse owners who were getting into the breeding business. Now we’re going 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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By Brad Cummings

Since the inception of the Paulick Report, I have stayed under the radar. Outside of the Eclipse Awards live blog and a few small ghostwriting opportunities, I have been the behind the scenes guy on a publication I am very proud to be associated with.
 
And this is for good reason. Before mid-June 2008, I was like most Americans when it came to horseracing. Somewhere around the last two weeks in April, I would jump onto ESPN.com and pretend to be an expert analyst when discussing the Derby field around “the water cooler.” (I’ve worked for myself for a while and therefore only have Brita filter, so please allow for the stretched euphemism)
 
After countless minutes of exhaustive research, I would find my “guy” and throw $20 his way. Win or lose, I would tune into the Preakness and plan on the Belmont Stakes if there was a Triple Crown shot. By the beginning of June, my racing season was ostensibly over.
 
I tell you this because after nearly a year on the Paulick Report staff, I have become a serious fan of racing. And furthermore, I believe it can be effectively sold to the average sports fan. It’s a more fascinating and exciting sport than I’d ever realized. And the really cool thing is you can bet on it – legally.
 
I’m a hardcore baseball fan whose prized possession of his childhood is a signed Carlton Fisk Louisville Slugger. Each year, I watch nearly every University of Louisville basketball game; from their home opener against North Minnesota State A & M to their final encounter in the tournament.  And I am such an avid football fan that I traveled to Chicago to watch my Bears beat the Packers in -20 degree weather.
 
Unfortunately, the only reason I fell in love with this sport is because of my work here. Had I not been hired by Ray and found myself in a racing crash course, it’s unlikely I would have ever been a fan beyond the first Saturday in May.
 
I grew up in a major racing city, Chicago, and have lived in Derby Town U.S.A., for several years. The fact I had not been lured by a sport with so much to offer means there is a failure in selling the game to a passionate sports fan. Until Saturday, I wasn’t quite sure the path to redemption. But when I watched the stark contrast between our television production values and those in Dubai, I knew at least where we needed to start.
 
ESPN’s coverage of the Florida Derby was dry and appeared to have little time or money spent on the production value. It felt more like the third day of an average PGA tournament than a major Derby prep race. If I didn’t know better, I would have little concept of just how big the stakes (pun intended) were that day for the horses running at Gulfstream Park.
 
Television is a visual medium and therefore production value wins the day. When CBS produces the March Madness basketball tournament, they don’t make a sweeping shot over the court and deliver a distant camera angle like racing likes to do. Instead, they pop you in the mouth with exciting clips, exploding graphics and camera angles that put the viewer right at courtside. After the first five minutes of a broadcast, my heart is pumping and I’m so hooked I don’t even notice Ray calling me for the eighth time that day.
 
Before watching the Dubai World Cup’s live feed on Saturday, I would have just assumed Thoroughbred racing had a brother in hockey, a sport that simply loses something on TV. But as I continued to watch the Dubai coverage, with its emotional build and track view camera, a similar feeling came over my body. It was a new sense of March madness, one I hadn’t ever expected.
 
Guys like me want to find new sports to obsess over. We love the thrill of competition and thirst for new outlets to find that action. And a lot of us like to bet. Deliver us visual fireworks, place us on the field of play and get our hearts racing. Once we’re hooked, we will be customers for life. The sports fan is an obsessive creature and before too long, we’ll find ourselves watching midnight replays of claiming races at Ruidoso Downs on TVG. (I speak from experience)
 
But the Paulick business model probably won’t transfer. You can’t hire all of your potential fans.

By Ray Paulick
Desert Party won Thursday night’s UAE 2000 Guineas at Nad Al Sheba racecourse in Dubai, rallying from just off the pace under Lanfranco Dettori to score an "under wraps"  victory over Regal Ransom and pacesetter Redding Colliery. Vineyard Haven, winner of the Hopeful and Champagne Stakes last year and runner-up to Midshipman in Eclipse Award voting, finished a distant fourth in his first start in Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin silks. The son of Lido Palace had previously been owned by a partnership that included trainer Robert Frankel and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre before a reported $12-million offer from the ruler of Dubai.

