YEARLINGS' AIL

The first round of yearling sales have been conducted and the perception is that the market is falling. At least, that is what we say Up North. Those who have read Dale Carnegie’s book, or done a sandwich course in Business Management, prefer the term “correction.” This implies that preceding levels were too high, though it is debatable how may advisors on either side of the transactions pointed this out to their principals last year.

All sides like to prescribe prize money as the wonder elixir that will cure the invalid, but it seems absurdly simplistic to assume that new owners will surge to the sales rings if this is improved. The problems for most of the players who try to make a living from the sport of racing, or the business of bloodstock, is that too few buyers take too much of the market. The number of potential buyers who rate a yearling highly is irrelevant set against what the major powers’ opinion of it is. This distorts the market grotesquely and is only exacerbated by the size of stallions’ books. The racing media accentuates this by continually referring to runners as “sons or daughters of” and vendors (probably unwittingly) are just as culpable by almost invariably displaying the sire on door cards, very occasionally both parents and almost never identifying them by the dam.

The three most successful stallions in England are the product of breeders who have nurtured families over generations. When is a vendor going to start advertising his lots under the dam? Would that be like a turkey voting for Christmas?

The trade press spends as many column inches on reporting pinhooking triumphs as it does on the racecourse successes of breeders. Surely this is putting the profit before the motive?

The various organs have a formula for interviewing vendors before the major sales; I would like part of these interviews to ask why they have chosen the matings for a couple of the lots they have to sell. No doubt it would give the hapless interviewer the twin nightmares of spinning a column out to ten times his word count, or reducing by a similar multiple, depending on who he is asked to interview. I know which episode would interest me.

The spectre of the size of a stallion’s book has become a nightmare in Germany. I have long admired their breeders’ dedication to substance over style and they have come within a neck and a length and a quarter of winning three successive ‘Arcs'. More than any other stud I admire the horsemanship and organic approach at Gestut Etzean. This year they sold the first yearlings from their stallion Japan. There were some very athletic individuals; however, the one ingredient that I do not look for on my visit to Germany is a son of Galileo out of a Danehill mare. This is not a respite from the saturation at home. Worse still, this stallion was responsible for almost ten percent of the German foal crop. This may be a very rewarding move for the stud in the short term, but in the longer term it can only make them a smaller fish in a bigger pool.