Op/Ed: Tailor A Sale For Middle-Distance Yearlings

The extended hiatus in the Thoroughbred business is forcing changes to the accepted calendar and offers the opportunity to make others. The extent of the issues to be resolved will be uncertain for some time, but there are two inevitable challenges to be faced: depression of the economy will reduce demand at the sales and there will be a loss of income for racing owing to reduced betting activity.

There is one change to the sales schedule which would be constructive in the long term and pragmatic in the short: hold a one-day sale limited to yearlings bred to race over middle distances as 3-years-olds and up. The ideal spot would be between Books 1 and 2 of the Tattersalls October Sale in Newmarket. Increasingly yearlings answering this description are marginalised in Book 3. Goffs UK has established a sale that almost exclusively caters for the other end of the spectrum, but no sales house is prepared to attempt to market the profile of horses that may require time and distance.

Book 1 is the major source of this type of horse for owners with substantial budgets, but producers of purportedly less fashionable yearlings answering this remit are shuffled back to Book 3. This comes at the end of a busy fortnight for the diehard, and week for the many who assume that they cannot compete in Book 1 and whose attention begins with Book 2. Very many feel, understandably, that they cannot justify absence from the day job as trainer or owner for the full two weeks. Compiling a single day that comes after a weekend without live sales action should enable all interested to attend and the response may well surprise those who believe it is a sector of the market without commercial appeal. My lasting memory from last year's sales season came with the very last yearling through the ring at Tattersalls. Normally this would be a manifest example of disillusion with saturation and most years the attendance in the ring would barely scrape into double figures. Last year a virtually full house came back to see a spirited battle for a son of Sixties Icon, out of a mare by Sir Percy, with no black type under the first two dams, make 70,000gns.

Yearlings like this deserve the opportunity to be viewed by a wider audience. No doubt the riposte will be that the charms of the more backward yearlings are less apparent when inspected. Fair enough–lump them together with likely types and let the buyers looking for them decide. They can do their shopping and let the deluge of limited models conceived for market appeal rather than lasting performance occupy the stage for as long as is necessary.

It is little wonder that precocious and limited horses are so popular within the business. They require replacing every 12 months, which means business for breeders, agents and trainers all of which must be underwritten by an owner–if the owner is there.

The more backward model is welcomed at the horses-in-training sales when it has reached an immediate and obvious appeal. There is no freely available data for the sales averages of stallions' stock as mature horses with form (partly as so many are sold privately), whilst it is easy for prospective purchasers to divine the disparity between foal and yearling sales prices and racecourse performance. I think yearling purchasers may well draw up different short lists if they were aware that the relation between yearling price and 3-year-old realisation tended towards the inverse.

The likelihood that an economic recovery will be gradual rather than immediate would motivate owners towards horses that can run for multiple seasons, as indeed many of the most committed, though smaller scale, already are. It is wildly optimistic to expect annual restocking on recent levels. Many within the business believe that we had reached overproduction before the current disruption, but that will surely be more apparent this autumn. There is a declining demand from the domestic buying bench for yearlings, but in contrast an increase from new export interests. They have a unanimous desire for a horse with scope to progress beyond its 2-year-old season and the vast majority of their purchases are for horses that will go well beyond a mile.

Which brings us back to the spectre of reduced levy funding. Unless we are able to divorce ourselves from this mechanism, we must embrace the most propitious programme to deliver the best yield. We have been prepared to suffer a bloated fixture list to appease the bookmakers, but largely ignored the strongest evidence: the highest turnover flat races are Group 1s and big-field handicaps. It seems obvious that this is because punters are most likely to bet on the familiar. In the 1930s, the then-Aga Khan was complaining about the slant of prize-money towards big handicaps and complaining about the earnings of better horses. Whatever the motivation, or merits of changes to the racing programme since then, it has not maintained the sport's popularity with the general public. The domination of racing superpowers has enabled us to keep the world's best bloodstock at home and cemented our position at the pinnacle of international racing, but it has come at the cost of domestic interest in the top events, both from owners and bettors.

The only contestant who is a certain loser is one that quits and too many breeders and owners have quit the Classic quest because they feel it is unattainable. As an industry we need to ensure that near misses are so well rewarded that they make the pursuit of those goals appealing and worthwhile. The reward will be a far healthier choice of stallions and depth of market. The recent initiatives in boosting the stayers' programme are a welcome start, but need expansion.

Australia and the United States have marched in the opposite direction over recent decades and where has that led them? Only Japan has sought to frame a balanced racing programme (Deep Impact was asked to race over two miles on two occasions and it failed to prevent him producing a Guineas winner out of a Galileo mare) and only Japan is a serious factor in international middle-distance competition.

Until racing's funding is properly addressed, international export must weigh increasingly heavily within our business. Sales inspections are now underway, it is time to showcase horses that meet that demand.

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