Bountiful Delights in Tattersalls October Sale

[Wandering Eyes]

With healthy returns at the major yearling sales around the world so far this season, it doesn’t require too much imagination to believe that the extraordinary growth seen at the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale over the last seven years will continue unabated this autumn.

From a slight dip in trade as the market readjusted after a global recession and breeders responded to overproduction, since 2010 the aggregate for all sections of the October Sale has more than doubled, from just over 72 million gns that year to last year’s record-breaking tally of more than 162 million gns from the sale of 1,552 yearlings.

Many of the headlines focus on Book 1 (Oct. 8 to 10) and that is hardly surprising, for these are the three days which draw potential buyers from all parts of the world, where pedigrees which would look the part in the stud book of any elite operation are to be found. This year, the number catalogued for Book 1 is up a little on the past two seasons, with 552 slated to sell across the three sessions. Among them are the siblings or half-siblings of 59 Classic or Group 1 winners.

“It has been Europe’s number one yearling sale for a very long time and the catalogue seems to get stronger and stronger. This year again, from the moment people saw the catalogue they were saying that they felt this could be the strongest ever, and there have been some very strong Book 1 catalogues in the last four or five years,” says Jimmy George, Tattersalls’ Marketing Director.

George also points to the draw of Europe’s ‘super sires’–Galileo (Ire), Dubawi (Ire), Sea The Stars (Ire), Frankel (GB) and the youngster whose stock are already scorching hot property, Kingman (GB). Tellingly, this quintet accounts for 164 of the yearlings, or almost 30%, of Book 1.

He says, “There is extraordinary depth to the quality of sires that we have at the moment in Britain and Ireland with probably four or five that would have been the top dog in any other era. For all of the top buyers, it would be very hard to ignore this sale. It’s a key event for anyone interested in owning an elite Thoroughbred.”

Beyond the famous five there is a raft of excellent names on the list of stallions with sizeable drafts during the opening week, including eight members of the penultimate crop of Juddmonte pensioner Dansili (GB), another eight by Shamardal, 30 by Dark Angel (Ire), 25 Lope De Vega (Ire) yearlings and another 23 by Kodiac (GB). And among those sires whose stock are seen less frequently in Britain are the Kentucky-based Flintshire (GB) (three), American Pharoah (two), War Front (two), Air Force Blue (two) and one by freshman Tamarkuz, as well as a sole yearling by German-based Adlerflug (Ger).

Of course, the stallions tell only half the story, often less. The bottom line is that there are also some pretty serious bottom lines.

Watership Down Stud topped last year’s sale with a 3.5 million-guinea full-brother to Too Darn Hot (GB), and they bring another Dubawi colt from one of their top-class racemares in lot 77, a son of the four-time Group 1 winner The Fugue (GB) (Dansili {GB}), who is bred on the same cross as the Book 1 topper of 2016, now known as Glorious Journey (GB) and a multiple group winner for Godolphin.

During the same opening session is lot 109, Chasemore Farm’s Sea The Stars half-brother to this season’s G3 Prestige S. winner and G2 May Hill S. runner-up Boomer (GB) (Kingman {GB}), while Woodcote Stud will offer lot 118, a Kingman half-brother to the dual Group 1 winner Poet’s Word (GB) (Poet’s Voice {GB}).

With a name like Yummy Mummy (GB) one would hope for a mare to be producing good-looking foals and Newsells Park Stud’s daughter of Montjeu (Ire) has had her fair share of Book 1 limelight via her offspring over the years. This time around her Dubawi colt will be sold as lot 128, and he has plenty to live up to with his brother having made 1.2 million gns last year, while half-siblings have been sold for 870,000gns, 725,000gns, 575,000gns and, for the subsequent Guineas and treble Group 1 winner Legatissimo (Ire) (Danehill Dancer {Ire}), 350,000gns.

Of course it’s all very well assembling a cast of equine stars, but they need an audience, and enticing buyers is a job which Tattersalls takes every bit as seriously as inspecting yearlings.

“We focus very closely on trying to attract top-end buyers from as many countries as we possibly can,” says George. “America and Australia are two particularly important markets at the moment. The expansion of the American turf programme is in itself very significant. I think that has been something that we have been able to build on and to use as a strategy when we go to America, in terms of targeting trainers and owners.”

That country’s dominant trainer of the turf, Chad Brown, has been a visitor to Newmarket for this sale over the last few seasons, with his purchases having included GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner Newspaperofrecord (Ire) (Lope De Vega {Ire}).

George continues, “Chad Brown doesn’t need us to point to the expansion of the turf programme but what is wonderful is that he has identified Book 1 of the October Yearling Sale as the premier sale to source those sorts of turf horses at that level. He’s been staggeringly successful at doing that and hugely enthusiastic about it. He loves coming to the sale and he, Mike Ryan, Peter Brant and Bob Edwards work the sale very hard and they have been hugely rewarded for doing so. It hopefully makes other buyers enthused by that success.”

