The Tattersalls December mare sales ended Thursday with declines from last year, when a record-setting session buoyed results. Topped by the $1,424,063 mare Velvet Moon, the four-day mare auction sold 756 horses for a total of $55,400,426, for an average price of $73,281. When compared year-to-year in the sale's local currency of guineas, those figures were down 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively.
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November, traditionally the major month to offer broodmares and weanlings, was a pleasant surprise for Thoroughbred sellers, who feared the worst after 30-percent declines in the major yearling sales.
Two of the season's largest and most important breeding stock sales - the Keeneland November auction in Kentucky and the Tattersalls weanling sales in England - produced substantial revenue gains.
He was born at Gainesway Farm, then raised at Gainesway, and even though he was sold as a yearling, he has returned to Gainesway to begin his career as a stallion.
Orientate, who won the Breeders' Cup Sprint and is the odds-on favorite to be voted the Eclipse Award as champion sprinter, has come full circle. He was retired following his Breeders' Cup victory and is preparing for his first year at stud, where his handlers believe he will be a hit.
Major stakes winners Street Cry and E Dubai are the first horses from Sheikh Mohammed's Godolphin racing stable to retire to Jonabell Farm in Lexington, Ky., but they certainly will not be the last. The sheikh acquired Jonabell last fall as the flagship farm for his expanding American operation, and the two new stallions are his opening move in a plan with significant long-term objectives. Sheikh Mohammed's stated goal the past few years has been to race a winner of the Kentucky Derby and to winter and prepare that horse for the classics in Dubai.
A $1,424,063 mare led the way at Wednesday's third session of the Tattersalls December mare sales in Newmarket, England.
Agent Anthony Penfold's Penfold Bloodstock purchased the session-topper, Irish-bred Velvet Moon, from the Voute Sales agency. Velvet Moon, offered in foal to Daylami, is a Group 2 winner herself and the dam of English Group 2 winner Moon Ballad. She is out of Park Special, who also produced the Italian Group 1 winner Central Park.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Klaus Jacob's Newsells Park Stud, Keeneland November's second-leading buyer with more than $15.9 million spent, added another filly to its stable Tuesday at the Tattersalls December mare sale's second session in Newmarket, England.
Newsells Park Stud signed for the English auction's second-day session-topper, an $813,750 Acatenango filly named Midnight Angel. The German-bred 3-year-old sold as a horse in training and went through the ring from Germany's Union Stud consignment.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Swan Queen, a $45,000 purchase by Lou Tucci, topped the 2002 Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society's winter mixed sale at the Woodbine Sales Pavilion on Saturday.
Schonberg Farm, as agent for Gustav Schickedanz, consigned Swan Queen, an unraced 6-year-old Regal Intention mare who is in foal to Langfuhr.
A total of 124 broodmares, yearlings, weanlings, horses of racing age, and a stallion share grossed $733,900, for an average of $5,919. There were 30 listed as not sold.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Tattersalls December foal sales, which produced a world record weanling filly price of about $2.9 million on Friday, ended Saturday with more records as gross, average, and median all rose sharply.
Topped by a Giant's Causeway half-sister to European champion Galileo who set the new weanling filly mark, the four-day foal auction sold 585 lots for $28,070,632. That was up 27 percent from last year's total on sales of 514 head.