“It’s night and day, really,” says Willie Browne as he discusses the difference between the modern day breeze-up marketplace and where things began the best part of 50 years ago. Few are better placed to comment than the Mocklershill man, as Browne sold his first breeze-up draft at the second renewal of Doncaster’s two-year-old auction in 1978.
Back then these sales were largely viewed as the last chance saloon, a place where vendors took their unsold yearlings for one final roll of the dice. While a market existed, it would be fair to say there was a lack of confidence in the product on offer. Even a more favourable assessment might have had these sales down as a source of cheap speed. How things have changed.
The European breeze-up circuit now caters for just about every requirement and budget across the course of seven sales, from the sharper precocious types found at Doncaster in April, right through the later-maturing types with blue chip pedigrees on show at Arqana in May. Moreover, the sector is now viewed by a cast of major buyers as the equal of any sale when it comes to supplying top-end talent.
But what has underpinned this seismic shift? The first step on the journey was identifying the opportunity to frame a sustainable business around selling two-year-olds.
“You’d buy a nice horse for four or five figures, 15 grand would be the kind of outlay you’d look to spend on any one horse,” Browne says of his earliest pinhooking endeavours. “There was always a good price to be got though, even back then. You could give a small price for a yearling and still get 30 or 40 grand.”
Norman Williamson entered the sector almost three decades after Browne but recounts a similar introduction. “The first time I rode at a breeze-up was for Eddie O’Leary in 2004.” he says. “I rode a horse called Abraxas Antelope, who Howard Johnson bought. He breezed fast and sold well and that’s really how I got into the game, because I didn’t think there were that many people doing it.
“Some people riding were ten or 12 stone and the horses weren’t prepared like they are today. A lot of horses came up in pairs and even trebles; it was all on the bridle and they weren’t all going zing, zing, zing. We were buying a different level of horse, you were buying the 15 or 20 grand yearling hoping he might make 50. It’s totally changed from a professional point of view.”
Despite the market’s early impressions about the breeze-ups, these auctions proved to be the source of some notable talents.
Bit by bit, racetrack results drove bigger results in the ring
Sylvan Barbarosa won the Cork and Orrery Stakes (now the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes) in 1983. Five years later another Doncaster graduate, Handsome Sailor, won the William Hill Sprint Championship (now the Nunthorpe) and the Prix de l’Abbaye, having been promoted to first in France at the expense of Cadeaux Genereux. The following year Tattersalls entered the breeze-up market with its own sale of two-year-olds.
Bit by bit, racetrack results drove bigger results in the ring. As pinhookers ploughed these dividends back into raw materials at the yearling sales, the standard of horse presented at the breeze-ups improved. The two-year-old sales began to feature less stock that had not made the grade at the yearling stage, and more horses that had been specifically selected for the task at hand.
However, for some, lingering doubts remained. A vocal sector of the industry believed that a breeze-up preparation led to horses with temperament issues that were difficult to train and headstrong on the track. This caricature has proved hard to shift, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
“Even five years ago trainers would complain that breeze-up horses are all mad,” says Blandford Bloodstock agent Richard Brown, buyer of multiple Group 1 winners at the breeze-up sales. “It’s just utter rubbish. These horses are prepared by some of the best horsemen on planet earth and they know, if they turn up to the sales with a sweaty wreck, we’re all going to walk away.”
What is harder to walk away from is the growing breeze-up roll of honour.
While the likes of Sylvan Barbarosa and Handsome Sailor made for early posterboys, the fact both were sprinters probably reaffirmed the notion that some possessed about these sales only dealing in five and six furlong horses.
Things have changed so markedly that it is now routine for Group 1 prizes to be won by breeze-up graduates
That perception was confronted head on in 2006 when Speciosa became the first European Classic winner to graduate from the breeze-up sales. The daughter of Danehill Dancer was bought by her trainer Pam Sly from Mocklershill at a cost of 30,000gns.
