Arqana Team Bid To Keep Dreamland In Deauville Alive During V2 Sale 

A dreamland in Deauville. That is how Arqana's head of bloodstock Ludovic Cornuel summed up a record-breaking August Sale that saw ten different horses change hands for seven-figure sums and get the European yearling sale season off to a sprint start. 

Albeit at an entirely different level, Cornuel says that he is optimistic that the sales house can maintain the gallop at the V2 Sale, the quality of which has been given a resounding thumbs up by leading French bloodstock agents Laurent Benoit and Hubert Guy. 

“The mood was great here all weekend and especially after the sale finished on Monday,” Cornuel said whilst inspecting some of the V2 stock ahead of Wednesday's sale, which begins at 11am. “Obviously, it was the type of sale that you can only dream of. We were not necessarily anticipating such fantastic results beforehand so it was a superb surprise.”

He added, “We had the horses, which made us optimistic. However, I think it was very difficult to anticipate what would happen because we were all here in the spring for the breeze-ups when the market was going through something of a contraction compared to the previous year. For the August Sale, we had great sire power, fantastic physicals and pedigrees. On that front, we were very optimistic, but there are some parameters that we obviously don't control and that we weren't sure about. So, it was a great surprise in the end and everyone on the team was extremely happy.”

The V2 Sale features nice models by top stallions like Sioux Nation, Mehmas and Havana Grey as well as young French-based sires like Vadeni, Mishriff and Onesto. The stock on the ground was described as “quite good” by renowned agent Benoit while Guy explained that he hopes to be active after being similarly impressed by what is on offer.

He said, “I have found a couple. It looks as though there are some numbers [lots] that are making a bit of sense. Okay, this sale is not as flamboyant as the August Sale, but nobody is saying that it is. It's a developing sale and, while it has a lot less stallion power and a lot less pedigree, we'll see what happens. I bought two nice prospects over the past few days here but didn't get as many as I wanted because it was very strong. Okay, it wasn't Saratoga, but it had the same spirit – anything that was really nice made plenty.”

Guy added, “I think it depends which end of the gun you are on – from my end, it wasn't that great but, if you were a vendor, you will be very happy.”

The August Sale clearance rate settled at around 80% this year – roughly the same it has been for the past few years. Outside of the blockbuster millionaire yearlings that were snapped up by either Godolphin or Coolmore, an encouraging number of trainers got on the scoresheet. 

Meanwhile, new wave of buyers – including a notable cohort of Irish breeze-up handlers – flew into Deauville especially for the V2 session while Amy Murphy, who runs G2 Prix Robert Papin winner Tokaido (Ubettabelieveit) in the Harry's Half Million at York this week, was busy sifting through every horse on Tuesday in a bid to find her next stable star.

Murphy said, “I've been buying out of this sale for the past two years. You get a lot of nice, early two-year-old types here and there are definitely one or two gems. It is a sale you need to work hard but, to be honest, we work every sale hard. We will look at every horse here and we will do the same next week during the Premier Yearling Sale in Doncaster. We've got a good few syndicates who are buying on a budget and we have people looking from everything from an early two-year-old to a miler –  we will be trying to fill some of those orders here on Wednesday.”

Cornuel agrees that, for all that the record-breaking August Yearling Sale provided a feel-good factor that sent reverberations across the European bloodstock market, a more accurate barometer on the health of the middle to lower tiers will be taken during the V2 Sale. 

He said, “I think there is a very good dynamic in France. We have young operations that invest a lot in broodmares, sending them to the best stallions in Europe in order to improve their stock and provide the best yearlings possible for the sales. That has been the trend over the last few years and it is very promising. We are definitely benefiting from it and a lot of people are saying that the stock here for V2 is good. The V2 Sale was initially designed to provide mature and precocious horses that would be ready to run in the first semester of the season.”

Cornuel concluded, “We know that in France we have some precocious horses and precocious stallions, but not as many as some other countries. Therefore, not all of them are necessarily two-year-old performers in the making. However, the horses in V2 are selected for their physique and their maturity. That is the DNA of the sale. This year in particular, it is going to be quite an interesting sale because we have a very strong group of first-season sires in France to discover. Hopefully the good results of the August Sale will continue at the V2 Sale and throughout the rest of the season.”