Tattersalls sale ends with strong gains

England’s Tattersalls December sale series ended Thursday with robust gains in all financial categories.

The December sale included yearling, weanling, and breeding stock sessions. All told, these grossed about $117,523,060 for 1,444 horses, resulting in an $81,387 average price and a $34,398 median. Compared year-to-year in the auction’s guineas currency, gross receipts rose 29 percent from last year’s total for 1,398 horses, while the average and median prices were up by 25 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

The nine-day series ended Thursday with the final breeding stock session, topped by the Group 2-winning stallion prospect Tartan Bearer. A Group 1-placed Spectrum horse, he originally was headed to Libya, but the private deal for him to stand there fell through during that country’s revolution against the late dictator Col. Muammar Qaddafi. The 6-year-old now will stand at Turkey’s Jockey Club Stud after selling for 50,000 guineas, or $81,900, to agent Omer Halim Aydin.

Tartan Bearer is a full brother to Group 1-winning millionaire Golan. Oak Lodge Stud consigned him.

The December sales’ highest price was the 2.4 million guineas, or about $3,931,200, that Coolmore Stud’s M.V. Magnier paid for Sumora. The mare is the dam of Group 1 winner Maybe, currently the early favorite for next season’s 1000 Guineas. A 9-year-old Danehill mare, she sold in foal to Coolmore sire Galileo.

The strong performance of the Tattersalls December sale followed hefty gains at similar breeding stock sales last month at Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland in the United States and at Goffs in Ireland.