Posts Tagged ‘Mark Taylor’

By Ray Paulick
Buyers at the 2008 Keeneland September yearling sale who stopped by the Taylor Made Sales Agency barn to inspect Hip 1738 would have been looking at a bay colt by leading sire Smart Strike out of a young mare bred and raced by William S. Farish in partnership with Temple Webber Jr.

They would have been looking at a colt whose year-older half brother by Mr. Greeley, broke his maiden impressively at first asking at Saratoga a month earlier and who was entered in the Grade 2 Futurity Stakes at Saratoga on Sept. 13, one day before the yearling colt was to enter the sales ring.

But many of the potential buyers might also have been looking at a veterinarian’s report that said the colt had “mild sesamoiditis” in his left front ankle … “moderate mid-sagittal ridge erosion” in his right front ankle … “moderate sesamoiditis” in his left hind ankle … and a “post-operative lateral trochlear ridge divot” in both his left and right stifle.

Unfortunately, the details of that vet report may be what most buyers focused on, for despite the fact its conclusion was a “favorable prognosis” for racing soundness the colt was bought back by his breeders for $35,000, which wouldn’t even cover his sire’s 2006 stud fee of $50,000.

Who was the colt these buyers were looking at?

It was Lookin at Lucky, who went on to be a $475,000 graduate of the 2009 Keeneland April sale of 2-year-olds in training and is the probable champion 2-year-old Eclipse Award-winning male on the strength of four victories in American Graded Stakes races, including the Grade 1 trio of the Del Mar Futurity, Norfolk Stakes and CashCall Futurity. His only defeat in six starts came when beaten a nose in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile by Vale of York.

Lookin at Lucky is just the latest example of a horse offered at public auction whose sale price was greatly diminished because of perceived physical problems that knowledgeable veterinary professionals believe would not impair its ability to train and race. He will be, as Mark Taylor of Taylor Made Sales Agency said recently, the 2010 poster child to help educate buyers about how physical or radiograph imperfections do not have to affect a horse’s racing ability or soundness.

Mark’s older brother, Duncan Taylor, who probably couldn’t dunk a basketball on an eight-foot hoop, often jokes that if NBA scouts drafted players on the basis of radiographs he might have gotten picked ahead of Michael Jordan because his X-rays are perfect.

Veterinarian Jerry Bailey and Lance Robinson, partners in Gulf Coast Farm, bred Lookin at Lucky after buying his dam, Private Feeling, for $130,000 from the Lane’s End consignment at the 2004 Keeneland November breeding stock sale. They sold Kensei for $300,000 to Jess Jackson’s Stonestreet Stables at the 2008 Barretts May 2-year-olds in training sale (Kensei went on to win the 2009 Grade 2 Jim Dandy, and Bailey and Robinson sold Private Feeling for $2 million at the 2009 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November mixed sale).

Robinson and Bailey were high on Kensei’s younger half brother when he was entered in the 2008 Keeneland September sale. But Lookin at Lucky underwent surgery in April 2008 to remove OCD fragments from both stifles, and the aforementioned report prepared by the consignor’s veterinarian indicated other minor issues that the vet did not believe would prevent the colt from racing soundness. But, as has been the case with a long list of successful racehorses who did not sell well because of perceived issues, the report discouraged buyers who feel a horse is stigmatized by the letters OCD (which stands for osteochondritis dissecans),

So Bailey and Robinson put the colt in training and pointed him for Keeneland’s 2-year-old sale in the spring of 2009, offering him in the name of the Jerry Bailey Sales Agency. He caught the eye of trainer Bob Baffert after a one-furlong breeze in 10 seconds and brought the top price of $475,000 on the sale’s second day. Baffert, who said Lookin at Lucky X-rayed fine before the 2-year-old sale, told the Paulick Report he was unaware of the issues that accompanied the colt into the sale ring the previous September. Baffert bought the colt in the name of Mike Pegram, who now races Lookin at Lucky in partnership with Karl Watson and Paul Weitman.

“There’s a lot of times when you’re looking for athletes that it’s better not to have too much information,” the Hall of Fame trainer said. “There are so many horses that don’t ‘vet’ that turn out to be runners. I’ve trained horses that had OCD lesions and it never bothered them.”

Mark Taylor, who serves as president of the Consignors and Commercial Breeders Association, said one of the organization’s primary goals is to educate buyers about veterinary issues that come up at Thoroughbred auctions. To that end, the CBA has published several informative and useful booklets, including one that specifically deals with OCD. (Click here for a copy of that booklet, written by Frank Mitchell, and here to learn more about the CBA.)

Taylor said another one of the CBA’s projects is to gather racing results data for horses in various categories assigned by veterinarians based on radiographs and their prognosis for racing soundness made at the time they were offered at public auction. “Just at Taylor Made, we’ve got 90% of the X-ray reports of all the Grade 1 winners we’ve offered, starting with horses born in 1980 to the present,” he said. “It’s amazing some of the X-ray train wrecks that have gone on to be really good horses.”

