Fasig-Tipton holds yearling sale

Fasig-Tipton returns to California for its fall yearling sale Monday at Los Alamitos, seeking to furnish a strong local marketplace in a Thoroughbred industry that continues to navigate the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

This will be the first California sale that Fasig-Tipton has been able to hold in 2020. The company’s Santa Anita sale of 2-year-olds in training, which had been scheduled for June, was one of the sale cancellations due to the pandemic.

The yearling sale was originally scheduled to be held at Fairplex in Pomona, Calif., but had to be relocated due to restrictions on large gatherings in Los Angeles County. Owned by Ed Allred, Los Alamitos is located in Orange County in Cypress.

Fasig-Tipton replaced Barretts as the sale company in Southern California last year after Barretts ceased operation at the end of 2018.

“This is an important sale for the California marketplace, and we are very appreciative of Dr. Allred and Los Alamitos for accommodating us when it became clear we could not hold the sale in Pomona,” Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning Jr. said in a press release.

The vast majority of the yearlings in the catalog for the second renewal of this auction are California-breds who will be showcased in front of local owners and pinhookers. Of the yearlings, 284 were bred in California; eight were bred in Kentucky; and one each hail from Arizona and Utah.

Although a number of prominent national sires standing in Kentucky are represented in the catalog, thanks to mares who were shipped to that state to be bred and back to California to deliver, California’s leading sires get to take a turn in the commercial spotlight. Those include a half-dozen yearlings by one of the state’s reigning leading sires, Square Eddie, the sire of Grade 1 winner Ralis and graded stakes winners Eddie Haskell and Listing. Square Eddie was pensioned earlier this year, meaning that this will be one of his final crops, which could lead to supply-and-demand dynamics with his progeny.

Also represented in the catalog are California top 10 sires Stay Thirsty, Smiling Tiger, Clubhouse Ride, and Grazen. Leading the local first-crop sires is Grade 2 winner Danzing Candy, who recently had a session-topper in a $115,000 colt who led the open section of the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s fall yearling sale in Florida.

The inaugural Fasig-Tipton California yearling sale in September 2019 was led by a $150,000 Goldencents colt sold to Steve Gasparelli’s Slugo Racing, one of six horses purchased for a six-figure price tag. Fasig Tipton reported 137 horses sold for $3,667,800, resulting in an average of $26,772 and a median of $13,000. The buyback rate was 46 percent.