Posts Tagged ‘keeneland september yearling sale’

By Ray Paulick
So much has changed in the two weeks since the Keeneland September yearling sale began its marathon run on Sept. 14. The private jets and air transport planes lined up across Versailles Road at Bluegrass Field have been replaced by pick-up trucks hauling two-horse trailers. The sheikhs and other high rollers are long gone–except for a Paulick Report sighting today of movie star John Malkovich, strolling the Keeneland grounds looking dapper in a white suit as he prepares to portray trainer Lucien Laurin in the Secretariat movie. The high-end buyers have been supplanted by horse lovers of more modest means. Bids come not in $50,000 or $100,000 increments but often $100 at a time—if at all.

But the biggest change, and the one that will hit the hardest and have the longest-lasting effect in Central Kentucky, is the realization of just about every horse breeder’s worst fear: the almost surreal yet relentless dismantling of the Thoroughbred yearling market over a two-week period. Day after day, the hits just kept on coming in the way of deep double-digit declines in the key economic indicators of gross, average and median prices.

Pick your adjective: awful, brutal, terrible—they’ve all been used by various sellers and breeders who have been caught in a classic down cycle of buy high (2007 stud fees) and sell low (2009 market prices for yearlings). The fallout from this market is expected to be substantial. More than a few breeders have been forced to sell for whatever the market was willing to pay because of forebearance agreements with some banks that simply want to end their relationships with breeders and are willing to cut their losses.

We are nearing the end of the road for this year’s biggest sale. How many players in this industry will determine 2009 is the end of their Thoroughbred road is still to be determined.

After the final horse through the ring was sold on Monday (actually, it was an RNA),  Keeneland reported the following final numbers for the September sale, and they weren’t pretty: 3,159 sold, down 12.4% from 3,605 sold in 2008, for total receipts of $191,859,200, a 41.5% decline in the gross from last year’s $327,999,000. The average price of $60,734 was down 33.3% from the 2008 average of $90,984, and the  median of $22,000 was a 40.1% decline from the $37,000 median in 2008. In the end, the percentage of horses that failed to sell was 27.5%, higher than last year’s 24.8% but down considerably from the 35%-plus RNA rate from early in the sale.

Those numbers were even worse than the projections made by the Paulick Report midway through the sale. We projected the gross to end up at $190,000,000, but thought the average would be $65,000 and the median $25,000. The last week found a higher percentage of horses selling, but for prices lower than almost anyone might have expected. Monday’s final session ended up grossing $985,500 from 175 yearlings sold, an average of $5,613 and a median of $3,000.

This was the lowest Keeneland September sale gross since 1998, when 2,860 yearlings sold for a total of $169,811,800. This year’s average was the lowest since that same 1998 sale, which ended with a $59,375 average.  The median was the lowest since 1996, which had an identical middle market number of $22,000.

Back in the 1990s, Keeneland still offered a July selected yearling sale (it was suspended in 2002). When you combine the totals from July and September, you have to go back to 1996 to find gross receipts lower than this year’s September sale (the 1996 July sale grossed $58,430,000, which combined with 1996 September totaled $195,788,600). Any way you slice it, the red ink flowed freely at this year’s sale, and the pain felt by breeders was palpable.

At the current rate, the final numbers for this year’s Keeneland auction will show gross sales of approximately $190,000,000, the lowest figure since 1998, when total sales reached $169,811,800. The difference between 2009 and 1998, however, is that the numbers were ascending then; the $169.8 million total represented what was then an all-time Keeneland September record and the seventh consecutive year of gains. (Click here for a summary of Keeneland sale history.)

This year’s projected sale-ending average is $65,000, also the lowest since 1998, when the average was $59,475, also a new September sale record. This year’s projected median, $25,000, is identical to the median of 2001. The decline in average price from 2008’s September sale is projected to be 28.6%, slightly higher than the 25% I predicted during a presentation in February to the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers’ Club. A number of concerned breeders said that night they thought 25% was optimistic—and they were right. The 28.6% decline is exacerbated by unprecedented buyback rates during each of the first six sessions ranging from 30.1% to 41.2%.