The winner was making his second start in Dubai for trainer Saeed bin Suroor, coming off a half-length win Jan. 22 in the Ford Flex Trophy, a prep for the Grade 3 UAE 2000 Guineas. A 3-year-old son of Street Cry out of Sage Cat, by Tabasco Cat, Desert Party began his career in the United States for trainer Eoin Harty,  breaking his maiden on Polytrack at Arlington Park in June, then beating three horses in the Grade 2 Sanford on a muddy Saratoga dirt track July 24. Desert Party finished a well beaten sixth behind Vineyard Haven in Saratoga’s Hopeful. Bred in Kentucky by David Smith and Steven Sinatra, Desert Party was a $2.1 million purchase at Fasig-Tipton’s February sale of 2-year-olds in training at Calder after Paul Pompa had purchased him for $425,000 at the 2007 Keeneland September yearling sale.

Runner-up Regal Ransom, a $675,000 purchase at the same Calder 2-year-old sale, broke his maiden at Saratoga in August but finished eighth in the Grade 1 Norfolk in his only other U.S. start. He also ran second to Desert Party in the Ford Flex, his first race in Dubai.

Vineyard Haven, purchased privately after  winning the Champagne Stakes by  5 3/4 lengths, appeared a bit rank in the early going while racing to the outside and just off the early lead of Redding Colliery. He failed to respond when asked by jockey T.E. Durcan and was never a threat down the stretch of the one-turn, one-mile contest.

VIDEO

By Ray Paulick

The final numbers from Monday’s opening session of the 2008 Keeneland November breeding stock sale were not pretty, and the bad news is that it might get worse before it gets any better in an environment stung by turbulent stock exchanges around the world, high-profile bankruptcies in the financial markets and a stalled American economy.

First, the numbers: Keeneland reported selling 149 horses (broodmares, broodmare or racing prospects, and weanlings) from the 311 catalogued. The gross amount was $48,021,000, an average price of $322,289 and a median of $185,000. Those numbers are down substantially from last year’s opening session when 194 horses sold for $109,064,000, an average of $562,186 and median of $272,500. The declines are 56% in gross, 42.7% in average, and 32.1% in median price. Last year’s opening session was the strongest in the history of the Keeneland November sale, jumping 30% in gross revenue from the 2006 opening day.

The average and median prices don’t tell the whole picture. Of the 311 horses catalogued, there were more that didn’t sell than changed hands. Seventy lots were withdrawn and 92 horses, or 38.2% of the 241 through the ring, failed to meet their reserve price. The RNA or buy-back rate was twice as high as last year’s opening session, when 19.2% of those through the ring failed to sell.

Those are tough numbers for  breeders to swallow. In cases where breeders were not forced to sell to pay their bills, they had the luxury to withdraw their horses rather than selling them in a soft market. In instances where bank notes were due or credit lines have been tightened, mare owners had to suck it up and see what the market was willing to pay.

"It’s a bloodbath," one agent said midway through the session. One breeder said he took a beating on one mare sold early Monday and withdrew the rest.

In contrast to 2007, when a record 28 million-dollar horses were sold on the opening day, there were just 11 this year, led by the $3 million paid by John Ferguson, chief bloodstock adviser to Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley operation, for Hip 53, the grade I-winning mare Hystericalady, who most recently finished fifth behind Horse of the Year candidate Zenyatta in the Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic at Santa Anita Oct. 24. It’s doubtful Hystericalady will race again.

Ferguson was the day’s leading buyer, with six purchases totaling $8,710,000. Last year, Ferguson bought just four horses on the first day, but one of them was Playful Act, a mare who set a then-world record price of $10.5 million, who made up the bulk of his $18.5 million expenditures.