Things have changed so markedly that it is now routine for Group 1 prizes to be won by breeze-up graduates, regardless of age or distance. There have been champion two-year-olds like Vandeek; another 1,000 Guineas winner in Cachet; a Prix du Cadran winner in Trueshan and a Prix de l’Abbaye heroine The Platinum Queen. And that is to name just a few of the headline names that have emerged in recent times.
The list of Group 1 winners grew last year when Hotazhell (left) landed the Futurity Trophy, while Bradsell added to his top-level triumphs in the Nunthorpe and Flying Five Stakes. Another breeze-up graduate, Ambiente Friendly, finished runner-up in the Derby.
Our own experts have done more than most to contribute to this list. Few, if any, consignor’s graduates have been in better form in recent years than Williamson’s, with the Oak Tree Farm man having sold major talents such as Contributor, Eldar Eldarov, Native Trail and War Of Will. Browne’s previous students include the likes of Rockemperor, Sakheer, Trip To Paris and Ventura Storm, while he also sold last year’s Flying Childers winner Aesterius and Australian Group 1 scorer Light Infantry to Brown.
The Blandford Bloodstock agent has also secured the Classic-winning Teppal, champion sprinter Dream Ahead and top-class two-year-old Perfect Power from the breeze-ups, while his role as Wathnan Racing talent scout saw him unearth last year’s Royal Ascot winners Leovanni and Shareholder.
According to data on the Breeze-Up Consignors Association website, the sector has supplied over 470 black type winners, 40 of whom have won 59 Group 1 races between them. Moreover, over 30 per cent of breeze-up graduates won at two, while over 50 per cent landed a race throughout their career.
The results are a testament to the talent of those who pinhook
“Will we one day see a Derby winner come from the breeze-ups?” says Brown. “You’d be a brave man to say that won’t happen in the next 25 years. A lot of seriously good horses have come out of these sales.”
The results are, Brown continues, a testament to the effort, investment and talent of those who pinhook and produce each year’s intake of breeze-up recruits.
“They’re an extraordinary bunch of people,” he says. “They’re exceptionally hard working and brilliant judges of a horse. They understand markets and what we want, and then they do a phenomenal job of preparing their horses. Twenty years ago they weren’t buying as aggressively as they are now, but now you have some of the best judges on planet earth willing to put down very serious amounts of money to buy proper horses.”
As breeze-up consignors have honed their craft and upped their investment, the returns they receive in the ring have grown almost exponentially. Last year’s market was topped by the exciting Ruling Court, who Williamson sold to Godolphin for a European record of €2,300,000.
The son of Justify changed hands at Arqana, which has established itself as the headline event in the European breeze-up calendar. While the results across key market indices have risen further in Deauville than anywhere else, this upward trend reflects the broader shift in the breeze-up market. In 2005 the French sale generated an average price of €20,920 and a median of €16,000. Last year those same metrics hit €166,775 and €100,000, gains of 697 per cent and 525 per cent respectively.
“Nobody had a clue that was going to happen,” Browne says of the breeze-up price boom. “One year we got €1.4 million, another year we got 1,150,000gns. Those kinds of prices were totally off the radar when we started, but the million is commonplace now. It just goes to show the kind of money that’s out there.”
About time
A few months prior to Speciosa’s Group 1 triumph, a major shockwave was sent through the bloodstock world when a colt by Forestry was knocked down to Demi O’Byrne for a cool $16,000,000 at Fasig-Tipton’s Florida Select Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale. The Green Monkey became one of the most infamous names in thoroughbred history, having failed in quite spectacular fashion to live up to his world-record price tag. He retired a maiden after just three uninspiring starts.
While that eight-figure sum in large part reflects the fierce rivalry that existed between the opposing camps of Coolmore and Godolphin, it also owes something to the stopwatch. The Green Monkey found himself at the top of the superpowers’ shortlists having been the first horse at public auction to breeze a furlong in 9.8 seconds. Although that price has never come close to being surpassed, never mind at a European breeze-up sale, the market on this side of the Atlantic has become increasingly influenced by times over the last 20 years.
