By Jessica Martini
What has been a competitive yearling sales season makes a two-day stop in Central Florida with the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's October Yearlings Sale to be held Tuesday and Wednesday in Ocala. A total of 507 horses, including 48 supplemental entries, have been catalogued for the sale, with Tuesday's opening session featuring hips one through 258 and Wednesday's session offering hips 301 through 551. Each session begins at noon.
“We're all anticipating a good sale, and it looks like a lot of people are coming into town,” said consignor Francis Vanlangendonck of Summerfield Sales. “A lot of people did not get horses bought and I've had a lot of phone calls from people wondering what I had.”
With a hurricane bearing down on the region a year ago, sales officials were forced to make a last-minute scheduling change and moved the October sale up a day. A total of 297 yearlings sold at the reshuffled auction for a gross of $5,724,600. The average was $19,275 and the median was $10,000.
A filly by Complexity brought the 2024 auction's top price of $150,000 when purchased by the Gladwells' Top Line Sales. Reoffered at this year's OBS March sale, the filly sold for $385,000. An Independence Hall half-sister to last year's sale topper will be offered Wednesday through Thoroughstock as hip 320.
Vanlangendonck expects the pinhooking bench to be active again at this year's auction.
“[The pinhookers] will be here looking and picking out the better ones,” he said. “It's going to be a good market for the horses that vet well and have good conformation.”
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