Fasig-Tipton July Sale Thursday

The Fasig-Tipton July Sale, the first yearling sale of the season, will be held Thursday starting at 10 a.m. at Newtown Paddocks in Lexington. The one-day sale has 332 catalogued horses in the yearling section, and will be immediately followed by the selected Horses of Racing Age section, which has 123 hips catalogued. The sale follows a strong season of trade in the 2-year-old market and Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning believes the upbeat buying bench will continue into the yearling market.

“We would anticipate the positive momentum and energy that we’ve seen in the 2-year-old market to certainly have an impact and carry into the yearling sales,” Browning said. “We’re coming off a great Triple Crown, a strong 2-year-old sales season and the overall economy seems to be pretty positive, so we’re very optimistic that the sale will be strong and that the yearlings sales will be strong throughout 2015, starting with the July sale.”

During the 2014 July Sale, 162 yearlings sold for a total of $15,253,000, good for an average of $94,154. The yearling sale was topped by a Cowboy Cal colt whol went to Northwest Stud for $550,000.

The Racing Age Sale, which was dominated by the Eugene Melnyk dispersal in 2014, saw 109 horses sell for a gross of $8,426,000. The average was $77,303, with an RNA rate of 14.8%. Bedford Lane, a 2-year-old filly by Speightstown from the Melnyk dispersal, was the top-priced lot when she went to Three Chimneys Farm for $1.075 million.

Browning noted that the Horses of Racing Age Sale, which was added to the July sale two years ago, works well in conjunction with the yearling auction.

“We’ve discovered that the yearling sale complements the Horses of Racing Age Sale and the Horses of Racing Age Sale complements the yearling sale,” he explained. “It’s truly one of those examples where 1+1=3. The horses-of-racing-age market has proven to be healthy and strong the last two years here and we’ve got another good catalogue in 2015 with some very interesting horses at a variety of levels. Combined there are over 330 yearlings and over 125 horses of racing age, so there are lots of opportunities for people to buy a variety of horses and they should have a great deal of appeal to virtually everybody.”

The July sale boasts an impressive catalogue cover, with Dortmund (Big Brown), Rosalind (Broken Vow), Firing Line (Line of David) and Birdatthewire (Summer Bird) gracing the pages.

“The greatest advertisement any sale can have is the success of its graduates,” Browning said. “Certainly, buyers can look at, not just this year’s July catalogue cover, but from a historical perspective, too. Year after year after year, it produces top-class racehorses, reasonable prices and it is a great place for people to buy racehorses and 2015’s catalogue is no exception. We’re pretty optimistic about the physicals and the group of pedigrees that we saw and put together this year. The 2017-2018 sales catalogues are going to have lots of cover horses as well and there’s going to be a lot of exciting graduates coming from this group of yearlings at the sales grounds.”