Keeneland December Digital Sale | Horse Racing Free Tips

Surrender Now New Topper–Privately–of Keeneland’s Digital Sale

Keeneland’s December Digital Sale, held Tuesday, Dec. 15, reportedly has a new topper, but with a wrinkle attached–Surrender Now (Morning Line) was sold after the sale for an undisclosed price. Kim Lloyd, representative for the 5-year-old stakes-winning mare’s owner, Rockingham Ranch, said the buyer, Blue Heaven Farm, requested the final price remain private.

“We put her in for a reserve of $450,000,” said Lloyd. “They made an offer and we got a fair price for both sides, actually.”

Lloyd was asked to verify if the price topped the $250,000 brought by Felicita (More Than Ready) and he said, “Yes, quite a bit over that. It was an opportunity and a fair price for both parties. Gary [Hartunian of Rockingham] made it possible by being reasonable.”

Lloyd, the former general manager of Barretts Sales, is the principal of Sweetwater Trading Company, who manages the horses for Rockingham Ranch. Surrender Now, who won the 2017 Landaluce S. at Santa Anita and placed in two other black-type events, comes from a stakes-laden family as her fourth dam is Broodmare of the Year Glowing Tribute (Graustark).

“We had put her away, booked her to Speightstown,” said Lloyd. “Our original plan was to sell her [next] November, but we decided to take a chance. We stable our horses at Rose Hill Farm. Tony O’Campo [of Rose Hill] does such a wonderful job; he’s a good, caring horseman, so we had him be the consigner.

“We have quite a few horses,” he continued. “We’re into racing. We do breed, but we like to race and it was just an opportunity. The market was right. We’ve built a nice stable and this was a way to keep the cash flow going. We would have never sold our filly without the digital sale, but they came and make an offer and did a fair deal for both of us.

“It’s an interesting new process. Everybody gets a chance to market their horse and play in the game. It’s really something special. I think in the future we’ll see a lot more people utilizing the opportunity with digital sales. They have some wrinkles to work out and they will. We do as sellers too, like how to make our horse more marketable. I like that it is a learning process and new for everybody.”

The post Surrender Now New Topper–Privately–of Keeneland’s Digital Sale appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Felicita Brings $250,000 To Top Keeneland December Digital Sale

Felicita, a half-sister to recent Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies runner-up Dayoutoftheoffice, sold for $250,000 to Alpha Delta Stables to headline Keeneland's December Digital Sale, held today as part of Keeneland's Digital Sales Ring platform.

The one-day sale grossed $508,000 for 15 lots, for an average of $33,867 and a median of $11,000. Summary results of the sale are available by clicking here.

Consigned by Taylor Made Sales Agency, agent, Felicita is a 4-year-old daughter of More Than Ready out of the Indian Charlie mare Gottahaveadream. She was offered in foal to Not This Time.

Four Bridges paid $55,000 for Warm Water, in foal to City of Light. The 5-year-old mare by English Channel is from the family of Horse of the Year A.P. Indy and Preakness Stakes winner Summer Squall. She was consigned by Machmer Hall Sales, agent.

Song of Melody, a winning 5-year-old mare by Flat Out, in foal to Not This Time, brought a final bid of $50,000 from Rose Hill Farm, agent. Consigned by Taylor Made Sales Agency, agent, Song of Melody is from the family of Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) winner Raven's Pass and multiple graded stakes winner E Dubai.

The post Felicita Brings $250,000 To Top Keeneland December Digital Sale appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

More Than Ready Filly Tops Keeneland December Digital Sale

Felicita (More Than Ready), an unraced 4-year-old half-sister to Grade I-winning juvenile and Dayoutoftheoffice (Into Mischief), topped Tuesday’s Keeneland December Digital Sale when hammering for $250,000 to Jon Clay’s Alpha Delta Stables. The auction, Keeneland’s third foray into the nascent online sale marketplace after its June Online Select Horses of Racing Age Sale and October Digital Sale, was seen by leading consignors as a clear improvement while still having kinks that need ironing out as the sector evolves.

The one-day sale grossed $508,000 for 15 lots, for an average of $33,867 and a median of $11,000. Overall, 69 lots were available for bidding from an original catalog of 79 horses.

Consigned by Taylor Made Sales Agency, Felicita was a $10,000 purchase by Harris Farms last fall at Keeneland November and received a major pedigree update this year when Dayoutoftheoffice streaked to convincing victories in the GIII Schuylerville S. and GI Frizette S. before running second in the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. She was offered in foal to Taylor Made’s leading freshman sire Not This Time.

“Felicita is the prototype of what really works in the online environment now,” said Taylor Made Vice President of Sales & Marketing Mark Taylor. “I think that it’s going to expand and the online marketplace will gain more traction in the future, but right now what sells is something that has a really current update or something that’s going on in the pedigree to create a sense of urgency, like, ‘Wow, I need to act on this and get ahead of the curve.’ With her being a half-sister to Dayoutoftheoffice, a [potential] Eclipse finalist and on the [GI Kentucky] Oaks trail for next year, from a hot female family with great horses up and down the page and being in foal to Not This Time who’s doing so well, that made her unique and created that sense of urgency.”

