'The horses at this auction are prepped in a very sympathetic way'

Tom Goff of Blandford Bloodstock has attended the National Yearling Sale for over 20 years and among his successes have been the likes of All Is Secret, a daughter of Captain Al purchased at the 2011 edition who went on to be crowned the champion two-year-old filly in South Africa in 2012-13.

Here, the agent tells us about the sale.

It really is a pretty unique sale - it's like any racing culture, they do things differently here. It doesn't matter if you're in Australia, Argentina, America, Britain or Ireland, they do things differently everywhere.

The horses aren't over-prepped, not like some other racing cultures. You can tell the difference between each farm's produce.

That's because all the horses are prepared in a different and sometimes very sympathetic way. They're not over-done.

There's a selection of very established sires down here - the likes of Dynasty, Silvano and Var - and various new kids on the block coming through, and it'll be fascinating to see how the new stallions fare.

Two young stallions that stand out for me are Futura and Willow Magic.

Futura was Horse of the Year here during the 2014-15 season and he is a Group 1-winning son of Dynasty standing at Drakenstein Stud. I've liked the look of his first-crop yearlings.

Willow Magic is a Group 1-winning son of Dubawi standing at Summerhill Stud and I've seen some nice first-crop yearlings by him.

There's over 500 yearlings being sold this week and I think the quality of horse and overall standard is very good. The vendors work very hard and the sales company look after any visitors incredibly well.

There's every chance the market here will be patchy, though the very good ones will make plenty. But the South African economy is not strong at the moment so the middle market could be tough.

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