Each year there are a handful of horses who significantly enhance their value on the back of a clock-busting breeze. However, the issue of timing has proved somewhat double-edged, because, while the evidence of sectional times has underpinned a greater degree of market confidence in those that show up well, it has had the opposite effect for plenty of those that do not.
Browne says the factor of timing has led consignors to fine tune the preparation their horses go through, with even the merest hint of stage fright likely to prove costly in the sales ring.
“With the American clock system coming in, and people taking an interest in timing, it’s brought things to a completely different level,” he says. “Go back ten or 15 years and if you bought a nice horse with a good pedigree, you’d be guaranteed to, at worst, get your money back. But it doesn’t really matter what you give for them [at the yearling sales] if they don’t do a good clock. Like most other horse sales, whether it’s Flat or National Hunt, the best ones sell well, but when you move down the pecking order that little bit, the market gets very weak.”
Those sentiments are echoed by Williamson, who says, “It’s made us up our ante in terms of how they breeze and how professional they are. Yes it’s become a bit polarised around the clock, but we just hope that buyers can see the big picture.”
For buyers like Brown, that big picture is becoming ever more detailed. While he cannot reveal the precise methods that Blandford Bloodstock employ, times are just one datapoint – along with details such as stride length and frequency, and consignors’ previous results – that are factored into a complex equation.
“What’s changed from our perspective is that we now have an enormous amount of data,” Brown says. “Like any dataset, you can look at it and find angles. Time is important; at the end of the day, we’re in the business of buying the horse that can go from A to B the fastest. But you have to take into account lots of different variables. I’ve said it so many times, if you went to sales and just bought the three fastest horses, you would spend a lot of money and do very badly. Another key thing is that by the time that horse walks into the sales ring, you can have judged that it’s got a pretty good temperament and that it’s pretty sound. You can’t do that with yearlings.”
Mixed opinions
Despite the clock being a ubiquitous feature of European breeze-up sales, times are not published on an official basis by the sales houses, as is the case in the US. Instead a range of agencies take their own, some of which share the data across the buying bench. The idea of officially published times has been floated in Europe, although those in favour appear to remain in the minority.
“If you want to go down the route of official clocks, what happens if my jockey is 7lbs heavier than the next jockey? What about the thunder storm just before the Craven last year? There’s too many variables, particularly with the ground and wind conditions,” says Williamson. Brown has an even stronger reaction to the notion of official times.
“I’m vehemently against it,” he says. “There’s a group of people who understand times, understand all the different variables, and what they mean. But if you give that to Joe Public you’ll completely ruin it because they don’t get the nuances involved. Clearance rates would crash and it would be very tough to sell a horse outside the top 20 per cent, which is what you see in America. It would make no difference to the top of the market but it would make the middle to lower far more polarised. It would be a disaster.”
There are some in favour of official times though, Browne included, albeit with one important caveat. “I’ve been saying it for a couple of years now, I think we should be going for the official clock,” he says. “I don’t see any advantage now in not having it. My angle all along has been that if we had the American clocking system, that would mean seconds broken down into fifths, as opposed to what we have with unofficial timing, when seconds are broken down into hundredths. When you break that second down, the smaller the fractions, the more difficult it becomes. I think having it broken down into fifths is easier on the horses and the vendor.”
For context, just one second separated the fastest 51 lots timed at last year’s Doncaster Breeze-Up Sale.
It is widely accepted that the more uniform nature of dirt tracks in the US means a fast breeze at the sales is more likely to translate into a high level of ability on the racecourse. In contrast, European turf racing calls upon traits unlikely to be revealed in their entirety by a two-furlong breeze. It is, therefore, interesting to note that American sales offer a ‘gallop only’ entry option, where lots go through their paces under tack, but work on the bridle rather than flat out.
The pinup horse for this new approach is the Mark Casse-trained Sandman. The son of Tapit has been Graded stakes placed on three of his seven starts after changing hands for $1.2m at Ocala last March. This month’s OBS March Sale saw three ‘gallop only’ lots come under the hammer, and the two that sold were led by a Curlin colt bought by Michael J. Maker for $300,000.