If these projections hold up, breeders will have suffered roughly $200 million in losses since the sale’s highwater mark in 2006, when gross receipts reached $399,791,800. That year’s average price, $112,427, was another record for September, as was the $45,000 median.

This year’s prices are all the more devastating when you take into account that breeders almost certainly invested more money in aggregate stud fees to produce these yearlings because of the record, inflated yearling market of 2006. The prospects for 2010 yearling sales are not bright, either, since those horses were produced from 2008 fees; it was not until earlier this year that many stallions operations significantly reduced stud fees.

How will this year’s September sale affect the broodmare market when Keeneland hosts its November breeding stock sale in less than two months? Because the global financial markets collapsed midway through the 2008 September sale, it didn’t have that severe an impact on yearling prices, but it was felt at the 2008 November sale, where the average price of broodmares was down 48.5% from the previous year(from $125,581 to $64,695). That was the most significant single-year drop in average price of mares in the history of the Keeneland November sale; the next closest came in 1990, when the average fell by 40%, from $78,883 to $47,109. However, over a seven-year period, from the market peak of 1985 to the bottoming out in 1992, the average price of Keeneland November broodmares plunged by 61%.

Keeneland’s broodmare market has fallen nearly that far already, but I’m not sure the bottom is yet in sight. As the size of the foal crop comes down even further (and it’s dropped 18% in two years), expect the market to be flooded with mares breeders no longer want nor can afford to keep. That means prices will decline even further, perhaps to a level similar to the early 1990s.

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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.

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By Ray Paulick
At the suggestion of a Paulick Report reader who thinks the market declines at Monday’s opening session of the Keeneland September yearling sale were overstated, we’ve done a comparison that includes figures from the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale from 2008 and 2009 and the first day of Keeneland from both years.So before we begin Tuesday’s live blog from Keeneland, we’ll spend a few minutes going over those numbers.

The assumption, and one repeated by more than a few people on the sale grounds, is that Keeneland lost some of its book one yearlings to the Saratoga sale, which was revitalized this year by Fasig-Tipton’s new, deep-pocketed owner, Dubai-based Synergy Investments. With a lot of help from Sheikh Mohammed, friend of the new owner and the industry’s leading buyer, the Saratoga sale jumped 45.6% in gross receipts and 11.1% in average, defying the trends at nearly every other Thoroughbred auction. The sale ended up with an average of $328,434, 29% higher than the opening day’s average at Keeneland. Last year’s Saratoga average was $295,738, 18.7% lower than the opening day average at Keeneland.

Do we have something of a role reversal under way?

Adding last year’s Saratoga numbers to the 2008 opening session at Keeneland gives us a total of 276 yearlings sold (122 at Saratoga, 154 at Keeneland) for $94,127,000 ($38,080,000 at Saratoga, $56,047,000 at Keeneland), an average blended price of $341,039.

This year’s two sessions of Saratoga and the opening session of Keeneland saw a combined 267 yearlings sell (160 Saratoga, 107 Keeneland) for $77,498,500 ($52,549,500 Saratoga, $24,949,000 Keeneland), an average price of $290,257.

Thus, the gross revenue from these three select sessions is down 17.7% from 2008 and the average has declined by 14.9%.

I’m not trying to sugarcoat what happened Monday. For those who remember the late 1980s and early ‘90s, yesterday’s session was reminiscent of that era when many breeders were selling yearlings for less than the stud fee invested in them–just cutting their losses. The difference today is that the racing industry, the economic engine at the foundation of Thoroughbred breeding, is lurching through troubled waters. The economics of horse ownership are worse today than they were in the late 1980s, and the crisis within the global economy only makes matters more dire.

Incidentally, just because Sheikh Mohammed stepped up his investments at Saratoga, it didn’t mean there was any slowdown for him at Keeneland. His agent, John Ferguson, led all buyers Monday with 14 bought for $5,152,000, and it will be interesting to see if any of the other foreign-based purchases will end up carrying his Darley or Godolphin colors on the track.

