By Emma Berry
The wraps come off the European breeze-up season on Wednesday at Osarus's La Teste de Buch fixture.
A catalogue of just 37 lots – down by more than 50% on last year's entries – has been reduced further by four withdrawals, and the sale is heavily supported by a draft of 14 from John Bourke's Hyde Park Stud, a long-term backer of Osarus.
This more gentle introduction to the 2025 round of two-year-old sales is in a sense the calm before the storm. By Sunday, around 160 Craven horses will be having a practice breeze on Newmarket's Rowley Mile before the real thing on Monday morning. Four straight weeks of breeze-up action at Tattersalls, Goffs UK and Arqana will set the tone for bloodstock sales more generally amid some Trump-inspired instability in the global financial markets.
Colm Kennedy of Drumphea Stables in Co Carlow has joined Bourke on the pilgrimage to south-west France and will be consigning at Osarus for the first time this week.
“It's beautiful down here. No pressure, and it's a great setting with really good yards,” said Kennedy as he prepared to send out his team of three for the practice breeze on Tuesday afternoon.
One of that trio, lot 14, is a colt by Sands Of Mali (Fr), who has three members of his first crop entered in Saturday's G3 Fred Darling Stakes at Newbury and was himself an Osarus graduate, from the September Yearling Sale, before becoming a Bansha House breezer at Ascot.
“This fella is a fine colt. We didn't actually enter him anywhere else as we didn't know where we'd get in, but the sire is going a very good job,” Kennedy said.
“Con Marnane bought Sands Of Mali here so you would imagine he might be popular here.”
He continued, “They all travelled a dream, so we'll see what happens. We've a nice Profitable filly and a Soldier's Call filly. They're three nice horses and they're all rock-and-rolling two-year-old types, though the Sands Of Mali should improve as he's a big horse – he's probably 16 hands and a good, solid horse.”
Kennedy was not alone in finding it tougher to claim sales slots for his breezers in recent seasons and said that he has adjusted his operation accordingly.
“After this, we've one going to the Guineas and one going to Fairyhouse,” he noted. “We've cut back. I couldn't get horses in the sales the last few years, even ones we'd paid a good few quid for.”
He is, however, optimistic for the season ahead despite the general uncertainty prompted by the instigation of President Trump's tariffs on the EU and UK.
“A lot of wealthy people would have got stung yesterday on the stock markets but people will always buy horses; there's always an appetite for horses,” he said.
Graduates of last year's sale include Make You Mine (Ire) (Circus Maximus {Ire}), who was sold by Mickey Cleere of MC Thoroughbreds for €18,000 and won first time out at Cagnes-sur-Mer in February. Bred by Alan Cooper, she was trained by Manon Scandella-Lacaille but has subsequently left France to join Chad Brown's stable in America.
This time around, Cleere is selling a filly by Awtaad (Ire) (lot 10) and a colt by Cotai Glory (GB) (lot 8).
Horses for the Osarus sale breeze on the turf track at La Teste de Buch at 9am on Wednesday, and the sale gets underway from 1pm local time.
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