Fasig-Tipton Midlantic yearling sale aims to follow successful formula

Fasig-Tipton will hold the first of its regional yearling auctions in the coming week with its Midlantic fall yearlings sale. The sale will be looking to battle an increasingly selective marketplace by building off a formula that has worked for Fasig-Tipton in the past.

After the coronavirus pandemic pushed the Preakness Stakes, the final leg of the reconfigured 2020 Triple Crown, to Oct. 3, Fasig-Tipton and the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. reached an agreement to swap the dates of two October yearling sales. The OBS sale, which had been set for Oct. 6-8, has been moved to Oct. 13-15. That allows the Fasig-Tipton sale, originally scheduled for Oct. 12-13, to move up to Oct. 5-6 at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, about 20 minutes from Pimlico. The auction is thus likely to be attended by horsemen in town for Preakness weekend, with a reduced amount of travel an extra incentive in navigating the pandemic.

The model of a sale following the Preakness has been a successful formula for Fasig-Tipton, which usually conducts its Midlantic sale of 2-year-olds in training following the race’s traditional spot as the middle jewel of the Triple Crown in May. That juvenile auction had grown exponentially, from a solid regional sale into a national marketplace.

Fasig-Tipton has cataloged 570 yearlings for this Midlantic sale, a jump of 31 percent from 435 in 2019. The bulk of that catalog is made up of horses bred in the Eastern region, with 206 yearlings in the catalog foaled in Maryland, 159 in New York, and 98 in Pennsylvania.

“Consignors have a lot of confidence in the Midlantic marketplace and have supported the sale with increased sire power and quality,” Fasig-Tipton’s Midlantic director of sales Paget Bennett said in a press release. “We are also pleased to welcome major Kentucky- and New York-based consignors to Midlantic this year.”

The majority of the New York-breds in the catalog will be grouped together at the start of the auction as Hip Nos. 1-154. The same formula was used at the Fasig-Tipton selected yearling showcase in September in Kentucky. With selectivity increasingly the watchword in a market showing restraint in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, that particular catalog segment finished with a buyback rate of 47 percent, compared to 34 percent for the sale as a whole.

Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning Jr., did not attribute those results for regional offerings entirely to the pandemic.

“Traditionally, if you look over the last 10 years, the New York-bred sale has probably the highest RNA rate of any of our select or major sales, because there’s so many racing opportunities for the New York breeders,” Browning said at the sale. “So there’s kind of less pressure on them from the outset. . . . [But] certainly the group that got probably the toughest hands in terms of a marketplace would have to be the New York breeders.”

Several prominent Kentucky sires are represented in the Midlantic fall yearlings catalog, including stalwarts Bernardini, Distorted Humor, Empire Maker, Malibu Moon, and Tiznow; commercially popular freshmen Not This Time and Nyquist, both represented by Grade 1 winners in their respective first crops; and Horse of the Year Gun Runner, the leading first-crop yearling sire by both gross and average at the Keeneland September yearling sale.

A number of leading sires in the region also are represented in the catalog, such as Central Banker (New York), Freud (New York), Friesan Fire (Maryland), Great Notion (Maryland), Jump Start (Pennsylvania), and Mission Impazible (New York).

A strong class of Maryland first-crop yearling sires also gets a showcase in its home state, including Grade 1 winner Dortmund and graded stakes winners Blofeld, Divining Rod, Holy Boss, Kobe’s Back, and Madefromlucky.

Last year’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic yearling sale finished with 300 horses sold for gross receipts of $7,275,900, led by a $190,000 Honor Code colt. The average price was $24,253, a gain of 12 percent from the auction’s 2018 figures. The median fell 7 percent, to $14,000, while the buyback rate was a solid 21 percent.