There's always another auction down for the road, but while many of the buyers and sellers at this week's Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October Yearling Sale will be returning to Lexington, Ky., in the weeks to come for the fall mixed sales, the staff of Preferred Equine will be heading in another direction.
The operation of David Reid has about 140 horses to sell in Pennsylvania at the Standardbred Horse Sales Co. Harrisburg Yearling and Mixed Sales, taking place Nov. 6-10.
It's a return to normal business for the Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.-based consignment, which will put over 400 Standardbreds through the sales ring in 2023, compared to about 20 Thoroughbreds. Of that smaller group, 11 were offered at this week's Fasig-Tipton October Sale.
On the surface, the differences between Thoroughbred and Standardbred auctions might appear negligible. The horses are shown to potential buyers at the barns in the days leading up to the sale, they go through the ring until a hammer falls, and the horse hopefully gets a new owner. With the same auctioneers often holding the gavel for auctions of both breeds, they even tend to sound the same.
It's a similar destination, but the roads to get there can be quite different.
That starts with when and why the horses are being sold. Where the Thoroughbred realm has several outlets for buyers to purchase horses ahead of their racing careers, Standardbreds offer only a yearling market at public auction for young prospects, followed by racing-age and breeding stock markets for older horses.
“Most of your Standardbreds, a high majority of them are being purchased by end-users and racing them, where here (at Thoroughbred sales), you have a weanling-to-yearling pinhook market, 2-year-old in training pinhooks,” Reid said. “Just by the nature of the breed, we're not able to do that. [Standardbreds] can't go race speed in March (of their 2-year-old season). It's a gradual progression, starting in November and they expect to race in June, where the Thoroughbreds can go race speed earlier for a short period of time.
“When we're at a Standardbred sale, there are no agents, per se, so it's much more hands-on,” he continued. “There's a high percentage of the horses that are being sold that the trainer has laid eyes on, that'll be training that horse for the next few years.”
The inspection process at a Standardbred sale arguably requires more self-reliance from its buyers, but that can remove a lot of the friction between buyers and sellers seen in the Thoroughbred realm.
There is no repository of radiographs and scopes at the Standardbred sales, and there are no books with veterinarian reports on each horse for buyers to reference. Instead, interested parties are encouraged to have horses radiographed by their own vet in the evenings of show days, as opposed to interrupting potential inspections during the day to grab an x-ray.
Reid said he's seen an uptick in horses being vetted at the Standardbred sales over the past decade.
This might seem less transparent than offering up reports and x-rays, but having interested buyers do their own work ensures no disputes with the sellers if what's in the repository differs from what a private vet finds. That tension has been a point of fervent debate in the Thoroughbred sphere for years, even leading to court cases.
This does not mean, however, that Standardbred consignors are selling horses without any disclosures. Preferred Equine's Austin Luttrell said certain procedures are much more forwardly presented than their Thoroughbred counterparts.
“OCD (Osteochondritis dissecans) surgeries are mentioned at the sale and put on the stall,” he said. “If something did have OCDs in the stifles, we put when the surgery happened, and it's announced publicly in the sale.
“I think that the potential perspective buyers taking care of the vet work themselves, instead of relying on a vet book that's provided by the consignor would help the Thoroughbred game a lot,” he continued.
The showing process starts the same between the two breeds – with shoppers checking off the horses they want to see on a card and looking at them at the end of the shank – but what the horses are asked to do and what buyers are looking for is a fork in the road.
Thoroughbred buyers must rely on a bit of imagination when forecasting how a yearling will move on the racetrack. At that point in their development, they've been trained to shine on the walk, and that's how they're shown. Videos of the horses walking have become more popular in recent years, to help shoppers further examine their stride, but they are not asked to go with any more urgency for public display.
Standardbred yearlings are typically offered with a video showing the horse moving at the trot in a paddock – not at racing speed, but moving freely – getting up to more speed to help buyers differentiate their gaits between potential pacers and trotters. The videos are made available at the barns on screens, and posted online, and they hold a lot of influence in a buyer's opinion.
