You really wonder sometimes: who's pulling the strings? The final statistics for the two-day Goffs Orby sale earlier this week were very similar to last year's, just as Keeneland September's 12-day marathon finished with statistics so similar to the last two years. One noticeable difference is that the clearance rate from the catalogues is about [...]

Empire Maker stood for seven seasons in Kentucky before his sale to Japan for the 2011 breeding season, and it is very good news for Kentucky breeders that he will be returning, after five seasons in Japan, to stand at Gainesway in 2016. His seven North American crops have produced thus far 48 A Runners [...]

There's a lot to be said for market stability, and as others have commented in the last couple of days, the Keeneland September market can only be described as 'steady'. A look at the accompanying Weekly Sales Ticker confirms this: the gross for North America's most important yearling sale finished up at $281,496,100, for 2,745 [...]

When all the cajoling, chirping, and yipping had died down Monday night at the end of Book 3, the needle hadn't moved at all. Last year (8 sessions) 1,588 yearlings sold in Books 1-3 for a total of $245,951,500, an average of $154,881 per horse. This year (7 sessions) 1,504 yearlings sold in the first [...]

After three days of selling, Keeneland September Book 1 totals looked much the same as last year's four-day Book 1. There were 5% fewer catalogued in Book 1 this year (724 vs. 762) and 7% fewer sold (443 vs. 473). The RNA rate rose from 27.3% to 30.9%, but with fewer withdrawals the clearance rate [...]

At last year's Keeneland September Sale, 473 yearlings (62.1% of the 762 catalogued) sold for a total of $142,153,000 and averaged $300,535 in the four-day Book 1. That means, if Book 1 had been a three-day sale last year, each day an average of 158 yearlings would have sold for $47,483,000 to average $300,000. In [...]

There are 249 sires represented by 4,164 yearlings catalogued at Keeneland September, an average of 16.7 per sire. However, 102 sires have fewer than four yearlings catalogued, including 68 sires with just one each. The 147 sires with four or more catalogued average 27 yearlings each and constitute 96% of the catalogue. So those are [...]

Though Book 1 is being compressed from four days into three–so Thursday instead of Friday will be the dark day–the overall composition of Keeneland's September Yearling Sale will not really change very much from last year. The Book 1 sessions will start at 11 a.m. this year instead of noon, and instead of cataloguing 762 [...]

Not including Arqana's August v. 2 sale yesterday, through their Book 1 August yearling sale which ended Monday, plus another solid edition of the NY-bred sale last weekend makes it a good time to take a snapshot of the sales season so far: Fasig-Tipton July, Saratoga, and NY-bred sales, plus Arqana August Book 1. It's [...]

Fasig-Tipton took a risk this year by cataloguing 26% more yearlings between their Fasig July and Saratoga yearling sales, since the usual pattern when catalogues are increased so much is for the not-sold percentage to rise, the gross to stay about the same, and the average　to drop. But it was all smiles at Saratoga Tuesday [...]

Three North American or European second-crop sires (first foals 2012, or F2012) have sired Classic winners in their first crops of 3-year-olds this year. That's presuming you agree that the GI Kentucky Oaks, won by the Majesticperfection filly Lovely Maria, should be classified as a Classic, which really it should be. The other two Classic [...]

Through racing of July 5, when we ran the Midyear APEX data, a North American racehorse needed to have earned just over $40,000 thus far in 2015 to qualify as a Midyear 'C Runner', and just over $83,000 to qualify as a Midyear 'A Runner'; you can see the amounts (converted to US$) for the [...]