Middle Market Faces Key Test At Doncaster

DONCASTER, UK–In an era where we hear so much about market polarisation, it seems difficult to know what to expect from the breeze-up sale staged by Goffs UK here on Thursday-following, as it does in this year's calendar, two sales pitched at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Last year this auction fell between the blue-collar curtain-raiser at Ascot and the elite catalogue at the Craven Sale, and ended up signposting a tough spring for the whole sector. Given its focus on the middle market, considered notoriously fragile nowadays by dealers in all kinds of bloodstock, a later date this time round may help to render more intelligible the slightly mixed messages coming out of Ascot and Newmarket.

Both tightened their catalogues and both improved their clearance rate, while the Craven Sale also managed to improve the median. That was encouraging, albeit the welcome presence of Sheikh Mohammed in person–generously redressing the absence of a number of more regular breeze-up prospectors–gave turnover a very different look than might otherwise have been the case.

Today's hosts have likewise trimmed the catalogue, down from 182 last year (before withdrawals) to 160. Now they are hoping that the dividends improve as much as the weather: last spring was so wet that there had even been talk of switching the breeze show to Southwell, whereas this time they had to water. Consignors sounded very happy with the conditions, and those buyers who rely on the clock can do so with corresponding confidence.

It always seemed a little harsh to blame sales companies for bloating their catalogues last year, when at the time you were hearing more complaints about the number of horses they had turned away. That said, Goffs UK chairman Henry Beeby acknowledges that the market's saturation had been a collective responsibility.

“Sales companies and vendors should work as a team,” he said. “It isn't them-against-us, or us-against-them. We're working together, it's very much a partnership. Particularly with a breeze-up, where the vendors will be able to tell you that this is the right horse for a given sale.

“So I think both parties were guilty last year. Certainly in our sale, I can't speak for anybody else's, we should have controlled it more. It's very easy for vendors to tell us we should control the numbers, 'except mine!' But essentially it's up to us to provide the right number. And we took too many, and it was the wrong decision. A universally wrong decision, maybe, but we were as guilty as anybody. The day after the sale we said we will cut back next year. So we had some difficult decisions to make. We could easily have had the same number. But the vendors understood, and they have sent us a really good bunch.”

The firm's other proactive response is this revised date, a move Beeby credits to a variety of different factors. “Last year we lost a number of buyers to the Easter Yearling Sale [at Inglis],” he said. “And we also noticed that Keeneland were reintroducing their 2-year-old sale this year. Then there were all the worries about the ground last year, we felt any extra time might help with the weather. There has often been a school of thought, as well, that it's better to go after the Craven Sale, as the market leader, because people might wait for that. And by now people are properly into Flat mode.”

After the breeze, the drums were beating for a couple of consecutive lots around a third of the way into the sale. But arguably it volunteered no more intriguing animal than lot 100: a colt by Malibu Moon out of a group-placed Giant's Causeway mare whose unraced daughter Querulous (Raven's Pass) is dam of Kessaar (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}), winner of the G2 Mill Reef S. last year and already at stud alongside his sire at Tally-Ho.

Both this colt's grand-dams are daughters of Mr Prospector, while his third dam is none other than champion racemare Inside Information (Private Account), herself responsible for dual Grade I winner Smuggler. All told, Tom Whitehead of Powerstown Stud appears to have done very well to import him from the Keeneland September Sale for just $50,000.

In fairness, there was an element of serendipity: Kessaar's G3 Sirenia S. success, just a few days before this colt went under the hammer in Lexington, was obviously not in the catalogue; and the Mill Reef followed a week later. But joining Whitehead was in turn a lucky break for the colt: it was Powerstown, after all, that consigned this sale's poster girl, Quiet Reflection (GB) (Showcasing {GB}), who won two Group 1 sprints after selling to Karl Burke for just £44,000 here four years ago.

Whitehead was rightly delighted by his Malibu Moon colt's breeze. “It was top-class,” he said. “But he didn't give us any surprises here. We liked him from day one, he's always worked well, and he's a very straightforward horse as well.”

Keeneland has proved increasingly fertile territory for European pinhookers in recent times and, while this colt has a highly accessible profile, Whitehead said he believes that the right model can overcome a more exotic page.

“I remember years ago my good friend Johnny Collins brought over a Speightstown when nobody knew anything about him,” he said. “And that was Bapak Chinta who won the Norfolk. He brought over a horse by Forest Camp that won the same race [South Central]. As soon as they win, everybody wants one. Remember with all the different surfaces we have now, the world has gone very small. But you do have to work hard at it. There are so many horses there, they can't all find owners: so if you get your vetting right, and are careful with your prices, you'll eventually find horses.”

Whitehead even managed to find an American Pharoah filly for just $30,000 at the Fasig-Tipton October Sale last year, and moved her on at the Craven Sale for 110,000gns.

“There were 900 horses in that sale,” he remembered. “So again, it's just about working hard: she was a nice filly and had good X-rays, but unless there's someone there to bid how can you value a horse? You can't value them by weight, like you can cattle. It's just a case of is there someone there to buy him, and is someone willing to sell?”

Overall Whitehead felt the vibes at the Craven sale were positive. “I thought the middle [market] was a lot better than last year,” he said. “And for whatever reason the second day in particular seemed to have a much better atmosphere, with plenty of homes for horses.”

But even the doldrums of this sale last year had a following wind: 58 juvenile graduates of this sale won, among a total of 212 individual winners worldwide in 2018.

“Whether changing the date was the right thing to do remains to be seen,” Beeby said. “But certainly it has paid off in terms of the weather: we got near-perfect ground, the Doncaster racecourse team did a really good job and the feedback has been very good.”

Nonetheless Beeby remains concerned by one lingering stormcloud on the industry horizon. “And that's the ongoing uncertainty created by lack of political stability in Britain and across Europe,” he said. “I'm trying to avoid using the 'B' word, which we're all heartily sick of. But Brexit has been the enemy of the market for the past couple of years. It's hurting, and so too, in the middle market, are the ongoing issues with return-on-investment and prizemoney.

“But we're hopeful. We've got a very good catalogue, we've a lot of foreign buyers here from Scandinavia and Italy and Eastern Europe, and I think the horses breezed as consistently well as I've ever seen.”