“The physical inspection is the same,” Reid said. “The walk is not important in the physical inspection (for Standardbreds). They would be concerned about how a horse carries his limbs, but the final decision would be based on the video.”
Preferred Equine was founded in 1989, starting as a Standardbred-only operation and later expanding into Thoroughbreds. Being based in a state rich in tradition with both breeds, Reid said having a foot on both sides of the line was a natural progression.
“I was born up in Saratoga and always had a little interest in the Thoroughbreds,” he said. “Then, a lot of the sales help that I have for the Standardbred sales worked for the Thoroughbred sales. I have a very close relationship with a lot of key employees, and they were the first ones to encourage me that we should have that.”
Reid said he owns some Thoroughbred mares and shares in some racehorses, though Thoroughbreds only comprise about 10 percent of his consignment business.
Luttrell's roots run deeper in the Thoroughbred realm, having worked as an assistant to trainers Christophe Clement and Kiaran McLaughlin, as a bloodstock consultant in Australia and Argentina, and as a manager at Denali Stud and Donamire Farm.
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.While both Reid and Luttrell agreed that the Thoroughbred side could benefit from adopting some of the Standardbred industry's habits on vetting, Luttrell said some of the marketing efficiency of the Thoroughbred auctions could go a long way on the harness side, as well.
“I really like the idea of express lanes,” he said, referencing the showcases when all of a consignments are paraded at the same time for groups of shoppers to take in several horses at once. “In the Standardbred business, there are four or five consignments that have a lot of horses, and if you could provide an express lane and some kind of little lunch or cocktail hour and parade a lot of the horses, it could possibly free up some of the heavy congestion traffic with potential buyers throughout the day.
“I worked for Magic Millions in Australia, and that was a big thing,” he continued. “Each consignor would have some type of little party or get-together, and they would parade all the yearlings so you could get a good initial look at everything, and then go back and tidy up your shortlist.”
Though they are one of the most high-profile examples, Preferred Equine is not the only operation with a presence in the commercial market of both breeds.
Taylor Made Farm, an industry-leading Thoroughbred consignor and stud farm, has been a player in a handful of high-dollar purchases of Standardbred racehorses, and manages a portfolio of Standardbred stallions. The four brothers that head up the Taylor Made operation got their start preparing yearlings for sales for their grandfather who bred harness horses.
John Gaines, the late head of Gainesway Farm and the founding father of the Breeders' Cup, got his start working at his grandfather's Standardbred farm, and he was a high-profile breeder and owner in that realm before expanding to Thoroughbreds in the early 1960s. Joe Taylor, the father of the Taylor brothers, worked for Gaines during the transition.
Preferred Equine is a smaller fish in the grand scheme of the Thoroughbred consignment pond, grossing $80,000 at this year's Fasig-Tipton October sale. Though industry-wide figures have generally been solid in the Thoroughbred auction realm, and especially strong at the high end of the market, mid-to-lower level offerings have often struggled to find their footing, and Reid said they saw that first-hand this week.
“It's a continuing education,” he said. “We didn't have high expectations coming in (to the Fasig-Tipton sale). From a breed point of view, we haven't seen this in the Standardbred game. The Standardbred sales have held up strong this year.”
It was a different story earlier this month on the same property, when the Preferred Equine consignment had nearly 150 horses in the catalog for the Lexington Selected Yearling Sale and grossed more than $10.5 million. Among those offerings was Treacheryinthedark, who sold for $700,000 — a new record for the highest price brought by a yearling filly pacer.
There is plenty different in the auction processes between the two breeds, but the drivers of commerce at the top of each market bear a similar refrain.
“The market is incredibly strong for Standardbreds,” Luttrell said. “Racing is good, the purses are good. A lot of the horses that we're selling are Kentucky-eligible, and that's because of the historical horse racing. That helps us out because people are running for higher purses than ever.”
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