Yearling Sale Season Ends With F-T October

Despite having bought 74 yearlings for his own account or on behalf of clients for more than $13.2 million this year, J.J. Crupi isn’t finished shopping and will be among those active at next week’s Fasig-Tipton October yearling sale.

“I will be very active at the October sale,” said Crupi, a prodigious buyer whose Crupi’s New Castle Farm is also a major buyer of weanlings and broodmares and among the leading consignors of 2-year-olds in training. “A lot of good horses come out of that sale and I did very well last year with what I bought.”

With sessions beginning at 10 a.m. daily Oct. 24-26 at Fasig-Tipton’s headquarters in Lexington, the auction is the last of the nine yearling-only sales in North America this year. It represents the final opportunity for breeders or pinhookers to sell or face the prospect of incurring additional overhead costs by waiting until next year’s juvenile auctions or putting them in training, not an inexpensive proposition.

But it also affords buyers such as Crupi, who have been unable to get everything they wanted in a highly competitive market for the most desired lots, to complete their shopping and move on to the fall mixed sales.

With more than 1,250 yearlings cataloged, the Fasig-Tipton sale has a potpourri of offerings, in all price ranges and pedigrees, including yearlings by 19 of the top 20 leading sires in North America. In addition to those initially destined for the October sale from the beginning because they were late developers, other yearlings in the sale were scheduled to go in other venues but for one reason or another got bumped back to the end of the season. Others went through the ring at other sales but went unsold.

Another major buyer who isn’t finished is deMeric Sales, the Ocala, Fla.-based pinhooking operation of Nick and Tristan deMeric that has bought 22 yearlings for nearly $2 million in 2016.

“We haven’t filled all our orders so we’ll be in the trenches,” said Tristan deMeric. “With over 1,200 horses, it has turned into a sale you really can’t miss. You have to be a little cautious there. There are definitely some horses that had issues that prevented them from going to earlier sales and there are quite a few that went through other sales.”

With fewer yearlings offered and sold to date this year when compared with the same period a year ago, the average price is tracking slightly above the 2015 figure, with a moderate decline in median.

According to data from BloodHorse MarketWatch, 6,119 yearlings have been sold in North America from 8,650 offered to date in 2016, compared with 6,882 head changing hands from 9,355 total through the ring in 2015. This year’s cumulative average is $64,715 ($63,974 in ’15), with a median of $19,170 ($22,000).

Last year 854 of the 1,234 total offered were sold for gross receipts of $29,369,300, second only to the $30 million gross the previous year. The 2015 average price of $34,390 was also second to 2014, with the median of $15,000 down slightly from $18,500 the year before.

Based on racetrack performance this year, the October sale has a lot of momentum, with 12 stakes winners since Sept. 1, including grade II winners Irish Jasper, Free Rose, and Calgary Cat, and grade III winners La Coronel and Caren.

Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning Jr. said the October sale has an important place on the North American sales calendar.

“As the last yearling sale, it creates a little sense of urgency for buyers and sellers,” the executive said. “Your option as a consignor is to go to a 2-year-old sale and it increases your investment. It gives someone an opportunity to buy horses that might have had issues or were later maturing. It’s one last shot for everybody.”

Consignor Reiley McDonald of Eaton Sales said he doesn’t envision the October sale to be much different from what has been seen in the rest of the yearling market, with demand for quality and fewer buyers for lesser stock.

“It is clear we are producing more horses than there is demand for,” McDonald said. “There will be new homes found for good horses.”

McDonald said some sellers face the prospect of selling at a loss or retaining them to race.

“If you don’t want to take the risk of a longer term investment in racing, then you have to take your lumps and take what the market will give you,” the consignor said.