At a time when the spring racing is hitting top gear in Australia, it is not uncommon now to find buyers from the Southern Hemisphere making a trip to Tattersalls. To a degree, the rising prices for horses with staying form has seen a shift in focus from the Horses-in-Training Sale to the yearling market, and sometimes to foals.

“We have something that the Australians don’t have,” George says. “Of course their industry is totally turf-orientated but we have horses that can stay beyond a mile and they are painfully short of that. As we know, the top-end horses-in-training market is very expensive so we have been working hard to try to say to the Australians that are interested in Northern Hemisphere horses that they might find it equally, if not more rewarding, to target the October Yearling Sale and some of them have already been successful doing that.”

He adds, “What we try to promote when we are travelling the world is that buyers can find something in Britain at Tattersalls that they will not find anywhere else in terms of the quality of the pedigrees. And also with the way the pound is they are not just getting unprecedented quality but also unprecedented value for money in terms of how far the overseas currencies are stretching.”

Among those yearlings who may well pique the interest of Australian buyers is lot 185. Offered by Stauffenberg Bloodstock, the €180,000 foal purchase is a Siyouni (Fr) half-brother to recent German Group 1 winner Danceteria (Fr) (Redoute’s Choice), owned by Australian Bloodstock and currently in quarantine ahead of a trip to Melbourne for the G1 Cox Plate. The colt’s dam, Bal De La Rose (Ire), is a Cadeaux Genereux (GB) half-sister to Lope De Vega (Ire), a stallion with a lofty profile in both hemispheres.

Two young stallions with first-crop yearlings in the sale are Vadamos (Fr) with four and Shalaa (Ire) with six, but interestingly their respective breeders will each offer Dubawi half-sisters to these two Group 1 winners.

Lot 216 is the half-sister to Vadamos from a select draft of five yearlings from Andreas Putsch’s Haras de Saint Pair, three of which are by Dubawi. Meanwhile Aisling and Mark Gittins of Castlefarm Stud will bring lot 315, the half-sister to Haras de Bouquetot’s Shalaa, who was the leading first-season sire at Arqana’s August Sale.

Also related to a promising young stallion is lot 283, New England Stud’s Dubawi colt out of Filia Regina (GB) (Galileo {Ire}), a winning daughter of Ouija Board (GB) (Cape Cross {Ire}) and thus a sister to dual Derby winner Australia (GB). Five lots later, Norelands Stud will offer as lot 288 a Frankel half-brother to the champion 3-year-old Golden Horn (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}).

Potential buyers will have to keep their wits about them when lots 488 and 489 go through the ring. Extraordinarily, both yearlings are by Kingman and out of a mare named Parle Moi. In the case of lot 488, a colt and a first Book 1 offering from Farran Anstock of Clearwater Stud, the Parle Moi (Ire) in question is a winning Montjeu (Ire) mare and a daughter of dual Group 3 winner Di Moi Oui (GB) (Warning {GB}).

He will be followed by the filly (489) from Oghill House Stud’s Parle Moi, herself a daughter of Giant’s Causeway out of the G1 Cheveley Park S. winner Pas De Reponse (Danzig).

To highlight each of the top-drawer pedigrees on offer could fill many more pages here. In an exacting market, the physical qualities of each individual have to match the bloodlines in quality, and despite the elite nature of the sale, a median price last year of 167,500gns–albeit a figure any sale company would be delighted to achieve–tells its own story of how price cannot necessarily match expectation right the way through the book.

Five years ago, in a bid to ensure that more buyers, and in particular trainers, were not shunning Book 1 and waiting for the second week of the October Sale, Tattersalls launched its Book 1 Bonus, which rewards graduates with an extra £25,000 on top of prize-money won in a maiden or novice contest. Plenty of owners have benefited from this scheme over the last four racing seasons and, as our accompanying tables highlighting Book 1 bonus winners sold for less than 100,000gns show, not all have required princely sums to have been paid in order to have taken them home from Park Paddocks.

“Trainers have actually changed their strategy for buying now and they are particularly targeting Book 1. They say to us at this is now the sale that they want to buy at, which is encouraging,” says George. “For example, Alan and Mike Spence recently received a total of £37,352 for Star In The Making (GB) winning a novice race at Salisbury, and that was more than they won for Positive (GB) winning the G3 Solario S. in the same week.”

He adds, “We are pleased that the message is very much getting through that there are horses here that will sell under that elite level but they have the pedigrees and the potential to earn decent bonuses on top of their prize-money. By the time of the sale we will have given out almost £5 million from four seasons of bonuses won by more than 180 different horses.”

For buyers who don’t manage to bag themselves a Book 1 horse, there are of course many more horses still to come through the following week’s Books 2, 3 and 4, with the sale coming to an end on QIPCO British Champions Day. And if history has taught us anything, it is that sales at every level are worth perusing closely in order to find a horse capable of winning on such an illustrious day of racing. The search is on.

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