Lookin at Lucky wasn’t one of those train wrecks. But the minor issues he had were discouraging enough to potential buyers that they passed on an opportunity to buy a horse who turned into a three-time Grade 1 winner and the early favorite for the Kentucky Derby. That’s the kind of horse that everyone is looking for.

Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick
Of the 233 horses that have won an American Graded Stakes (AGS) race this year, 122 of them (52.4%) have sold at public auction in North America or abroad, either as foals or weanlings, yearlings or at 2-year-olds in training or sales of older horses.

Yearling sales dominate the roster of 2009 AGS winners. There are 107 AGS winners this year sold as yearlings (that’s 45.9% of 2009 AGS winners and 87.7% of the 122 sold at any type of sale). Keep in mind, these numbers only reflect American Graded Stakes and do not include horses offered at a sale and either withdrawn or bought back by their consignors. Some horses sold as yearlings were previously bought as foals or weanlings or were later sold as 2-year-olds in training by pinhookers.

Drilling down a little deeper on the yearling statistics, the Paulick Report’s weekly American Graded Stakes Standings brought to you by Keeneland shows that Taylor Made Sales Agency is responsible for selling 18 of those 107 yearlings that subsequently became AGS winners. That means 16.8% of this year’s AGS winners sold at public auction as yearlings passed through the Nicholasville, Ky., operation run by brothers Duncan, Frank, Ben and Mark Taylor and Pat Payne.

Of course, we all know that Taylor Made is the industry’s largest volume of seller of yearlings, so how does that 16.8% compare with the overall percentage of yearlings sold by Taylor Made? Since the AGS winners came from different foal crops and yearling sale years, we’ll arbitrarily select one auction year as an estimated benchmark. Using statistics from the 2007 Thoroughbred Times Auction Review (3-year-olds of 2009), Taylor Made sold 536 yearlings, or 5.3% of the 10,215 yearlings sold that year. In other words, Taylor Made sold about one in 20 of all the yearlings auctioned off in a given year, but sold one in six of the yearling sale graduates that won a 2009 AGS race. If 2007 was an average year for Taylor Made in terms of the number of yearlings sold, then its 18 AGS winners of 2009 equates to a success rate of 3.4% AGS winners from yearlings sold.

The prices of Taylor Made graduates reflect that quality. While the overall average of the 10,215 yearlings sold in North America in 2007 was $55,020 and the median was $15,000, Taylor Made’s 2007 average price was $137,500. Buyers of Taylor Made consigned yearlings that went on to success in 2009 AGS races spent, on average, $346,111 for each yearling that became an AGS winner (the median price of a 2009 AGS winner sold by Taylor Made was $342,500).

For comparison’s sake, of all 107 yearlings sold that went on to win a 2009 AGS, the average hammer price was $211,134 and the median was $120,000.

Eaton Sales is typically second in volume (number of yearlings sold) and is also second behind Taylor Made in producing the highest number of 2009 AGS winners, with 10 (two of which were sold by Eaton as weanlings and eight as yearlings).

Using overall 2007 auction numbers, the eight yearlings sold by Eaton that won a 2009 AGS equates to 2.2% of all the yearlings Eaton sold in 2007. The average sale price of Eaton’s 2009 AGS winners is $131,500, almost identical to Eaton’s 2007 yearling average of $130,970.

Paramount Sales is represented by six AGS winners of 2009, all sold as yearlings for an average price of $92,000, and the six AGS successes represents 2.4% of the total number sold by Paramount in 2007 (again, please remember, we are choosing 2007 arbitrarily, since this year’s AGS winners come from multiple foal crops and sale years). Paramount’s overall yearling average in 2007 was $67,803.

Lane’s End has six 2009 AGS winners, one sold as a weanling; the five sold as yearlings had an average price of $1,021,000, a number spiked by the $3.9 million Storm Cat colt Mr. Sidney. The five AGS winners represent 2.7% of the 184 yearlings Lane’s End sold in 2007. Lane’s End had an overall yearling average of $236,506 in 2007, by far the highest of this group of consignors ranked among the leading sellers of AGS winners. (Another reminder, the statistics do not include overseas graded/group race results.)

Hill ‘n’ Dale sold six 2009 AGS winners, four of them as yearlings for an average price of $148,800. The number sold represents 2.1% of all Hill ‘n’ Dale yearlings sold in 2007. Those yearlings averaged $92,982.

Conclusions? Obviously, Taylor Made is enjoying an outstanding year as the leading seller of 2009 AGS winners, and it’s not only because of the higher volume of horses sold. Using those 2007 auction figures as a benchmark, Taylor Made’s rate of 3.4% AGS winners from yearlings sold is higher than all the other leading consignors shown in the table below demonstrating that quantity in a consignment does not by any means exclude quality.