Here are a few addition numbers to ponder:

Taylor Made, Monday’s leading consignor, offered 38 yearlings, and half were bought back and listed as RNA. Eaton Sales (excluding the five Overbrook yearlings that sold without reserves) offered 16 and bought nine back. Three Chimneys offered eight and bought five back. Some smaller consignments like Chesapeake (3 offered), Man o’ War (three) and Middlebrook Farm (2) bought all their horses back.

A few consignors had better luck: Brereton Jones offered six and bought back just one. Gainesway sold four of five offered; Lane’s End sold 14 of 18 and Warrendale sold all four, and Claiborne, Narvick and T. Wayne Sweezey and partners all were 3-for-3 in sales from their Monday offerings.

Will a reset button change things Tuesday? Geoffrey Russell, Keeneland’s director of sales, said his staff believes there are some potential breakout yearlings catalogued today, but he said the same thing about Monday’s book.

We’ll find out soon enough.

11:40 a.m. … Today’s live blog is just like the sale itself–a bit slow to get going. I spent the first hour wandering the grounds and talking with buyers and consignors, and there are very few optimists in this crowd. The negative forces at work include the global economy, market volatility, the credit squeeze, the disappearance of investment money for pinhookers, troubles in the racing industry, a shortage of new owners and departure of some existing ones…you name it. One horseman who buys and sells, after perusing Monday’s results sheet, said: “We should be bowing to Sheikh Mohammed for doing his best to hold this sale up. If it wasn’t for him–and he’s buying horses through other agents besides John Ferguson–it would be a lot worse than it already is, and it’s bad enough.”

Speaking of Sheikh Mohammed, he helped break through the seven-figure ceiling that seemed almost a psychological barrier for the first 245 Hips catalogued. Standing alongside the ruler of Dubai, Ferguson signed the ticket for a $1 million filly by Unbridled’s Song out of the Strawberry Road mare, Strawberry Reason, consigned by Stone Farm as agent. The filly is a half sister to champion Vindication.

12:10 p.m. … Last year’s second session of the Keeneland September yearling sale was a bit stronger in average price than the first day, with 146 yearlings selling for $57,310,000, an average price of $392,534 and a median of $300,000.

The cumulative figures for the first two days in 2008 were: 300 sold for $113,357,000, an average of $377,857 and a median of $300,000.

So far in today’s second session, including the first 40 catalogued, 22 yearlings have sold for $6,600,000, an average of $300,000 and median of $247,500 (the average includes the only $1 million horse sold thus far). There have been 12 RNAs, 35.3% (at an average price of $156,667), somewhat better than Monday’s opening session. The average and median are both up from Monday, too, but still significantly down from 2008.

12:30 p.m. … With the two select sessions nearly 65% complete (Hips 1-268 of the 418 catalogued), here are the cumulative numbers (comparable figures are listed above in the 12:10 p.m. update): 141 sold sold for $34,294,000, an average of $243,220 and median price of $200,000. The number bought back stands at 95, or 40.3% of those through the ring. Today’s RNAs are running at 37%.

2:20 p.m. … Here’s a new one. Hip 296, an Elusive Quality colt that was selected for book one of the Keeneland sale, left the ring without a single bid being made on it. I haven’t seen that before during the select sessions. A short time earlier, when Hip 280, a Giant’s Causeway colt, left the ring, he sold for just $5,000. It’s an unforgiving market.

Through Hip 310 (the session ends at Hip 418), the average for Tuesday was $270,756 and the median was identical to Monday’s $200,000. There have been 32 RNAs, a buyback rate of 36%. The buybacks have averaged $153,563. Today’s average is down 31% from 2008’s comparable session. It’s improved, but it’s hard to find many smiling faces around here.

