Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall yearling sale: $560,000 Quality Road colt top price after two days

A Quality Road colt sold for $560,000 as the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall yearling sale, the final major-market North American yearling auction of the season, continued to post solid figures as it reached its midway point.

Fasig-Tipton reported 241 horses sold during Tuesday's session, the second of four overall, for $7,996,700. In the second of four sessions in 2019, 256 horses sold for $9,530,200. As with Monday's opening session, the year-to-year, session-to-session average price was down - to $33,181, a decrease of 11 percent from $37,227 - while the median remained steady at $15,000.

The sale's buyback rate in what has been an extremely selective marketplace this season continues to improve from the 2019 renewal, an encouraging sign which perhaps also shows the urgency to move stock in the final sale of the season. The session's buyback rate was 20 percent, improved from 23 percent in the 2019 second session.

The session-leading Quality Road colt, who also took over the top price for the sale overall to this point, was purchased by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners.

The Ontario-bred colt, consigned by his breeder, Anderson Farms, is out of the stakes-placed Bernardini mare Pearl Turn. That makes him a half-brother to Gretzky the Great, winner of the Grade 1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine and expected to be among the favorites for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf next week at Keeneland.

Grade 1 winner Love Theway Youare appears on the catalog page, as do graded stakes winners Lightning Moon, Luftikus, Saint Anddan, and Tower of Texas,

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