Leading Yearling Buyers by Racetrack Performance

Sharp eyes are required to comb through the yearlings offered at auction and find the ones with the most athletic potential.

On the cusp of the world's largest yearling sale, held at Keeneland Sept. 9-22, BloodHorse MarketWatch looked at the buyers who have the best track record from yearlings purchased at North American sales in 2014 through 2017, with racing statistics compiled up to Aug. 15 of this year.

No single metric adequately defines the most successful buyers. While earnings are certainly important, so is the ability to find horses that will thrive in stakes competition and—even better—graded stakes. We've tried to cover most of the bases by providing three leading buyers lists: by average earnings from the horses purchased, by number of black-type winners, and by number of graded/group winners.

Identifying the buyer is not a straightforward exercise. Bloodstock agents and trainers buy dozens of horses for clients who are often not identified. MarketWatch did its best to give credit to the person or outfit actually putting in the effort to evaluate and acquire the horses. If an owner used multiple agents, however, then we used the owner to give them overall credit for the volume of horses bought. There is potential in these statistics for an owner and an agent to get credit for the same horse. Also note our leaders lists include only buyers that bought 10 or more yearlings during the four-year period.

Juddmonte Farms was the runaway buyer by average earnings due to the extraordinary ability of its champion Arrogate , who the farm bought for $560,000 at the 2014 Keeneland September sale from the breeder/consignor Clearsky Farms. The son of Unbridled's Song went on to win four grade 1 stakes and earn more than $17.4 million. Arrogate's earnings gave Juddmonte overall average earnings of $1,159,026 from the 16 runners it has out of 25 yearlings purchased for an average $446,600.

Trainer Ken McPeek ranked at the top of the buyers' ranks by number of black-type winners and by number of graded stakes winners. He was the co-leading buyer alongside the late J.J. Crupi by stakes winners at 16 apiece and was the leading buyer by number of graded stakes winners with 10.

During our time frame, McPeek bought 125 yearlings that averaged $107,064 at auction and went on to earn an average of $99,616 at the racetrack. Among the horses he bought as yearlings, 37% earned more in purses than they cost as sale yearlings. 

Crupi is the co-runner-up in our buyer study by number of graded stakes winners among his yearling purchases with nine alongside agent Mike Ryan, who was also co-ranked third by number of black-type winners with 12 along with Gatewood Bell's Cromwell Bloodstock.

It should be noted these statistics do not capture the residual value of these yearlings as breeding stock, which can be significant. A good example is a Pure Prize filly that McPeek bought named Dothraki Queen. He bought her for $35,000 at the 2014 Keeneland September sale from the Hill 'n' Dale Sales Agency consignment. She went on to win the Pocahontas Stakes (G2) and was runner-up in the Darley Alcibiades Stakes (G1). She sold as a broodmare prospect to China Horse Club International for $950,000.