Ascot Opens Breeze-Up Season

[Wandering Eyes]

While it represents an unashamedly up-and-at-’em start to the European breeze-up calendar, trading in workmanlike speed and precocity, the sale staged by Tattersalls Ascot today is nonetheless capable of serving as a weathervane for the whole market.

Two years ago, a clearance rate of 80% and turnover breaking £2 million for the first time proved an auspicious signpost to a continued boom in the entire sector. The very first horse to breeze in Europe, moreover, turned out to be Sands Of Mali (Fr) (Panis), who proceeded to win the G2 Gimcrack S. that same summer.

The momentum sparked at Ascot in 2017 extended through the ensuing sales, crowned by one of the all-time great pinhooks when Willie Browne of Mocklershill sold a Street Sense colt, found for just $15,000 at Keeneland the previous September, for €1.4 million to Kerri Radcliffe, then operating for Phoenix Thoroughbreds, at Arqana in May.

It was a different story at Ascot last year. The clearance rate slumped to 50% and the median, for those that did manage to find a buyer, to 16,000gns from 21,000gns. And, once again, the more upmarket sales found that Ascot’s opening skirmishes had set the tone for the whole battle.

As the circus proceeded to Doncaster and elsewhere, it gradually became clear that a number of factors had come askew across the market. And it certainly didn’t help that the breeze show for this sale, in particular, had to be staged in extraordinarily difficult conditions.

But to the extent that there were lessons to be learned by sales companies, as well as by vendors, it looks as though one or two nettles have been grasped with commendable purpose–above all, in restoring catalogues to the kind of size that had sustained market growth until last year. Nowhere will this have been done more decisively than at Ascot, where today’s catalogue (before withdrawals) has been slashed from 146 to 91.

The principal complaint, as the wheels came off the breeze-up bandwagon in 2018, was that the sector as a whole had become “a dumping ground” for unwanted yearlings. Overproduction, of course, is hardly the fault of the breeze-up sector, sooner reflecting the enormous books of mediocre mares nowadays being routinely corralled by unproven, ostensibly “commercial” stallions, in the hope of turning a fast buck. And many breeze-up vendors last year rebuked the sales companies for expanding their catalogues.

Anecdotally, however, it appeared that many horses were being turned down. After all, it is not as though any shopkeeper prospers from oversupply.

Either way, the fact is that market forces always contain the seeds of correction. Those opportunists who burned their fingers last year are doubtless less inclined (or insufficiently solvent) to come back and ride the wave created, over previous cycles, by the exceptional expertise of so many breeze-up consignors. In contrast, those who had generated that swell will, largely, also have proved best equipped to weather the storm. This time round, then, they will hope to regroup and maybe renew some of the positive curves achieved until last year.

Remember that these supremely professional horsemen have a canny eye for the right type to develop as a breeze-up horse; and that some of the flotsam and jetsam drifting onto the market last spring, for no better reason than market rejection as yearlings, would never have got anywhere near their shortlists.

Wherever the fault could be divided–not just between vendors and sales companies, but also with extraneous economic factors such as Brexit–the fact is that today’s catalogue of 91 is actually below the 99 lots published in 2017. That represents an unequivocal repentance on last year’s bumper book of 146.

Other auctions, if not quite to the same extent, have also narrowed their sights. Goffs UK, for instance, has trimmed back its offering at Doncaster later in the month to 160, much closer to the 152 listed in 2017 (of which 79% ultimately sold) than to the 207 animals catalogued last year (66% sold).

But it is not just about retrenchment. There have also been proactive, positive gestures. A new bonus scheme is being introduced at the Craven Sale, while graduates of today’s auction will be eligible for a new £100,000 incentive should they return to the same strip of turf in 11 weeks’ time and win at the Royal meeting.

That is the ultimate aspiration for those shopping at the earliest of the sales, and was famously vindicated when Sean Quinn signed for The Wow Signal (Ire) (Starspangledbanner {Aus}) here in 2014, for £50,000. The following month Quinn’s father John saddled the colt to win by nine lengths on his Ayr debut, and he then returned to Berkshire to win the G2 Coventry S.

The Wow Signal followed up in the G1 Prix Morny but was unable to race at three. Importantly for those who promote this format, however, Sands Of Mali continued to thrive last year to the extent that he too scored at the highest level, in the G1 Haydock Sprint Trophy; besides being a close second in the G1 Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot.

Hope springs eternal, and stakeholders recently canvassed by colleague Kelsey Riley say they are confident that everyone will have learned from the collective mistakes of last year. Yes, these were compounded by misfortunes beyond anyone’s control–the horrible going for such young horses at more than one sale, for instance. But the bottom line is that catalogues across the major European sales in 2018 expanded from 1,079 lots to 1,279, while actual sales only inched up to 769 from 739.

Those figures helped everyone grasp that demand, for now, remains finite and largely unchanged. Moreover the stronger demand at the top end, reflecting a polarisation familiar across all markets, was propped up last year by the final crop of Scat Daddy. Consignors at every level, then, will have taken a chastened new focus to the yearling sales. Many, after taking a hit last year, will step back into the ring with a meaner, leaner look. As such, everyone will surely be satisfied should Ascot today offer neither fireworks nor fire sales, but simply a solid base for the weeks ahead.

 

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