Keeneland September Sale Starts Monday

Keeneland’s marathon 12-day September Yearling Sale begins Monday morning at 11 a.m. with the first of three Book 1 sessions. Activity was high at the barns over the weekend and sales officials are looking for a strong auction.

“Everybody is here,” commented Keeneland’s Director of Sales Geoffrey Russell. “There is no change in the enthusiasm for horses, if anything it’s increased since last September. The magic of American Pharoah has definitely helped. It has helped elevate the visibility of our sport, which will hopefully bring more people into it. And we look forward to a good sale.”

During last year’s September sale, 2,819 yearlings sold for a gross of $279,960,500. The average was $99,312 and the median was $50,000. Those figures held largely steady with the sale’s break-out 2013 results and Eaton Sales’ Reiley McDonald looks for the status quo to continue in 2015.

“I suspect it will pretty much be like last year,” McDonald said. “I haven’t seen anything here in two days of showing that makes me think otherwise. I haven’t seen many new faces, I haven’t seen a lack of the old faces. I think the number of shows has been the same. I’d say pretty much what we saw last year is what we’ll see this year.”

Select Sales will be participating in its sixth yearling sale of the season and the company’s Andrew Cary has seen strong demand and enthusiasm coming into the September market.

“The results of the horses coming out of this sale and U.S.-breds winning all over the world further backs up the quality of horse that we raise here,” Cary said. “We’ve got tons of domestic people here, tons of international people here. This is definitely one of the best places in the world to find the best horses. I hope that they stay all the way to the end because we have some good horses selling the last day of the sale, too.”

In 2014, Book 1 lasted four sessions and featured 13 seven-figure yearlings, including matching $2.2-million sales toppers by leading sires Tapit and War Front. There were 762 yearlings catalogued for the four sessions.

This year, Keeneland has shortened Book 1 to three sessions with 724 catalogued and a dark day Thursday before Book 2 starts Friday.

“We are trying to keep buyers mobile,” Russell explained of the change. “What we found out last year was that by Thursday, we didn’t have enough horses for Book 2 in [to the sales barns]. So buyers and consignors said if we put fewer horses in in days one, two and three and then get the Book 2 horses in in time, people can keep moving. Come Wednesday, they’ve already looked at all the horses for Book 1, they need to look at something.”

Gainesway’s Michael Hernon thinks the change will be a positive for the sale.

“The new structure of Book 1 is very appropriate,” Hernon commented. “It will raise the market, there will be more synergy, we will sell more horses each day. The sessions will start a little earlier and there will be more continuity of sessions now that it is three not four days. The last few years, session four in Book 1 has become more difficult to sell out of because people have mentally moved on to Book 2. By moving up the dark day, it will allow for better screening of Book 2 horses by people who have to leave town because of time commitments. So those horses will get additional exposure and consequently will sell better because they will have a bigger following.”

The three Book 1 sessions of the September sale begin at 11 a.m. The remaining sessions of the auction begin at 10 a.m.