OBS July Catalogue Online

The catalogue for the OBS July Sale of 2-Year-Olds In Training and Horses of Racing Age is now online at www.obssales.com. Supplemental entries will be accepted through this Friday, June 19.

An even 1000 horses have currently been catalogued for the three-day auction, comprised of 988 juveniles in training and 12 older horses. Hips 1-360 are set to go under the hammer Tuesday, July 14, hips 361-720 Wednesday, July 15 and the balance of horses, including any supplements, Thursday, July 16.

There are six scheduled under tack previews for the July Sale beginning Monday, July 6 and running through Saturday, July 11. Batches of 180 horses will breeze each morning beginning at 7:30. The breeze shows will be streamed live at the OBS website and at the TDN homepage.

As it was for the just-concluded Spring Sale, online bidding will be available for the July Sale. Click here for comprehensive details on online bidding.

An iPad version of the catalogue is available at the Equineline Sales Catalogue App, which allows users to download and view the catalog, receive updates and results, record notes and also provides innovative search, sort and rating capability.

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OBS July 2-Year-Olds And Racing Age Sale Catalog Now Online

The catalog for the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's 2020 July Sale of 2-Year-Olds and Horses of Racing Age is now available via the OBS website at obssales.com. Supplemental entries are being accepted until June 19.

There are 988 2-year-olds and 12 older horses cataloged for the three-day sale, rescheduled from its original June dates, with all sessions beginning at 10 a.m. Hip No.'s 1 – 360 will sell on Tuesday, July 14;  Hip No.'s 361 – 720 will be offered on Wednesday, July 15 and Hip No.'s 721 – 1003 plus supplements will sell on Thursday, July 16.

There are six under tack sessions. Hip No.'s 1 – 180 will go to the track on Monday, July 6, Hip No.'s 181 – 360 will work on Tuesday, July 7, Hip No.'s 361 – 540 will breeze on Wednesday, July 8, Hip No.'s 541 – 720 work on Thursday, July 9, Hip No.'s 721 – 900 will breeze on Friday, July 10 and Hip No.'s 901 – 1003 plus supplements will go on Saturday, July 11. All under tack sessions begin at 7:30 a.m.

The under tack show and sale will be streamed live via the OBS website as well as the DRF, TDN and BloodHorse websites.

OBS will again offer online bidding during the July Sale. Buyers will be able to go to the OBS website and register to gain bidding approval, then access the OBS bidding screen with their credentials. For complete information on registration and online bidding please go to the OBS website at: https://www.obssales.com/2020/06/obs-online-bidding/

The online catalog's main page contains a link to a sortable master index providing searchable pedigree and consignor information as well as access to pedigree updates occurring since the catalog was printed.

The sortable master index has been updated with advanced search and filter capability and to allow shortlist creation. A link to instructions for using the new features can be found in the index header and a step by step tutorial is available in the index as well.

The iPad version of the catalog can be accessed via the equineline Sales Catalog App. The App allows users to download and view the catalog, receive updates and results, record notes and also provides innovative search, sort and rating capability. For more information and downloads go to: http://www.equineline.com/SalesCatalogApp/

Current information about OBS sales, consignors and graduates is now also available via social media sites Facebook and Twitter. A link on the homepage directs users to either site.

To view the online catalog, click here.

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Predictably Painful Market Opens New Cycle

These, as we all recognize, are unprecedented times. Only the foolhardy would forecast the duration, or future direction, of the tempest we suddenly find ourselves trying to navigate. Even so, one thing seems nearly guaranteed. There are people out there, whose most critical resources are not merely financial but sooner measured in intrepidity and acuity, who will turn out to have sown a great harvest during these times of famine.

Because that’s the other side of the same coin that made the current crisis as inevitable as it was impossible to foresee. As a system theoretically predicated on something that is simply impossible–perennial growth–capitalism relies, in practice, on cycles of growth and recession. Even these may not be very sustainable, if repeatedly taking the extreme form of “boom” and “bust.” But if society as a whole cannot easily absorb so bumpy a ride, the great individual fortunes will often be made by riding (along with Shakespeare’s Brutus) that “tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

The trick, as after the financial crisis of 2008, will be catching that tide. For the moment, some degree of trauma seems inevitable for a market that ultimately trades–among end-users, at least–in luxury goods.

Setting aside the March Sale in the same ring, a surreal episode even as the pandemic took hold, the postponed 2-Year-Old Spring Sale at OBS last week was the first real measure of the initial shock. Here was an auction that had registered records in gross, average and median for three years running and now faced an onrushing train (containing no overseas passengers, obviously).