2:35 p.m. … That was a pleasant deja vu. John Magnier vs. Sheikh Mohammed, just like in the days of old. The two international Thoroughbred giants hooked up in the first battle royal of the sale, Hip 342, a Storm Cat colt out of the Indian Charlie mare Fleet Indian, consigned by Taylor Made Sales Agency on behalf of the Summer Wind Farm of Frank and Jane Lyons, brought a final bid of $2,050,000 from Sheikh Mohammed and agent Ferguson, who were standing out back in their usual spot. Magnier, who is usually just a few paces behind the sheikh’s entourage by the horse path near the back ring, had slipped inside the pavilion to do his bidding, according to sources. The final price more than doubled the sale’s previous high of $1 million. The colt is the first foal out of Fleet Indian, a winner of 13 of 19 starts and champion older mare in North America.

3:20 p.m. … How would this sale be going without Sheikh Mohammed? His agent, John Ferguson, has signed 15 tickets Tuesday for yearlings totaling $7,830,000, roughly one-third of the day’s gross receipts. That brings Sheikh Mohammed’s two-day total to 29 yearlings purchased in the name of Ferguson, plus an unspecified number that may have been bought through associates and other agents. The $2,050,000 sale-topping Storm Cat colt has helped increase the day’s average to $289,720 from 82 lots sold. The receipts so far total $23,757,000. There have been 42 RNAs from the first 124 through the ring, a percentage of 33%. The median is $222,500.

3:45 p.m. … With about 30 horses left to sell, here are the cumulative numbers for the first two days of the Keeneland September yearling sale: 198 sold for $50,961,000, an average price of $257,379 and median of $210,000. There have been 52 yearlings withdrawn and 123 listed as RNAs, a cumulative buyback rate of 38.3%. (For comparison with 2008’s select sessions, see today’s blog update at 12:10 p.m.)

It is almost certain the average for the two Keeneland select sessions will fall below the $328,434 average price of Fasig-Tipton’s 2009 Saratoga sale. That’s the first time since 1999 that Saratoga’s yearling sale average topped the select sessions at Keeneland September. Back in 1999, however, Keeneland still had a July select yearling sale where many of the top offerings were sold. That sale was suspended in 2003.

We’ll  report on the final numbers around 6 p.m.

6:15 p.m. … “It’s a reflection of the world…it speaks for itself,” Keeneland’s director of sales Geoffrey Russell said after the final hammer came down on the two select sessions of the 2009 Keeneland September yearling sale. The numbers on Tuesday’s second session improved across the board from Monday,  but the comparisons to previous years and the cold, hard facts left many breeders reeling.

The number sold over the two days, 222, was down 26% from last year’s 300 sold, Gross receipts of $58,756,000 reflected a 48.2% drop from 2008’s $113,357,000. The average of $264,667 was a decline of 30.0% from $377,857 last yeawr and the median price, $215,000, fell 28.3% from $300,000 in 2008.

There were 137 horses bought back by consignors from the 359 through the ring, an RNA rate of 38.2%, up substantially from the 30.1% buybacks in 2008.

Tuesday’s comparative figures with 2008 were 115 sold for $33,807,000, an average of $293,974 and median price of $250,000. Those numbers represent a 41% decline in gross receipts, a 25.1% drop in average and a $16.7% fall in median from 2008’s 146 sold for $57,310,000, an average of $392,534 and median of $300,000. Tuesday’s 62 buybacks were 35% of the 177 offered, up slightly from the 32.1% RNAs at the second session in 2008.

There were three seven-figure yearlings sold Tuesday (none Monday), topped by the $2,050,000 Storm Cat colt purchased by Sheikh Mohammed’s agent, John Ferguson, the leading buyer of the select sessions with 31 purchases totaling $13,460,000. It was the fewest million-dollar yearlings sold at the September sale since 1997, when two brought seven figures.

Ferguson told the Paulick Report that Sheikh Mohammed purchased additional horses through other agents, including Blandford Bloodstock, the sale’s fourth leading buyer (11 for $2,742,000) but that he was uncertain of the total number. Ferguson said he would attend at least a portion of Wednesday’s first non-select session before leaving Lexington.

