Klaravich, Brown grab sale-topping Quality Road colt at Fasig-Tipton New York-bred sale

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – A $370,000 Quality Road colt led the way as a competitive edition of the Fasig-Tipton New York-bred preferred yearling sale closed Monday evening with a strong average and a record median.

Fasig-Tipton reported shortly after the close of business Monday evening that 182 yearlings changed hands in the two-session sale at the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion for gross receipts of $19,095,500. Last year, 220 horses sold for a sale-record gross of $20,929,000. Both sets of figures include a handful of post-ring transactions, with horses who were privately sold later on at the sale grounds.

This sale's cumulative average price was $104,920, up 10 percent from $95,132 in 2023, and good for the sale's third-best all-time average. The median, considered a key indicator of market health because it is not skewed as much by high-end prices as the average can be, was up 15 percent, to finish at a record $86,500 compared to $75,000 in 2023.

"It seems fair," bloodstock agent Jacob West, who was on both sides of the bench in buying and selling horses, said of the marketplace. "The right horses are bringing the right money – it doesn't seem outlandish or too wild. On the same token, I think it's fair. If the market deems [your horse] to be what we all want, you're getting paid. If they don't, it seems like those horses might struggle a little bit. It's a balancing act of having all the right pieces and all the right boxes checked."

This week's buyback rate, without any of the private sales factored in, was 31 percent. Last year, it was 29 percent without private sales.

"This sale is traditionally a little bit higher buyback rate," Fasig-Tipton president and CEO Boyd Browning Jr. said. "The breeders have so many opportunities themselves to race these horses, and oftentimes, it may be more [lucrative] to have these horses race in New York than get sold and move to another state."

Leading the way at the sale was the $370,000 Quality Road colt, with trainer Chad Brown signing the ticket on behalf of Seth Klarman's Klaravich Stable. He was followed by a $300,000 Connect filly and a $300,000 Constitution colt, both purchased by bloodstock agent Jacob West, on behalf of Repole Stable; and a $300,000 Vekoma colt, purchased by trainer Christophe Clement. Klaravich and Repole both appeared on multiple tickets at last week's Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, highlighting the nationally competitive buying bench for New York-breds as a result of the growing quality of the program.

"It has changed tremendously," New York-based trainer Clement said. "We have very good, quality horses now, which is great, and the program is wonderful. It might be the best statebred program in the country."

The quality of horses in the state has improved alongside, and as a reaction to, robust purse and breeding incentives in the state, with statebreds soon to compete for purse parity with open-company races.

"It's a better product overall," West said of the state's foal crop. "Breeders up here are taking it a lot more seriously. You can tell they're putting a lot more money into their stud fees, sending mares to Kentucky, bringing them back up here, raising them, and just producing a better product. And that coincides with the purse money that people can run for and the breeders awards that these people are getting, and stallion incentives and stuff, so it's a very vibrant market."

Klarman's sale-topping purchase was the fifth-last horse to go through the ring on Monday.

“Obviously, Seth's been a leading owner in New York for many years,” Brown said. “He loves supporting New York racing and breeding and the whole industry in New York. [Bloodstock agents] Mike and Mary Ryan did all the work for us here. I'm busy over across the street racing – without them, I would not have been able to get this covered. Mike thought he was the best horse in the sale, so we waited around all day and were willing to stretch for him.”

The colt, who was consigned by Winter Quarter Farm, as agent for breeder Waterville Lake Stable, is out of Grade 3-placed stakes winner Portmagee, by Hard Spun. The mare's first foal Derrynane, a full sister to this colt, was a minor stakes winner at 2 at Woodbine before rallying from last to finish fourth, beaten a length, in the 2021 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint. Derrynane then placed in three stakes as a 3-year-old.

“We always try to identify, at this sale, New York-bred horses that look like we would buy them if they weren't New York-bred horses - like they have the potential to be open-company horses,” Brown said. “That they are a New York-bred is sort of an added bonus to fall back on, if you will, or to have perhaps some easier races to develop the horses before they get to open company.”

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