'It went beyond our expectations' - Keeneland concludes on a high

A positive vibe enveloped the Keeneland barn area and filled the sales pavilion long before bidding actually started at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. Buyers filtering in on the opening day of the two-week event were greeted at the door to flutes of champagne and live Bluegrass music.

The action on day one ended with nine horses selling for seven figures and an average on the day of $488,458. The next day was even stronger with another 13 horses selling for $1 million or more and a day's average of $510,261.

Momentum from Book 1 (the first two sessions) roared like an avalanche throughout the sale's remaining 10 sessions, which ended on Saturday with across-the-board records for gross sales, average, and median.

Buyers took home 2,961 horses for a total $418,271,200, which exceeded by 4.6 per cent the sale's previous record gross of $399,791,800 set in 2006. The horses sold averaged a record $141,165, which exceeded the previous record of $130,698 set last year by 8 per cent. The record $70,000 median was 7.7 per cent higher than the previous record of $65,000, also set in 2021.

"The very first hip selling for $850,000 set the tone and was incredible, and the results from Book 1 just solidified that state of mind," Tony Lacy, vice president of sales at Keeneland, said. "There has been a sense of euphoria around the grounds for a number of days and even yesterday [Friday] seeing numbers that surpassed last year's incredible numbers."

Keeneland September broke its record for gross sales on Friday, with two days of selling still to go.

"This sale went beyond our expectations and reflects the energy and excitement in racing right now," Keeneland president and CEO Shannon Arvin said. "We are grateful to our consignors, sellers, and buyers for their support of Keeneland and the September Sale. And a special thanks to the breeders. We appreciate how much hard work goes into breeding and raising quality horses, and we are very happy they were rewarded for their efforts through the ring."

Cormac Breathnach, Keeneland's director of sales operations, said the catalogue was very strong with high-quality offerings bred both domestically and internationally.

"That is a credit to the breeders and to the consignors who presented them so well," he said. "We were well supported by the buying base, and we have seen several leading trainers over the last few days showing the hunger for racehorses is there."

In addition to having a catalogue loaded with quality horses, Keeneland reaped the rewards of its efforts throughout the year to recruit buyers from around the globe to be in Lexington in September.

"As we were putting a strong catalogue together, we also worked on bringing a strong group of buyers to the table, and that means traveling to every major race meeting to promote," Lacy said.

"It also means creating a good buying and trading environment, which includes everything from good customer service, hospitality, information, and an ease to all transactions. We have been working hard to extend our reach. We had ten groups from Japan here, and that is probably the busiest from any sale in a very long time."

Breathnach said he began hearing in early summer that buyers, particularly in Europe, were planning to travel to Kentucky who had not been able to attend the September Yearling Sale since 2019.

"When we started seeing more open borders than during last year's September sale, when we gained back probably 50 per cent of the buyers we lost because of the pandemic in 2020, we had a pretty good feeling we would have a strong representation from the international markets," he said.

The sale wasn't without its concerns going in, with inflation high, the financial markets tumbling, and currencies including the yen and pound sterling falling against the US dollar, sapping some international clients' purchasing clout.

A record-breaking Keeneland concluded on SaturdayCredit: Keeneland photo/photosbyZ

In the end, it didn't matter. The market was not only resilient, but it also thrived.

"Honestly, I thought it would be a good sale and thought it would hold steady. I never thought it would have done what it's done," Kerry Cauthen with Four Star Sales said. "It became the most incredible sale we've ever seen."

Cauthen said he felt the balance of supply and demand worked in the sale's favour and would help be a buffer against concerns about an overall economic recession. He also looked at the growth in US purses and saw much to be hopeful about. At the end of August, US purses were up more than 12 per cent compared with the first eight months of 2021, according to Equibase.

"We're running for real money now, especially in Kentucky," he said, adding that the sharp rise of purses in the Bluegrass State - gross purses up 51 per cent and average purses per race day up 50 per cent since 2018 - make a strong impact on the auction markets because of the state's concentration of stock and breeding farms.

"I sat on the [Kentucky Horse] Racing Commission for a lot years, and a lot of attention was paid to where the [pari-mutuel] licenses needed to be distributed around the state based on the markets they could serve," he said. "That drove a tremendous amount of investment in those locations and has rolled over into the purses."

Kentucky purses have gotten a huge shot from Historical Horse Racing gaming, first introduced in 2011 and which was codified as legal pari-mutuel wagering by the Kentucky Legislature in 2021.

"The people who invest in these farms want to race here and win here in Kentucky," Cauthen said. "You go to Colorado to go skiing, and you come to Kentucky to go racing."

Brisk selling carried through to the last session when Buckland Sales sold a filly by the late English Channel for $115,000 to owner/breeder Tracy Farmer. Buckland consigned the session-topping filly on behalf of her breeder Calumet Farm.

"Obviously the English Channel yearlings have been pursued all week. We sold a colt in Book 3 for $300,000, so I had a good vibe about her," Zach Madden with Buckland said. "He's an elite sire and unfortunately not with us anymore, so there is a scarcity value there as well.

"It has obviously been a very good market, so if you have a specialty item, like an English Channel, and it looks the part, you're going to do well."

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