 

 

Combining the two days of the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga select yearling sale in August with the Keeneland September select session, there were 382 yearlings sold in 2009, compared with 422 last year. The 2009 combined average of the two sales was $291,375, a decline of 18.8%. Gross receipts in 2009 were $111,305,500, a 26.5% drop from the combined FT Saratoga and Keeneland September select gross of $151,437,000 last year.In 2008, Keeneland’s market share of the combined gross receipts with FT Saratoga was 74.9%, with FT’s share at 25.1%. When the results of this year’s top two yearling sales were finalized, Keeneland’s market share fell to 52.8% with FT at 47.2%. For the first time since 1999, the FT Saratoga sale resulted in higher average prices than the select sessions at the Keeneland September sale. 

The Paulick Report will have further analysis of the select sessions on Wednesday morning.

Book two yearlings sell Wednesday and Thursday, beginning at 10 a.m. Friday is an off day, followed by 10 consecutive days of selling starting Saturday.

 Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
Keeneland’s September yearling sale is the largest auction of its kind in the world, serving as a marketplace for all levels of participants in the Thoroughbred industry, from the rich and famous who fly into Lexington in their private jets for the early select sessions to the blue-collar horsemen who pull a two-horse trailer into town behind their pickup trucks at the tail end of the marathon sale.

This year’s 14-day Keeneland September sale begins on Monday, Sept. 14 and runs through Sept. 28. Friday, Sept. 18 is a dark day. There are over 5,000 yearlings catalogued to this year’s sale.

Because it is the largest Thoroughbred yearling sale in the world, it should come as no surprise that the Keeneland September sale has more of its graduates win American Graded Stakes than any other auction. The Keeneland September sale has produced 66 AGS winners of 2009, five times as many as any other Thoroughbred auction. It accounts for 38.4% of the 172 AGS winners of 2009 that were sold at public auction. (The figures represent only those horses that sold and do not include RNAs.)

The most surprising thing to me about the Keeneland September graduates that went on to win an AGS race in 2009 is the number of horses that sold for relatively low prices. Unbridled Belle, winner of the Grade 3 Obeah Stakes at Delaware Park, was the biggest bargain, selling for $4,000 at the 2004 Keeneland September sale. Zensational, winner of three consecutive Grade 1 races and the likely favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, was a $20,000 yearling purchase. A total of 20 AGS winners of 2009 brought prices of $50,000 or less at the Keeneland September sale. At the other end of the spectrum is the $3.9 million Storm Cat colt, Mr. Sidney, who won the Grade 1 Maker’s Mark Mile at Keeneland this spring.

The 66 AGS winners that sold at Keeneland September had an average price of $254,621 and a median of $115,000.

Because it serves as a marketplace for such a wide range of yearlings in terms of the quality of their pedigrees, the percentage of Keeneland September graduates that win an AGS race is lower than that of some other Thoroughbred auctions. Since the AGS winners of 2009 sold in different years, we’ll arbitrarily use 2007 as a benchmark for calculating the percentage (the same year was applied to consignors of sale horses in last week’s American Graded Stakes Standings brought to you by Keeneland). There were 3,799 yearlings sold at the 2007 Keeneland September sale, and the 66 AGS winners that were bought at a Keeneland September auction represent 1.7% of that figure.

By comparison, Fasig-Tipton’s select sales in Kentucky in July and at Saratoga in August, which select yearlings based on pedigree and conformation, had 3.3% and 7.0% AGS winners of 2009, respectively, using the number sold in 2007. The average price of FT July’s 12 AGS winners of 2009 was $141,500 and the median was $150,000. FT Saratoga select has produced 10 AGS winners of 2009; their average sale price was $431,000 and median was $330,000.

The Keeneland November breeding stock sale has had 12 of its graduates (10 weanlings, two horses of racing age) win AGS races in 2009. Their average was $415,083, buoyed by the world record price $1.7-million weanling, Mi Sueno (winner of the Grade 1 Darley Debutante last week), and the $2.4 million Mushka, who sold as a 3-year-old at last year’s Keeneland November sale. The median price of the 12 AGS winners sold at Keeneland November was $79,500.

