Fasig Florida Sale Today

by Justina Severni and Jessica Martini

   The juvenile sales season makes its third stop of the year today in Williston with the Fasig-Tipton Florida Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale. After a two-year sojourn at Palm Meadows Training Center, the auction will be held for the first time at Frank Stronach’s Adena Springs South. 
    “We’re optimistic,” said Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning, Jr. “You always worry. If you don’t have pre-game jitters before a horse sale, you shouldn’t be in the horse sale business. But we’re enthusiastic. We couldn’t have asked to have the table set any better than it is right now.” 
    The Florida sale comes in the wake of a strong renewal of the Barretts March sale and a record-breaking OBS March sale. Barretts registered a 23.5% increase in average, while the median was up 12.5% and the sale produced its first million-dollar horse in seven years. The OBS sale produced three seven-figure juveniles, while the average was up 22.7% to a record $190,997 and the median rose 10% to another record, $137,500. 
    During last year’s Florida sale, 136 juveniles were catalogued, while 78 horses were offered and 46 sold for $17,725,000. The average of $385,326 was up 20.3% from 2012, while the median was up 31.9% to $300,000. 
This year’s catalogue is slightly larger than the 2013 version. From a catalogue of 157 head, 40 had been withdrawn by Sunday afternoon. 
    “We’ve gotten a little feedback from some of our customers,” explained Browning. “They hoped to have a little bit more variety and a few more choices, so we are happy to have 20 additional offerings–about a 15% larger catalogue.” 
Despite the increase, consignors acknowledged the boutique sales attract a smaller buying bench. 
    “I think there’s a lot of interest in quality stock,” said consignor Niall Brennan. “I still don’t think we’ve got a huge depth of buyers in these select sales–we don’t have the depth of buyers to move all the horses. We’ll see that change at the OBS April sale, I hope. Last year there were a tremendous amount of people–that’s where they all came to one-stop shop for every budget and they could find what they wanted. That’s what moves horses and makes a great sale. These select sales are still very much top-ended looking for quality stock and that’s the mindset the buyers have, so anything less than that gets pushed to the side.” 
    Still, with two sales already in the record books, consignors have noticed a vigorous demand for horses. 
“We’ve gone through two sales and both sales have been great,” reported Dean De Renzo. “We’ve sold the majority of our horses. We’ve only bought back one horse and we’ve offered 15 for sale.” 
    De Renzo was also a fan of sale’s expected one-year stopover at the idyllic Adena Springs facility. 
    “We knew that Mr. Stronach puts an amazing amount of effort into building his racetracks, so we were pretty confident in the track and that’s what is really important to us. We have a good surface to be able to show our horses over and when they leave here they are as good as when we started.” 
    Activity at the sales barn this weekend has been steady, if not overwhelming. 
    “It was quite busy yesterday,” Brennan said. “It seemed quiet this morning, but that wouldn’t be a surprise. I think it’s an easy set-up to get around here and it’s very nice and relaxing for everybody.” 
    Consignor Eddie Woods said, “The traffic has been reasonably good without being outrageous. You always like to see a bit more, but it’s been steady and we’ve got another day to go.” 
    Bidding at the Florida sale begins Monday at noon.