I’ve just completed my initial reading of the catalogues and it’s not difficult to sense a significant difference between these volumes and their predecessors.
There seems to be much less of a difference between the K2 and K3 sales than there used to be. As recently as 2015 you could look at a pedigree and have a very good idea which catalogue it came from without looking at either the lot number or the cover. Now it’s a different story altogether. Take the colt by Shamoline Warrior out of the Western Symphony mare Blue Lady, for example. The sire looks promising, the dam has had six winners including a G3 winner which has accumulated over $500,000 in stakes. The second dam features such an amount of black type that Zazu, the third dam, doesn’t appear on the page. Sounds a certain Select lot? Not this year. Here’s another one. A colt by Roc ‘n’ Pop out of an unraced Savabeel mare, herself the daughter of a one-win Masterclass mare which has left two seriously minor winners from six named foals. Where can you read all about him? You guessed it! There he is in the Select Sale.
I realise that it’s always fun to criticise the selections of NZB, but the point that I’m really making is that type seems to be becoming more important than pedigree with every year that passes. Sure, the first requirement that owners have is that their racehorse is sound enough to get to the races and the second requirement is that it remains sound enough so that they can get some idea as to whether it’s worth spending any more money on. However, pedigree remains an important indicator of a yearling’s likelihood to succeed. Would you rather have owned a Zabeel or a Rossini?
OK, that’s a simplistic argument but I think that there certainly needs to be some serious analysis done by yearling buyers as to all factors relating to the purchase of yearlings. Apart from the issue I’ve just outlined, here are a couple more questions for you. What evidence is there that older mares can’t produce stakeswinning offspring? What evidence is there that December foals can’t mature into first class racehorses?
It’s fairly obvious that if you have a late foal or if the mare that produced it is getting on in years, your chances of that foal appearing in the Festival catalogue are much improved – not entirely the right word, but you get my point. On the other hand, smart buyers won’t be put off by these factors. Smart buyers will do their homework.
Anyway, if I can help you with those homework tasks, just let me know.
