SYD > LEX
With one stop over in Dallas, Lexington is pretty much around the corner from Sydney when you leave on a Tuesday afternoon and land on a Tuesday evening… If it weren’t for nineteen hours of air time!
Abuzz, on arrival, the Keeneland sale was awash with a deep buying bench perhaps not seen for decades and an unmatched line up of sire power to choose from.
From Curlin to Constitution, Gun Runner to Good Magic and Not This Time to Nyquist, to name but a few, the sire ranks of North America are bustling with ambition and ability.
The week has been well documented across racing publications but when putting it into context for Australians, the numbers are jaw dropping.
A quick look at Xe (exchange rate app), saw A$1,000,000 equal USD$675,000 earlier today.
Out of interest, I thought it would be worth seeing, just how many American yearlings have sold for that ‘golden figure’ following 41 in Australia earlier this year.
The answer… 132.
That is 132 A$1,000,000 yearlings across the Fasig Tipton Saratoga Sale and Keeneland over the past week. Quite astonishing.
With less horses sold for more dollars year-on-year, the average and median have had healthy increases which bodes well for Australia in 2025 on the surface.
However, it must be noted that the amount of horses sold from what is catalogued is hovering at around 62% with a handful of days to go with more vendors happy to withdraw late in the piece than R.N.A (pass-in).
Therefore, and it is beginning to sound cliché, but the market is well and truly honed in on quality: type, pedigree and horses that ‘vet’ well. Miss a tick, and the breeder will be racing the horse.
To forecast what may or may not unfold in Australia next year would be foolish, having read this interesting quote by John Kenneth Galbraith in a Howard Marks update (The Folly of Certainty). ‘There are two kinds of forecasters: those that don’t know, and those that don’t know they don’t know.’
What is for certain, is that if you depart Lexington on a Sunday evening and land in Sydney on a Tuesday morning, a whole calendar day has magically disappeared with just jet lag to show for it!