Year-on-year comparison, in the accompanying table, is of limited value because of the accommodation this time of a small but valuable group of refugees from Fasig-Tipton’s cancelled sale at Gulfstream. These realized eight of the sale’s top 10 prices.

Taking these and other supplementary entries out of the equation, the core catalog naturally suffered rather deeper losses than those registered on the surface. The gross for the whole sale shrank by 19.8% and the average by 14.4%. Without the Gulfstream transfusion, however, the core market would have shed around one-third of its 2019 value; and the average would have been down by around a quarter.

Some, no doubt, would settle for even so severe a bump in the road, compared with the kind of abyss that has been opening up in the industry’s collective imagination. Regardless, the fact is that even the core of last week’s catalog can’t be sensibly compared with the equivalent sale in 2019.

Across all North American juvenile auctions last year, 30.2% of the animals catalogued were scratched; last week, 40.8% failed to make the ring. While vetting was presumably at a higher premium than ever, the principal driver for this jump in defections was surely the number of private sales preceding the sale. Pragmatic consignors had been receiving scouting missions from trusted clientele all spring. And while private deals doubtless accounted for the very numerous no-shows in the supplementary catalog, they may also have contributed to loss of impetus in the core market. (Certain elite stallions were conspicuously reduced in their representation through the sale.)

Remember, also, that the earlier auctions usually leave vendors the option of regrouping at Timonium. This time, of course, there was no such safety net. Though itself postponed, the Fasig-Tipton Midatlantic Sale is only days away.

If anyone is equal to tough decisions on a horse’s value, it’s the guys who present a 2-year-old for sale. They know that 10 seconds of theater can sometimes be too unforgiving a window to demonstrate the true potential of a horse. Often, if retaining sufficient faith and nerve, they will cling to the wreckage and find partners to prove a higher value on the track. This time round, however, many surely felt obliged to write off a project altogether. Despite the depressed values, the clearance rate held up at 80.1%, virtually identical to last year.

Nor, as such, would a juvenile auction necessarily be the most reliable litmus test for the wider market. These represent the end of a cycle, already comprising serial visits to the ring: as a yearling, weanling, even in utero. Throughout that process, values depend heavily on the confidence of pinhookers. The industry’s morale, to that extent, is nearly self-fulfilling.

But the cost of the raw materials has been rising steeply in recent years. So yes, the North American juvenile market last year passed $200 million for the first time ever, with the average transaction up 8.5%. But the typical yearling, the previous fall, had cost pinhookers nearly 30% more than had been the case only two years before.

Now, in contrast, we may have the kind of environment in which fresh cycles of investment can begin. If you’re a talented young pinhooker, you probably won’t need quite such a head for heights to test the water now.

In the end, last week’s sale was a nettle that had to be grasped by a few unlucky vendors and consignors on behalf of the whole industry. If the usual complaints about polarisation were shriller than ever, then that’s hardly surprising. If anything, the fact that there was still competition for the better horses is more important than a predictable expansion of no-man’s-land.

In 2009, the average at this sale shed 15%. But since the tremors on Wall Street were already being felt the previous year, it may be more pertinent to record that the average between the 2007 and 2009 sales slumped by 23.5%. Conceivably this crisis, being more abrupt, may have compressed its impact in corresponding fashion.

Either way, it will doubtless feel like a long way home. Looking back to 2008, the worry is that the bloodstock market–though greatly favored by all those cash steroids injected into the economy–took much longer to filter the benefits than did mainstream indices. The Dow Jones lost 33.8% in 2008, but recovered 18.8% the following year and maintained solid gains annually until 2015. The United States GDP, similarly, haemorrhaged 2.5% in 2009 but rebounded 2.6%in 2010 and maintained a decade of growth. North American bloodstock, in contrast, lost 21.2% in 2008; 32.2% in 2009; and another 6.5%, even on those compound losses, in 2010. It was not until 2011 (up 18.2%) and 2013 (up a crazy 27.9%, and even then only in tandem with the biggest spike in the Dow Jones) that its own recession levelled out.

Whether our business will again ride the slipstream of recovery in this very different crisis remains to be seen. But let’s just give a moment’s attention, and due credit, to the dollars and cents banked by the big winner in whatever kind of market may be left to us.

