It's about to be uber-busy season at Keeneland. The fall meet begins Oct. 4. But first there is the annual extravaganza that is the Keeneland September sale. That begins Sept. 9 and more than 4,000 horses are in the catalogue.
The sale and the upcoming racing meet were among the topics of discussion when Keeneland CEO and President Shannon Arvin joined the TDN Writers' Room Podcast presented by Keeneland.
Arvin is expecting that this will be a strong sale.
“The economic indicators so far are really good,” she said. “We, obviously, watch closely the other yearling sales that precede ours, and we're thrilled to see how successful they were. Over the years, I have been told that the horse business follows the stock market. What? I've actually looked at the statistics. It's really not true at all, which could be good or bad, depending on the day and what it looks like on Sept. 9th and 10th. I think we've got a lot of excitement in the industry. This is always, as you said, kind of a stressful time for our breeders who are bringing their full stock to market for this massive yearling sale. But it's really exciting. And one of the best things about the September sale is that it's exciting from start to finish. You know, you can find gems all the way through the sale, and you have a lot of prominent buyers that shop all the way through the sale, and it pays off for them.”
On the Wednesday prior to the Breeders' Cup, Keeneland will hold its first ever “Champions Sale” at Del Mar. Similar to what is done at the Royal Ascot meet, the sale will include horses that are entered in the Breeders' Cup.
“We brainstorm a lot, “Arvin said. “The sales team sits around, says what would help the market, what would help the breeders, what would be fun? Sales and racing clearly go hand in hand. So this seemed like a great opportunity to try something different. The concept is that it's before the Breeders' Cup. Hopefully, we'll have entries that are either in Breeders' Cup races or on the undercard. It could also be shares or breeding rights to exciting stallions you might expect to see there, too.”
Keeneland's racing meet has become so popular that all seats are sold out in advance.
“The seats sell out in eight minutes,” she said. “So far as the general admissions go, we sell those out for our big days. We encourage everybody to get their GA tickets in advance. We used to report our attendance every race day, and I remember I'd get 10 emails a day with the attendance updates. We noticed all the scans, but we don't really report it anymore because we're not trying to pack in as many fans as possible. We really want it to be a good experience for the people that are here. So if you're in line for a hot dog, you can get a hot dog without waiting for 20 minutes.”
In our breeding spotlight section, we took a look at the WinStar stallion Nashville.
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar, XBTV.com and Stonestreet Farm, the team of Randy Moss, Zoe Cadman and Bill Finley, reviewed the major races of the holiday weekend, including the GI Pacific Classic, the GI Travers S. and the GI Hopeful S. The list also included the GIII Nashville Derby, worth a cool $3.1 million, at Kentucky Downs. They wrapped up the Saratoga meet and sang the praises of Flavien Part and Dylan Davis, who both had strong meets.
Moss weighed in on how disqualifications are handled in the sport and advocated for a system whereby the jockey can be fined or suspended, but the winning horse is not taken down.
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