New York-breds get their turn in Saratoga sales ring

Less than a week after two New York-bred yearlings fetched prices over half a million at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, the spotlight turns exclusively to the statebred program for the auction company’s New York-bred yearling sale Aug. 11 and 12 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

New York-breds continue to perform admirably in the sale ring.

At the selected sale, China Horse Club and WinStar Farm went to $550,000 for a New York-bred Quality Road colt out of stakes-placed Risk a Chance, while Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm went to $500,000 for an Uncle Mo filly out of multiple Grade 1 winner Artemis Agrotera.

Both were consigned by Sequel New York, as agent for breeders Chester and Mary Broman. Perennial leading owners and breeders in the state, the Bromans have begun paring down their Thoroughbred holdings as they begin the process of preparing their estate.

Quality Road, a leading general sire, and young sire Uncle Mo are both among the wide variety of Kentucky stallions represented in the Fasig-Tipton New York-bred catalog. Also represented are New York’s longtime leading sire Freud – who stands at Sequel Stallions – and fellow top state sires Bellamy Road and Big Brown, and breakout young successes Central Banker and Mission Impazible. New York-based stallions with their first crops represented at the sale include the late Grade 1 winner Effinex, for whom this is his only crop, and graded stakes winners Laoban (by Uncle Mo) and War Dancer (War Front).

Last year’s New York-bred auction was led by a sale-record $600,000 Pioneerof the Nile colt, as the sale bested its records for gross, average, and median established just the year prior. The two-day auction finished with 172 yearlings sold for gross receipts of $18,492,000, a gain of 14 percent from 2017. The average price was $107,512, soaring 21 percent, and the median was up 9 percent to $76,000.

There are 331 yearlings cataloged for this year’s New York-bred sale, with the first session beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, Aug. 11, following the day’s card at Saratoga Race Course. The second and final session begins at noon on Monday, when the track is dark.

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Dealing with ‘transition year’

The New York-bred yearling sale continues what Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning says is a “transition year” for the staff.

Lifelong horseman William E. Graves, a senior vice president with Fasig-Tipton for 26 years who was deeply involved in the yearling selection process for Fasig-Tipton’s various sales, died in May of 2018 at age 69. Up to the last 10 days of his life, Graves was still working with consignors to assemble the catalogs for Fasig-Tipton’s three summer yearling sales in Kentucky and New York.

This year’s sale season is the first where Graves was not physically involved with the yearling inspection and selection team. That team added bloodstock agent Tom McGreevy, best known for his work in scouting out champions such as Havre de Grace and Songbird. But Browning noted that Graves’s presence was still felt in the selection process, thanks to his years of working closely with the inspection team.

“Honestly, it’s horsemanship,” Browning said. “I think that’s one of the foundations of Fasig-Tipton. … Frankly, this was a transition year. We all felt an enormous amount of pressure going into 2019 because of some changes and the passing of Bill and so forth. Tom asked me earlier in the week, ‘What’s it like to have a sale without Bill’s fingerprints on it?’ And I said, ‘Tom, his fingerprints are still on it.’ We’ve all been exposed, we’ve all looked at horses together, we all talk, we communicate.”

The Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, conducted Aug. 5-6, finished with record average and median figures.

Led by four seven-figure yearlings, including a pair of $1.5-million Curlin colts, the sale finished with 135 yearlings reported sold for gross receipts of $55,547,000. The average sale price soared, finishing at $411,459, up 11 percent from $369,376 last year and establishing a sale record. The previous mark was $385,259, established in 2001. The two-day median price finished at $350,000, surpassing the sale-record $300,000 established in 2017 and matched in 2018.

“Kudos to our inspection team,” Browning said. “There was a lot of pressure, and I think we passed with flying colors.”

So will the Fasig-Tipton team rest on its laurels? Hardly.

“We’re not gonna be content with status quo,” Browning said. “We’ll try to recruit a better group of horses [for 2020]. We’ll really be busting our tails, because it’s the 100th anniversary of the Saratoga sale.”