Additionally, Taylor Made was able to sell 5-year-old mare Song of Melody (Flat Out), also in foal to Not This Time, for $50,000 to Rose Hill Farm in a sale that suffered from a high number of RNA’s.

“You can see the results, there were tons of buybacks, but we got another mare sold for $50,000, and that was a fair price, about what we were hoping to get,” Taylor said. “Then a lot of the other mares that didn’t get done, we’ve learned from the online marketplace that if you’ve got a chink in your armor, it gets magnified by the extra hassle. People aren’t just standing around the back ring and seeing horses go through and spontaneously going, ‘Well I’m here at the auction, I’ve got to buy five horses, I’m going to buy this one.’ You’ve got to make the conscious effort to sign up, get your credit, send somebody out to the farm to see the horse, check out everything and [the challenge] is breaking through those mental obstacles that are in people’s brains and trying to draw their attention to something.”

Conrad Bandoroff, Vice President of Denali Stud, concurred that updated pedigrees lead to the most attractive offerings in the new world of digital auctions.

“The digital sales platform isn’t going away, and there was a mare who sold for $250,000. We’re going to see more of this,” he said. “You have the new online platform in Wanamakers, and you can capitalize on immediacy, on a race result or an update.”

Bandoroff and Taylor both agreed one of the issues leading to high RNA rates at the initial online sales is that, due to the relative ease with which horses can be entered digitally compared to the costly effort of physically getting a horse to and through an auction ring, there is less built-in incentive for a seller to complete the transaction online.

“What we’re seeing in these early stages is that when people don’t have to ship a horse into a sale, pay the bigger entry fee, or pay the expenses that come along with it, maybe their level of expectation is higher than where the market is,” Bandoroff said. “I think this is why you see so many horses who fail to meet their reserve. People are testing the market, and if they can get this number, they’ll do it, but maybe they’re not getting what they expected.”

“It’s a learning experience,” Taylor said. “Keeneland did a nice job of moving the ball forward and trying to make the product better, but it’s going to be an evolution and we’ve still got a long way to go to perfect the marketplace and get it really seamless. The seller also has to be realistic about the price. Sometimes, because people don’t have to ship the horse, they’ll think, ‘Yeah, I’ll lob it on there and if I happen to get a premium, I’ll take it, otherwise I’m content to just sit tight.'”

Taylor added that improvements to online sales could come in the form of more consistent presentation, and said that the nature of the medium leads to a more challenging, involved selling process for consignors.

“I think from a consignor’s point of view, the presentations on the website ranged from very low grade all the way to really good,” he said. “Having more photos, really good videos, clear contact information for how to reach out and get more information on the horse, and then being able to be proactive [would help]. This is not passive selling, it’s not throwing them online and hoping somebody bids. It’s more like a private transaction, calling people and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got this horse for sale, it’s on the digital marketplace with Keeneland, you need to go check it out.'”

He also said that while it’s admirable for a digital sale to contain offerings that fit the lower levels of the market, the evolution of the medium could lead to catalogs of more select offerings.

“From Keeneland’s side, this is just my opinion, but if I were them, I’d start with smaller numbers and I would be more selective about what actually went on there,” Taylor said. “I would curate the catalog for things that I thought really would push the buttons of the buying bench out there. It’s a good thing about their culture that they’re trying to help people at all levels move horses. There were $1,000 horses getting sold on there and that was a service to those people selling the horses. That’s to be applauded, but maybe you could separate the auctions that are curated with really nice offerings that check a lot of the boxes. I think we’re all learning and Keeneland definitely moved the ball forward from where they were in the summer when they did it. It was a better product, better experience, better promotion, everything was improved. It’s going to be evolving and we’ve all got to learn and adjust.”

Keeneland’s January Horses of All Ages Sale, which features 1,588 offerings in its catalog, will take place Jan. 11-14 in Lexington with all four sessions starting at 10 a.m. ET.

The post More Than Ready Filly Tops Keeneland December Digital Sale appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Keeneland December Digital Sale: Is This Our Future?

When the owners of Fancy Green (Fr) (Muhtathir {GB}-Fancy Stone {Ire}, by Rainbow Quest) decided to enter her and seven others into Keeneland’s December Digital Sale, they did so with years of personal experience with the technology and methods that made digital buying and selling possible.

“We are international owners,” said Majdolin Shatrit, the Executive Director of Marbat LLC, based in Saudi Arabia. “We don’t live in America or Europe, and so we’ve used this method for a long time.”

Indeed, the offering of Fancy Green (Fr), who sells as hip 21 in Tuesday’s sale (full catalogue here), represents a quantum leap forward for an increasingly international marketplace with a technology accelerated by the global pandemic of COVID-19.