The atmosphere at Keeneland on Monday in no way matched the buzz that was created across town at Fasig-Tipton on Sunday night, which was highlighted by the $14-million sale of Broodmare of the Year Better Than Honour and the $5.7 million sale of presumptive 2-year-old filly champion Stardom Bound. But even those headline prices camouflaged a soft market.

Fasig-Tipton was packed Sunday night, in part by Thoroughbred enthusiasts who wanted to get a close look at Better Than Honour and Stardom Bound. It was a little reminiscent of the old Keeneland July yearling sale, when the Keeneland pavilion was filled with a combination of buyers, consignors, industry workers and "tourists." Monday’s atmosphere at Keeneland is strictly business, it seems. 

The tarmac at Bluegrass Field across Versailles Road is filled with private jets, suggesting that many of the industry’s wealthiest particpants are here. Comments from several consignors suggest the presence of those jets indicates the very high end of the broodmare market will be stable. Below that, however, there are fears of a major dropoff in prices. "Some breeders are in a tough spot," one consignor said. "They need to sell some mares to pay the bills, but they are selling into a very tough market right now."

Geoffrey Russell, Keeneland’s director of sales, made the following statement in a press release: "Last November opened with an historical and record-breaking session during which we sold 28 million-dollar horses versus 11 this year, including a $10.5 million broodmare; that’s a huge difference. Whether the difference is owed to the economy or to the catalog; it’s probably a factor of both. But this is marketplace where people come to trade horses; and we will successfully trade horses over the next two weeks; though probably not at the level we did last year.” 

Click here for Monday’s results, includilng a summary of leading buyers and consignors.

The sale continues through Monday, Nov. 17, with daily sessions beginning at 10 a.m.

A CLOSER LOOK AT SUNDAY’S FASIG-TIPTON SALE

While Fasig-Tipton’s Sunday night sale looked very strong at first glance, it had the same clearance problems that plagued Keeneland’s opening session on Monday. The published buy-back rate was 39.3% (59 RNAs from 150 offered), but there were also 39 lots withdrawn, meaning that 98 horses, more than half of those catalogued, failed to sell.

Fasig-Tipton reported 91 horses sold for $70,279,000, an average of $772,297 and median price of $250,000. Included in those sales were eight horses bought for $23,460,000 by Southern Equine Stables from the consignment of Hill ‘n’ Dale Sales Agency that were previously owned in partnership by Southern Equine and Hill ‘n’ Dale (including the world record-priced Better Than Honour, which sold for $14 million). Hill ‘n’ Dale owner John Sikura bought one from his consignment for $3.1 million. Stripping those nine transactions out, Fasig-Tipton still sold 82 horses for $43,719,000, an average price of $533,158 and median of $220,000, well ahead of last year’s average of $486,318 and median of $180,000. 

Either with or without the Hill ‘n’ Dale horses, it was an extremely strong market for top-class mares.

The increasing depth and quality of Fasig-Tipton’s November sale didn’t happen overnight, or with the purchase of the company by an associate of Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed. Fasig-Tipton is in the very early stages of that new ownership, but already there have been significant enhancements in the physical plant on Newtown Pike (more are certain to come), along with news about coming improvements at the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

The accompanying table shows Fasig-Tipton’s stready growth in the November sale over the last eight years.

Perhaps more than anything else, the strength of Fasig-Tipton’s outstanding catalogue was the reason for Keeneland’s sluggish start on Monday. As one commercial breeder said, "Fasig-Tipton took a huge bite out of book one at Keeneland."

Earlier this year we wrote about the "new era of Fasig-Tipton" under the ownership of Synergy Investments, and included a number of comments from breeders, agents and buyers who hoped that Fasig-Tipton’s advancements would make Keeneland more customer friendly. Keeneland was called "arrogant" by a some of its customers in a subsequent Paulick Report article.

Based on comments by some mare owners, Keeneland is responding with a stronger recruiting effort, something Fasig-Tipton has been doing for years. Keeneland has held a powerful edge in market share in yearling and breeding stock sales, but the results from this fall indicate Fasig-Tipton is gaining ground.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

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