Rounding out the auctions that have produced the most 2009 AGS winners are a pair of 2-year-old sales, Fasig-Tipton’s Midlantic May sale and the OBS March sale, with eight each. FT Midlantic’s eight AGS winners sold for an average price of $130,125 and median of $92,500, and the eight OBS March AGS winners sold for an average of $256,875 and median of $260,000. Using the number of 2-year-olds sold at their 2007 sales, the FT Midlantic AGS winners represent 2.3% of the number sold and the OBS March winners 3.2%.

 

The following press was distributed by Keeneland Association regarding the dispersal later this year of the breeding stock and a majority of the racing stock of Overbrook Farm, the Lexington Thoroughbred operation founded by the late William T. Young.

            Lexington, Ky. (June 9, 2009)—Overbrook Farm, founded and developed by the late William T. Young into one of North America’s most successful breeding establishments, announced today that it will completely disperse its Thoroughbred yearlings, breeding stock and the majority of its horses in training, beginning at Keeneland’s September Yearling Sale.

            “Over a period of more than 30 years my father developed Overbrook Farm into one of the most successful and respected breeding operations in the world,” said Bill Young Jr.  “The decision to disperse is a personal one that came after a great deal of thought. I simply don’t have the same passion for the Thoroughbred sport that my father did, despite my respect for the business.”

            Overbrook Farm, which is located outside of Lexington, bred, raced and has been the home of perennially leading sire Storm Cat, who was pensioned last year.

            “The retirement of Storm Cat ended a phenomenal era at Overbrook,” continued Young.  “The dispersal will give buyers a unique opportunity to purchase families that previously have not been available commercially.”

            Overbrook has bred and raced a long list of champions, classic and Breeders’ Cup winners including 1996 Kentucky Derby victor Grindstone and 1999 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Cat Thief along with champions Boston Harbor, Flanders, Golden Attraction and Surfside.  Overbrook also bred and raced dual classic winner Tabasco Cat, in addition to racing champion Preakness winner Timber Country and Belmont winner Editor’s Note.

            Overbrook received an Eclipse Award in 1994 as outstanding breeder.  The farm has bred 113 stakes winners including 62 group/graded stakes winners–21 group/grade 1.

            Approximately 200 horses will comprise the dispersal.  It will include approximately 75 broodmares, 50 weanlings, 50 yearlings and 20 to 30 horses of racing age.  Bill Young said Overbrook will continue to campaign a small racing stable under the direction of his son, Chris.

            “Our goal is to lease the farm as a Thoroughbred operation,” continued Bill Young.

            The dispersal, with Eaton Sales as agent, will begin with the sale of yearlings at Keeneland’s annual September Sale, which will start September 14.  Weanlings, broodmares and horses of racing age will be sold during the November Breeding Stock Sale.  The dispersal will continue during the January Horses of All Ages Sale.

            “The late W. T. Young established a tradition of excellence at Overbrook,” said Keeneland President Nick Nicholson. “ Keeneland had the privilege of selling many sons and daughters of the great Storm Cat.  Now we have the opportunity to offer our buyers horses from the outstanding Overbrook families.”

NO ONE PREDICTED KEENELAND’S SEPTEMBER YEARLING SALE WOULD BE UP, so it’s not that surprising to see a 13% drop in the gross receipts through the first six sessions of the 15-day marathon. That 13% equates to a $41-million decline in revenue that will not go into the pockets of breeders this year, and that red number only figures to increase as the sale reaches the second half.  The drop in revenue will ripple throughout all kinds of Thoroughbred-related businesses.

Gill, who was recently in the news because of some regulatory problems at his mortgage company, said he was getting out of the horse industry in 2006 when he accepted his Eclipse Award as outstanding owner. Many people had two words for him: good riddance.

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER WON’T BE COVERING GILL’S EXPLOITS since it accepted the early retirement of Turf writer Craig Donnelly only a month after the paper, the nation’s eighth largest, dramatically reduced the space allotted racing in its sports section. At that time, Inquirer editors told the Paulick Report it was keeping Donnelly but obviously they had a change of heart.

Newspapers may be an endangered species in the near future. Turf writers at daily newspapers already are.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

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