Fancy Green (Fr) is boarded at Anna Sundstrom’s Haras du Grand Chene in Survie, France, about an hour south of Deauville. The 10-year-old mare’s second foal was the Group 1 Criterium de Saint Cloud winner Mkfancy (Fr) (Makfi {GB}) (video). She is in foal to Coolmore Ireland’s Saxon Warrior (Jpn), whose first foals are being well received all over the world.

So why a digital sale based in America?

“The travel restrictions were the main reason,” said Shatrit. “The sales were not as good this year, as everyone knows, especially in Europe, and we found the Keeneland Digital Sale to be a good opportunity to show the filly to everyone in Europe, Australia, America-all over the world.”

“COVID has changed a lot about our lives, and about this business,” said Shatrit. “For years, in France and all over Europe and America, people have been traveling to buy horses, and it’s very difficult to stop that trade because of travel restrictions. I think this digital sale is very helpful if people really think about it in the correct way.”

Sundstrom, whose Coulonces Consignment sells horses all over Europe, said that the digital sale will be an interesting test, and that Fancy Green is the perfect mare for the situation.

Fancy Green (Fr)’s son Mkfancy (Fr) wins the G1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud

“With what’s going on around the world, it’s going to be very interesting to see if it works, how it works, what kinds of interest it will get,” she said. “And obviously, Fancy Green is such a high-profile mare, having produced a Group 1 winner. She’s in foal to Saxon Warrior and the buyers are mad about them. They’re looking like the real deal, those foals. So she’s a good candidate to do this and she’s such a beautiful mare and I think it’s enough to see in the videos and pictures, that she’s very correct, in great form and shape. It’s very exciting.”

Indeed, her location provides some interesting choices and opportunities for a buyer anywhere in the world.

“She’s here in France, and she’s due at the end of January which means she can foal down, she can be covered again, wherever the buyer may be, they can breed her back in Europe to a top stallion. And then, brought to America, Japan or Australia, in foal to Dubawi (Ire) or Kingman (GB) or Frankel (GB), it could be quite a nice opportunity. If I lived in America, I would be interested in that.”

But as the world has moved more and more to online sales over the past decade, the Thoroughbred trade has been slower to adapt.

Said Shatrit, “I think that people don’t want to buy horses from digital sales because they are not used to it. It’s a tradition, they love to go to sales, we love to see the horses.” But, she said, because of their Saudi Arabian base and the additional burden their location puts on travel, Marbat has conducted its business in this way for years, with the advice of bloodstock David Ingordo, who selects potential racehorses for the group, and Kris Stuebs, who chooses their broodmares.

“We call our agent, they take videos, pictures, send veterinary reports, and based on what we see we decide on whether we want to buy this horse or not and we put a budget based on what we see. I think now, people should start wanting to conduct their business in this way. When you have a horse’s physical information, his height, his weight, his full vet records, I think this information is enough to buy horses even if you can see the horse physically or not.”

Marbat is also offering Fancy Green’s yearling colt by Myboycharlie (Ire), along with a yearling by Constitution, among several others.

“Her yearling is also in the sale,” she said. “You can see how pretty, how strong he looks. People love him in the pre-training center. They’re all very sound.”

But Fancy Green is clearly the star of their show. “This broodmare is really beautiful and a top producer. Her first foal is a multiple winner, her second foal is a Group 1 winner. Her blood is free of Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector which makes it easy for an owner to breed her to any type of stallion. She can stay in Europe until she has the foal. She can go to any of the top horses at Coolmore, or Dubawi, Frankel, Sea The Stars (Ire)-sires who do very well everywhere; Australia, America. She has the potential to do whatever the owner wants.”

Marbat and its owner, Sheikh Abdullah Almaddah, have successfully campaigned horses such as Green Mask (Mizzen Mast), a $150,000 OBS Spring purchase by Ingordo on their behalf who went on to win over $1 million.

Through Stuebs, they have acquired a number of successful broodmares, including Rote, whose progeny have sold for up to $1,250,000, and Miss Challenge, who produced a then-record Saratoga New York bred in 2013 at $430,000.

“We want to do this, we love this, have a great passion for it, but it’s very difficult to be able to travel to every sale in Europe and America,” said Shatrit. “This makes it easier for us to look at horses. We look at almost every horse that goes through the sale, then we pick our horses based on pedigree and conformation, then we request more information.”

Accelerated by COVID, digital sales, said Shatrit, really are the future, and should remain when the pandemic has abated.

“I really encourage horsemen everywhere to look at this sale,” she said. “These sales are very important even if we go back to our normal life, because it’s nice to buy horses everywhere. Maybe you don’t have to travel to Australia to buy a horse from there. The digital sale gives the chance to everyone-the owner and the seller–to conduct business in a very easy and safe environment.”

Bidding for the December Digital Sale begins Tuesday, Dec. 15, at 10 a.m. EST.

The post Keeneland December Digital Sale: Is This Our Future? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post