Strong yearling market gives boost to weanling sales

While the broodmares and broodmare prospects garner the bulk of the attention at the November sales, weanlings make up a crucial part of the marketplace, and a number have fetched prices in excess of $500,000 as buyers and sellers look to the future.

This week’s highest-priced weanling was a $900,000 son of five-time reigning leading sire Into Mischief, purchased by Glen Hill Farm during the Keeneland November Book 1 session on Tuesday. Glen Hill’s Craig Bernick said he is shopping the weanling market after struggling to buy in a very competitive yearling sale season.

“We were trying to buy some colts in September and we couldn’t get near anything,” Bernick said. “You need to be so organized with money in September, so we thought we’d try to buy some foals.”

The colt is from the dispersal of Ed Seltzer’s Solera Farm, with Taylor Made Sales consigning the dispersal, as agent. He is the first foal out of the Grade 3-winning Malibu Moon mare Eres Tu, a half-sister to stakes winners Pangburn and Ain’t Got Time, from the family of Preakness Stakes winner Tank’s Prospect.

“It was a lot of money, but I kind of figured that he would be,” Bernick said. “When we came here, he was a very obvious horse. A really classy mover, pretty head. Strong colt, but looks like he’ll hopefully run around two turns.”

A strong yearling market has buyers trying to get out ahead of it, but also has sellers setting higher reserves for their stock.

“People were protecting their weanlings,” said Tony Lacy, Keeneland’s vice president of sales. “They weren’t going to let them go for less than what they thought they were worth when the yearling market is so strong and they have confidence to come back next year.”

Earlier in the week, Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning Jr. also noted a strong yearling marketplace as a factor in weanling sales at that company’s November auction.

“The yearling market was good, and people were not going to give a weanling away tonight, because they had confidence . . . that the 2025 yearling market will be very good,” Browning said Monday.

The Fasig-Tipton November weanlings were led by a $675,000 colt from the first crop of unbeaten Horse of the Year Flightline, purchased by bloodstock agent David Ingordo, on behalf of a partnership. Of the seven yearlings sold for $500,000 or more in two days of sales, Flightline was responsible for three of them. Into Mischief, had two and was the only other sire with multiple lots in the group.

Ingordo said his partnership is seeking to buy “a number” of young horses. Some will be retained to race, while some “may come back next year” as yearling pinhook prospects.

Randy Hartley, half of the Hartley/DeRenzo Thoroughbreds pinhooking operation, also expressed faith in a continued strong marketplace when he stretched to $575,000 for a Flightline colt at Keeneland to re-sell next year.

“We’ve got to have nice babies to sell, so we stretch when we see something,” he said. “No risk, no reward.”