‘A Very Good Buyers’ Sale’: OBS June Brings Curtain Down on Juvenile Sales Season

[Wandering Eyes]

The Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's June Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training, the final major juvenile auction of the season, gets underway Tuesday in Central Florida, with bidding scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. The auction, held in recent years over three days, will be held over two days this year with a catalogue of 851 2-year-olds.

“I think there are some horses who breezed very nicely and have a little bit of pedigree here and then you have your usual range of horses who don't have as much pedigree that performed. I think the horses are going to be well bought,”  consignor Nick Sallusto of Thorostock said of expectations for the two-day auction. “I think that this sale is a very good buyers' sale.”

After setting sale records in 2022, the June sale figures ticked down slightly in 2023 and 2024, but Sallusto said the auction has developed a dedicated buying bench.

“I think there has almost become a unique group of buyers that come to this sale because they feel like they can buy a nice horse at a different price point, a little less than the sales average all year long,” he said.

With just weeks until the yearling sales season begins, the June sale also has some motivated sellers.

“I think sellers look at it as, whether the horse is worth more or not, most of the horses here are in some sort of pinhook package, so if the group has been profitable, than the sellers just tend to let those horses move along at whatever the market values them at,” Sallusto said. “We are getting ready to go back and start buying in a few weeks, so every single dollar counts, it sort of helps push the next year along.

“So the buyers need to fill their orders to race and the sellers certainly have a need to move some inventory, even if it is not at the price point that we had hoped it to be.”

The 2-year-olds in training sales this spring opened with a record $3-million sale topper at the OBS March sale and, with a record number of seven-figure offerings, the company's April sale produced its highest-ever average. The strength of the market continued in Timonium in May when the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale produced sales record gross, average, and median despite facing an uphill battle with the weather.

Consignor Robbie Harris looks for the strength of those previous sales to bolster the competition at the June sale.

“I am hoping there are some guys who got shut out,” Harris said. “The 2-year-old sales have been up, as far as average and all of that goes. So I am hoping for some guys who haven't gotten their orders filled and they are looking to try to find something.”

Harris is also expecting to see some familiar trends.

“It's the same old story,” he said. “What the market perceives as the good ones seem to find a home. I am hoping for some good luck.”

While 24 juveniles worked a furlong in :9 4/5 during last week's under-tack preview of the June sale, a colt by Nyquist (hip 634) earned the show's bullet with a :9 3/5 work for Wavertree Stables. A colt by Beau Liam (hip 829) claimed the week's quarter-mile bullet when covering the distance in :20 1/5 for Omar Ramirez Bloodstock.

A pair of fillies from Tom McCrocklin's consignment brought matching $400,000 bids to top the 2024 June Sale. Stakes-winning Silent Law (Tiz the Law) was second in this year's GII Santa Anita Oaks.

In all, 606 horses sold at last year's June sale for a gross of $22,045,800. The sale average was $36,379 and the median was $20,000.

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