Inglis Easter sale moves to digital format during pandemic

Triple Crown winner American Pharoah was last year’s leading freshman sire in North America and also found international appeal with first-crop stakes performers in Japan and Europe. American Pharoah, based at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Kentucky, has extended that popularity to the Southern Hemisphere, with his first crop of yearlings bred at Coolmore Australia being well met in the auction ring during that continent’s ongoing yearling sale season. However, not even America’s long-awaited Triple Crown hero is exempt from the effects of the global coronavirus pandemic, and his next yearlings to hit the auction ring in Australia will do so under unique circumstances, in a digital format.

The Inglis auction house is conducting its flagship Australian Easter yearling sale solely with online and telephone bidding this week, showing professionally produced videos of each horse rather than the horse appearing in the sale ring with a handler. Inglis has regularly offered digital auctions in the past, and all major auction houses accept telephone bids during live auctions, but this is the most high-profile sale of its type, moved to a digital format after originally being scheduled as a physical auction. The logistics of the sale’s conduct and the results will surely be keenly watched by the global bloodstock community as it grapples with the pandemic. In the United States, for example, the juvenile auction season that would normally be well under way has been upended by the pandemic, with no auctions scheduled until June 9, at the earliest.

“We have everything in place,” Ian Smith of consignor Edinburgh Park told the AusHorse Marketing group in a press release. “There are professionally produced videos for each of the yearlings online, farm graduates are going terrific, this draft is as good as we’ve ever brought to a sale, and we’re prepared to meet the market. Bottom line is, I’m as confident about the sale as I can be – the quality is here, and, let’s face it, there are still Group 1 2-year-old races to be won next year.”

In order to bid at this week’s auction, buyers had to register and receive bidding approval and a credit limit. A trial auction was held last Friday to test the online bidding platform and to allow buyers to become accustomed to the software. Buyers also were provided with a contact list of Inglis staff standing ready to provide telephone bidding assistance, should there be a technical issue during the live sale.

Pre-bidding for the sale opened Sunday, with live bidding scheduled to take place Tuesday and Wednesday, with 514 cataloged lots going through the ring. Winning bidders were to receive swift phone calls from Inglis staff to complete buyer acknowledgement forms – typically filled out while still seated after bidding at a physical auction – and to arrange post-sale testing, if desired, and transport.

To be sure, there is uncertainty surrounding the strength of the market at the sale. Some prominent consignors, such as Arrowfield Stud, have withdrawn their entire consignments due to the inability to hold a live auction. In order to bolster the market, Inglis and AusHorse Marketing have been reaching out directly to thousands of international buyers in an attempt to entice them to make use of the low Australian dollar at the Easter sale, with AusHorse noting that the U.S. dollar is at an 18-year high against the Australian dollar. In addition to international outfits such as Coolmore and Darley, several Kentucky-based outfits have been increasingly involved in Australia in recent years, including Spendthrift Farm, which has opened an Australian stallion roster, Stonestreet Farm, and WinStar Farm, with various partners.

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“Ironically, this may well create many other opportunities, with the videos created by many vendors making it easier for people to appraise stock from afar, which in turn might tempt more people into the market,” Sebastian Hutch, Inglis’ general manager for bloodstock sales and marketing, said in a press release.

American Pharoah, of course, needs no international introduction – and with his own solid juvenile form, a trait valued in Australia, and his progeny’s early turf prowess, his first Southern Hemisphere yearlings have garnered results. At the prominent Magic Millions Gold Coast sale in January, his 20 yearlings averaged $350,000 Australian, led by an $850,000 colt. That made him not only the leading first-crop sire at the sale, but fourth in the results overall, trailing only prominent regional sires I Am Invincible, Redoute’s Choice, and Exceed and Excel. At the New Zealand yearling sale series’ Book 1 at Karaka later in the month, he was the leading overall sire by average at $265,833, led by a $575,000 colt.

American Pharoah’s 25 cataloged horses at Inglis Easter include a colt out of Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner More Than Real, already a stakes producer and from the immediate family of last fall’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Structor, and a filly who is a half-sister to Australian Group 1 winner Irish Lights.

Other yearlings by Kentucky-based shuttle sires at Inglis Easter include nine by stalwart More Than Ready, a tremendously popular sire of several champions in Australia, and 13 by Medaglia d’Oro. Medaglia d’Oro’s Australian Group 1-winning sons Astern and Vancouver, who reverse shuttle to Kentucky, also are represented in the catalog. Fellow shuttle sires represented include Air Force Blue and Frosted, both of whom are freshmen with their first 2-year-olds in the United States this year.

Into Mischief, who claimed his first general sire title in the United States last year, and the country’s reigning leading turf sire Kitten’s Joy do not shuttle. However, both are available at their Kentucky bases to mares bred on Southern Hemisphere time, and both are represented by resulting yearlings in the sale.