‘Everything is Coming Together’: High Expectations as Fasig-Tipton New York-Bred Sale Opens Sunday

[Wandering Eyes]

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – After a few days to recover from a blockbuster Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale, bidding returns to the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion Sunday evening for the first of two sessions of the Fasig-Tipton New York-Bred Yearlings Sale. The auction is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m with 100 catalogued yearlings set to go through the ring, and it will continue Monday at noon with an additional 203 catalogued head on offer.

Buyers–both pinhookers and end-users, with new shoppers joining those that were shut out during the record-setting select sale last week–hit the sales barns on a sunny morning in upstate New York Saturday.

“Our shows seem to be way up from last year,” said Brian Graves of Gainesway, which sold three million-dollar yearlings at the select sale and returns with a six-horse consignment for the New York-bred sale. “We showed these horses 70 times on the first day. And we have been busy today as well. So I think there is a good solid group of people here to buy them.”

Demand was strong at last year's New York-bred sale, with 182 yearlings selling for a gross of $19,095,500. The average of $104,920 was third-highest in sale history, while the median of $86,500 was an all-time high for the auction.

“Last year was a great sale here,” said Ron Blake of Blake-Albina Thoroughbred Services, which had a seven-figure yearling at last week's select sale and will offer nine New York-breds. “We had six last yera and we sold every horse for more than we thought we were going to get for them.”

Blake continued, “We had a strong select sale. So I'm sure there have to be a few people who got shut out who wanted to buy. So you just hope that there is a trickle down effect.”

With an advantageous tax code, added to the purse parity in New York which will have state-bred horses running at equal money with open company, people have plenty of incentives to buy racehorses, according to consignor Colin Brennan.

“I think the tax breaks seem to be motivating some people, in addition to the new New York-bred incentives,” Brennan said. “Everything is coming together–the sum of all the parts, which would suggest a strong market for us.”

Asked if he was seeing a turnover of buyers from the select sale to the New York-bred sale, Brennan said, “I think there are two separate buying benches and they are two different niches, in a sense. But then again, agents that have orders to fill for good horses, they are here as well. We have seen different people come and go between each sale, but either way, there has been a lot of good foot traffic and our group has been well received.”

Allegra Lee will add another accomplishment to her resume when she offers her first consignment under the Ascend Thoroughbreds banner Monday in Saratoga.

“I have wanted to start a consignment for about four years and this was just the right time to do it,” she explained.

The consignment's lone offering is hip 444, a daughter of Munnings out of stakes-placed Amazing Shoes (Empire Maker).

“I thought this filly would fit in this sale,” Lee said. “The family has been live.”

Of the shoppers she has seen at the barns Sunday, Lee added, “I think the pinhookers got shut out in the first sale, so were the end-users, so [the shoppers] are a mix of both.”

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