While European buyers may have adopted their timing system from the US, Williamson doubts we will see an equivalent of the ‘gallop only’ entries on this side of the Atlantic any time soon. “Everybody wants to be faster than the next fella, or be a bit more stylish, so you need to see something with a bit of speed and style,” he says. “I think we’re at a very good place because we’re getting results, we’re spending more money on buying better horses and we’re selling better horses. Our results speak for themselves.”
High hopes
While official timing and ‘gallop only’ options may remain some way off, the 2025 European breeze-up season will soon be upon us. Things kick off at Osarus in the south west of France on April 9 before the Tattersalls Craven brings the curtain up on the British season five days later.
After a memorable yearling sale season, hope is high that the strength of trade seen last autumn will roll on into the spring. Things got off to a bright start in the US, with OBS’s March Sale witnessing a new auction record when a Gun Runner colt fetched $3m from Donato Lanni on behalf of Zedan Racing.
“We always have to be hopeful, especially at this time of the year,” says Williamson. “The yearling market was very, very strong so we’re hopeful that there are some orders left over. There are certain people who just like buying breeze-up horses and have had good results doing so. There shouldn’t be any reason why they won’t buy breezers again this year, so hopefully it’ll be stronger than ever.”
Browne is similarly optimistic about the top of the market, although is predicting an unwelcome level of polarisation will persist elsewhere.
“You don’t need a crystal ball to know that if you have a good horse this year, there’s half a dozen people out there to buy them and they can give any kind of money,” says Browne. “But you’d like to see something happening to the middle to bottom of that market.
“You can still buy a breeze-up horse that’ll win you plenty of races, but people can’t see it. That’s the worry. It’s so polarised, it’s all or nothing.
“I still think the breeze-ups don’t really get the credit they deserve, there’s still some people out there who doubt it. I know I’m biased, but I think there’s no doubt anymore. These breeze-up horses have proven themselves time and again.”
‘We think it will add to the market’ – Goffs gearing up for new addition to the breeze-up calendar
The evolution of the breeze-up market has seen a new date added to this year’s European circuit. Goffs will host the inaugural Classic Breeze-Up Sale on June 28, the Saturday of the Irish Derby weekend.
Horses will be put through their paces at Naas racecourse five days in advance of the sale, mirroring the system used at the two-year-old sales in the US.
The name not only reflects the sale’s place during a weekend of Group 1 racing, but points to the type of animal likely to be on offer.
“In the last few years there’s been a growing clamour from a variety of breeze-up consignors to hold another Irish breeze-up,” says Goffs group chief executive Henry Beeby. “Given that the overwhelming majority of breeze-up consignors are based in Ireland, it seemed to them and various people watching that it was almost nonsensical that there was only one breeze-up in Ireland, but three in Britain and one or two in France.
“We believe this sale will appeal to the later maturing horse, but is also a good option for those quality two-year-olds that were maybe entered in Doncaster or some of the other first-choice sales earlier in the season, but had a small issue and didn’t make it. A number of major consignors have said they’ll have one or two, but might have three or four if things work a certain way. We’re talking about a target average of around €50,000 and it’s going to be a tight catalogue.”
With any initial concerns about expanding the breeze-up calendar allayed, the Goffs team are now focussing on launching the sale with a bang.
“We’ll sell on the eve of the Irish Derby and make a bit of an occasion of it,” says Beeby. “There’s going to be a bit of a festival atmosphere with a lot of people in town, so we’re hopeful of a good audience. Of course, it will all hinge on the horses, we have to get the horses first and foremost, but we believe we’ll do that.
“It’s been mentioned to us for three or four years and we’ve held back and held back, and now we’ve decided this is the year to go,” he adds. “We think it complements what we’re already doing and that it will, hopefully, add to the market rather than in any way detract from it. The feedback from potential purchasers has been good. We think there’s enough of a hunger for it, and enough of a need for it, that probably didn’t exist five or six years ago. We’re confident that this certainly exists now.”
