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Hopes and dreams This year proves more than ever that buying a yearling (or several) offers owners a dream to focus on through the winter months
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OPES, DREAMS, the need to trade, and the influence of the big players. More than ever these factors have dictated the results of this autumn’s yearling sales and have clearly indicated just what drives the market. A graph of the trade experienced this autumn would show an as-expected line underneath last year’s results through the Goffs UK Premier Sale and Arqana Sale, a dramatic fall for the Goffs Orby and the Sportsmans Sale, a return to a below-2019 for the October Sale Book 1, before a very surprising and unexpected upward turn to merge with last year due to the astonishing results and trade seen through the Book 2 and 3. By the end of Tattersalls October Book 4 the figures were between 12 per cent and 16 per cent below 2019 incidentally revealing just how strong that record year
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For the first time since 2016 bloodstock agent Demi O’Byrne (left) purchased at Tattersalls, working on behalf of Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm. The pair purchased 13 lots in Book 1 and 2 for a spend of 3,245,000gns. He is seen here with partner Sean Grassick
“The world is upside down, prize-money is rubbish, no one can go racing, and yet prices are so strong.”
experienced in 2019 actually was, but also just how strongly a sale needs to perform year on year just to keep pace. Bizarrely, as the momentum was maintained at Tattersalls, the outside pandemic-affected world was mirrored in the negative – the newspaper headlines screamed of increased cases, threats of hospitalisations and calls for circuit-breakers, regional lock-downs and COVID-related economic disaster. Sitting at the Tattersalls press desk reading newspaper reports speculating on the likely government response to the expected onward development of the pandemic, arguing how to balance economic survival against required health measures, I was typing up Angus Gold’s quote that he felt that middle day of Book 2 was the strongest day’s trade he has seen in ten years, and was watching the 19th horse in Book 2 sell for over 300,000gns.
