Timonium Two-Year-Old Sale Review

Lots of news, here, here and here, celebrating the just-concluded Fasig-Tipton sale of two-year-olds in training, held at the Timonium, Maryland, fairgrounds.And by many standards it was indeed a successful sale. Of the 575 horses in the catalogue, 330 of them were sold, or 57% of the catalogue. These days, a total clearance rate of anything over 50% isn't bad. Of those not sold, the majority, 163, were scratched, and 82 went through the auction ring but failed to make their reserver price.

The average price for those sold was $76,476, compared to an average of $68,654 a year ago, an 11% increase. And the median price, perhaps a better gauge of the overall market, rose from $32,000 in 2016 to $35,000 this year. Moreover, this year's sale saw a flurry of buying at the high end, including the most expensive horse ever sold at this sale, a Curlin colt that John Oxley, the owner of 2016's juvenile champion Classic Empire, paid $1.5 million for.

A bunch of other high-priced horses also sold, helping to boost the sale average. A Distorted Humor colt went for $850,000, a Ghostzapper colt for $800,000. and an Orb colt for $710,000. The highest price filly was by Smart Strike, selling for $525,000, and two Into Mischief fillies sold for $425,000 each.

So, as in the case of last month's big Ocala Breeders Sales Co. auction, the two-year-old market, a decade past the financial crash of 2008, seems top have stabilized. Breeders have cut back sharply, reducing the foal crop by nearly half, and so the market is not quite as flooded with badly bred, cheap horses as it once was. And there are still enough rich folks willing to buy at the top of the market to make a few lucky (or smart) pinhookers very happy indeed.

But still, all is not perfect. There is still those 47% of the Timonium catalogue that didn't sell. Who is going to race those horses, and where? And when one breaks down the Timonium sale into categories, the numbers don't look quite as good.

Let's look at the New York-bred market in particular. Timonium May has long been a prime destination for New York owners and trainers, and this year, some 123 NY-breds were in the catalogue, representing over 21% of all horses listed for the sale. Of those, 71, or 58% sold, 30 were scratched and 22 were RNAs. The average price fort all NY-breds sold at Timonium was $49,626, and the median price was $25,000.Highest price was the $375,000 that agent Mike Ryan paid for an Into Mischief filly.

But those average and median figures hide a lot of complexity. I went to the sale, hoping to see some NY-breds that looked like they could win on the NYRA circuit and that might be in the $25,000 range. And there weren't many of them. The horses high on my shortlist -- even the ones without fancy pedigrees -- generally sold for $40,000 and up, in some cases way up. The ones that didn't look much like runners or that had some fairly serious vet issues were the ones that sold for under the $25,000 median.

So, to sum up, if you were looking for a horse to race, and didn't want to spend more than the horse was likely to earn in its racing career, Timonium was a tough sale. If you were a big spender, you could get a very nice horse, although most of those million-dollar and high six-figure purchases never do pay back their purchase price. And if you were a pinhooker, enough money was rolling in so you could head back to the yearling sales this summer and fall and keep the wheel turning round one more time.