It’s obviously an unlucky time to be launching a stallion. Having recently reiterated a personal regard for the horse, however, it was gratifying to see Not This Time consolidating his brisk start on the track–and a precocity that had not been widely anticipated, in a son of Giant’s Causeway–with a knockout sale. From 23 members of his debut crop catalogued, it was a rare distinction to get as many as 21 into the ring; staggering, to find a new home for all but one (a colt who got as far as $95,000 without reaching his reserve); and spectacular, to top two of the four sessions. As a $12,500 stallion, Not This Time baked a cake of rare consistency for a $205,400 average; and then applied the icing in the $1.35 million filly who led the whole sale.

At the best of times, of course, many a good horse will slip through the cracks. Browsing the returns, it looks as though a reluctant farewell must have been said to several youngsters that showed all due gusto under tack and still failed to gain traction. Equally, someone out there will have taken home a foundation mare, or maybe a game-changing stallion, for little money: a tide taken at the flood.

After all, we’re dealing with a guess laid upon a guess. Who can say how the global economy will look, even in a few months’ time? For now, it’s about laying duckboards across the mudflats and keeping as balanced as possible.

The last big shock to the system was caused by financial institutions squeezing its functionality to breaking point (i.e. precisely because of that pressure towards constant growth). The origins of this crisis, plainly, are more extraneous. But you could argue that the post-2008 recovery, and subsequent surge, in turn saw boundaries being pushed, whether in fiscal, political and regulatory terms.

Certainly the instruments used to stimulate growth were all about liquidity–nugatory interest rates, quantitative easing, etc.–and much medication was still being prescribed long after the patient came out of intensive care. That was always going to leave governments short of options, in the event of a relapse. So it remains to be seen how they get back on an even keel, after suddenly being forced into lavish paternalist interventions to stem the catastrophe of a global economic shutdown.

What we do know, in our business, is that the post-2008 therapies were especially congenial for the affluent and that some of them played up their winnings in our business. Then they landed a bunch of tax breaks. The bull run continued breathlessly. It seemed like it would go on forever. After each record-breaking sale, it felt like a moral duty to remind everyone what happened to the “unsinkable” ship. But you might as well go round the Churchill infield on Derby day with a sandwich board, urging repentance, for the end is nigh.

By the same logic, however, it is an equal imperative now to urge everyone not to panic; to keep the faith; to know that the value now available in the marketplace will someday generate the next boom.

As we’ve noted, last week’s market was really centred on the current appetite for a racehorse. We’ll have a better idea of what lies ahead when the pinhookers show what they have left–whether literally, in their coffers, or simply in terms of confidence–at the yearling and weanling sales.

Meanwhile here’s something for them all to ponder. Because one of the problems of the bull run was that it inverted the whole premise of commercial breeding. It made the sales ring, not the racetrack, the key to far too many matings. If it takes a market crash to correct that, well, for the long-term sake of the breed, that might even be a price worth paying.

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West End Girl Tops Inaugural Tattersalls Online Ascot Sale

The Alan and Mike Spence-owned West End Girl topped the inaugural Tattersalls Ascot Online Sale when selling to Badgers Bloodstock who saw off interest from a number of bidders to secure the filly for £420,000 (US$527,184).

The daughter of Golden Horn, who is out of a half-sister to Reckless Abandon, won the Group 3 Sweet Solera Stakes at two and was placed third on her latest start in the listed Oaks Trial at Lingfield on June 5. The Mark Johnston-trained 3-year-old is declared to run in the Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes on Tuesday at the Royal Meeting.

Lot 4, Igotatext, consigned by Archie Watson, made the perfect start to his career when making a winning debut at Lingfield just ten days ago. He caught the imagination of the Cool Silk Partnership who secured him for £165,000 (US$207,183). The son of Group 2 Gimcrack winner Ajaya now looks set to take his chance in the Group 2 Coventry Stakes on Saturday for new connections who are no stranger to Royal Ascot success.

Commenting on the first sale of its nature in the U.K. and Ireland Matthew Prior, head of Tattersalls Ascot Sales, said;

“A big team effort has gone into getting the inaugural Tattersalls Ascot Online Sale off the ground and we are very pleased with the results. There were a few technical glitches along the way which were quickly resolved and we will learn from today's sale, but overall it was a genuinely encouraging start for Tattersalls Online. We had wholehearted, enthusiastic support from the vendors as well as bidders from throughout the world, and we would like to extend our thanks and gratitude to all who supported and participated in this new venture. In particular we wish all the connections the very best of luck with their purchases this week if taking up their engagements at Royal Ascot.”

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