Saturday, March 25, 2017 By

A lot of work and preparation goes into buying horses at a sale

By George Katzenberger

OBS (March, 2017) was the first sale that I have attended.  I was amazed by all of the preparation that is required to get a handle on which horses would qualify for Kenwood to bid on.  There were 677 horses that were originally scheduled to be at the auction but that was reduced to about 525 by the first day of the sale.   Each horse was breezed at either an 1/8  or ¼ of a mile during  the few days prior to the sale.  Videos were available to see each horses work and the time that they posted.  Galloping out times had to be obtained separately.  The first step was to watch each video to determine which horses had the proper “movement”  to become a successful race horse.  This narrowed it down to under 100 horses to be considered.  The next 2 days were then spent going to see each of these horses to check on their “conformation” and the way they walked.  After this step there  were about 40 horses still under consideration. The “pedigree” came into play at this time where certain horses were put on a watch list because they more than likely would be sold at much higher prices than Kenwood was willing to pay.  The list was down to about 25 and on Sunday we went back to see each of these horses and to see them walk again and check out the veterinarian reports for each horse.  There were several of the horses that had minor problems or so it seemed.  Kenwood decided to have these horses checked by another vet and as a result another 5 or so were eliminated because of health issues.  Both Ben Perkins and Adam Parker were there to express their opinions as to which of the horses left were worth bidding on and put together a list of favorites.  The first day of the auction was uneventful with either astronomically high prices or very low prices paid.  Kenwood was under-bidder for 2 horses that sold out of the agreed upon price range.  After the sales began many horses were taken off of the auction block because the bids did not meet the Owner’s Reserve.  The second day the bulk of the horses that Kenwood wanted to bid on were up for sale.   Many horses that were scheduled for that day were pulled back by the Owners because they did not feel they would receive their price.  Kenwood was successful in obtaining a colt Hip 441 at auction.  The rest were either pulled or went for more than the agreed amount.   The 2 fillies were bought after the sale with private negotiations with the owners who we had met in the prior days.  The extra money spent for the trainers, vet reports, etc. are a necessary part of the process.  If not it could turn into  a “Penny wise Pound foolish” situation.  In purchasing unproven young horses for tens of thousands of dollars and for some millions of dollars the most important thing is that the horse will be healthy and ready to run in a reasonable amount of time to start giving back a return on the initial investment.   Going the extra mile provided an opportunity to purchase 3 exceptional 2 year olds at reasonable prices with the potential to earn significant purse money down the line.  I was very glad that I was able to share in this process and would highly recommend that you attend one of the sales in the future to see it for yourself.

George Katzenberger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.