Keeneland has made available the catalogue for its 2017 September Yearling Sale Tuesday, featuring a new structure designed to heighten the exposure of its top offerings. Most notably, Keeneland revised the format of the first week of the sale to feature 167 elite yearlings during a one-day Book 1 session Monday, Sept. 11, followed by 1,036 yearlings offered over three ensuing days in Book 2. In total, 1,203 yearlings are cataloged during week one in 2017, compared to 607 in 2016, when there was a three-day Book 1. The catalogue for the sale, which features a total of 4,139 hips, can be found here.
“Keeneland September Book 1 is always about the highest-quality athletes, but I definitely think the new single-session format is going to add some extra energy to the opening day,” said Antony Beck, whose Gainesway Farm stands perennial leading sire Tapit, represented by 23 yearlings in Book 1. “The yearling market seems to be in very healthy place at the moment, and I expect Book 1 to set strong momentum for the sale right through the end.”
Book 1 features 40 sires, including War Front, who is represented by 25 entries, while the entire sales contains a total of 206 sires–59 of which are represented by 30 or more yearlings. A number of international sires have yearlings in the sale, including Australia (GB), Camelot (GB), Casamento (Ire), Dansili (Ire), Deep Impact (Jpn), Dubawi (Ire), Epaulette (Aus), Frankel (GB), Galileo (Ire), Invinicible Spirit (Ire), Poet's Voice (GB) and Raven's Pass.
“If the stock market holds up, Keeneland has a great sale,” said Duncan Taylor, President and CEO of Taylor Made Sales, which consigns 25 of the Book 1 entries. “It's world-renowned and they've done a great job of promoting to foreign markets. I'm looking for September to be another really good sale.”
The catalogue release comes one week after Keeneland announced the expansion of its September Sale Bonus Program to include a Sellers Program, which, together with a previously announced Book 1 Bonus, will offer cash rewards to horses sold at the September Yearling Sale that win graded or group stakes (for more information, click here). The Book 1 Bonus targets Grade or Group 1 stakes winners that sold as yearlings in the premier Book 1 portion of the September Sale, while the Seller Bonus extends opportunities for rewards to all eligible graded or group stakes winners sold at any time during the September Sale.
“I think that hopefully, with the bonus incentives and everything they're doing, they're going to get the right horses at the beginning of the sale and they're going to make it so everybody will try to attend,” Taylor continued. “What they're always battling is even people who have quite a bit of money saying, 'I don't need to come to the front part,' because they think they can maybe get a better buy or have more horses to look at later on. We'll see how it works.”
Entering its 74th year, the September Sale has yielded a total of 18 Grade I winners in 2017 to date, including champion Arrogate (Unbridled's Song), who became North America's all-time leading money earner with a score in the G1 Dubai World Cup in March, GI Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming (Bodemeister) and GI Preakness S. winner Cloud Computing (Maclean's Music).
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