Glory
Days, well they’ll pass you by,
Glory
Days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory
Days, Glory Days
I
suspect Bruce Springsteen has never been quite the icon on your side
of the Atlantic that he is in America. His songs embody a
particularly, unabashedly American ethos that I doubt resonates as
viscerally in other cultures.
Most
everybody loves a great rock song, though, just as everyone in the
Thoroughbred industry loves high prices, and lord knows, we had
plenty of those at our November breeding stock auctions. Glory days
indeed.
The
Fasig-Tipton November sale began calmly enough, but once Love and
Pride, a spectacular physical specimen with a race record and
pedigree to match, sold for $4.9-million to Brazilian Goncalo Borges
Torrealba, all hell broke loose. And it wasn’t just that there were
better horses that followed Love and Pride into the ring than had
preceded her. Everyone in the industry knows that a horse like Love
and Pride should bring a certain price (in her case
$4-to-$5-million), and once they hit the mark, it makes signing other
tickets for millions of dollars so much easier. The feel of the
marketplace changes from caution to let the good times roll with the
crack of the gavel.
At
the end of a memorable evening 24 mares had sold for $1-million or
more at Newtown Paddocks, and Keeneland sold another 14 in that range
over the next two days across town. Those 38 seven figure mares were
purchased by 21 different individual buyers. The principal residences
of those buyers (as far as we know at this point) are located in
Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Greece, Qatar,
and USA. Clearly the resurgent Thoroughbred market is a global
phenomenon.
We
have been wondering if or when the Qataris would dive into our market
as vigorously as they have yours, and Sheikh Joann did not
disappoint, purchasing dual Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner
Mizdirection for $2.7-million. That was, however, the only
high-profile Qatari purchase. Sheikh Mohammed’s forces continued to
be conspicuous only by their virtual absence, purchasing one Street
Cry weanling they co-owned on a foal share for $350,000.
Four
years ago when the market was in the dungeon following the global
economic meltdown of October 2008, I do not think anyone would have
been foolish enough to predict that four years hence we would not
need Sheikh Mohammed to enjoy a vibrant market for Thoroughbred
bloodstock. That, in fact, has been pretty much unthinkable for more
than 30 years now, but it was obviously true at the two bloodstock
sales in Lexington last week.
After
watching your horses beat everyone but Wise Dan on grass at the
Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita last week it is obvious that you have
better horses than we do right now, so what price glory at Goff’s
and Tattersalls over the next month? Even here the top-priced lot was
a Galileo three-quarter sister to Yesterday and Quarter Moon
purchased by Coolmore for $5.2-million.
After
years of wondering whether they would survive the latest bloodstock
recession it did the heart good to see smiles on the faces of so many
old friends in Lexington last week. True, there are fewer left to
smile, but that is the way of the world.
Those
that are left understand that the glory days can disappear, indeed as
quickly as the wink of a young girl’s eye...or perhaps the wink of
an eye of that lovely young mare now residing in their broodmare
barn.
