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Distribution of talent, by its very nature, tends not to be egalitarian. Competitive sport is an arena where that fact is particularly revealed, and students of the history of any such activity will be well aware of "Golden Years" or "Golden Eras" when several stars simultaneously made their presence known. A look at stallion crops over the last 15 years or so...
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Following on from the earlier post on the racing class of the dam , we decided to take a look at the fluctuation in graded/group stakes winners over the first eight crops of a stallion's career. We took some 50 proven stallions and extracted out the number of graded stakes winners sired in each of their first eight crops. As you will note, they are not a random...
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As we get ready for the start of the Northern Hemisphere yearling sales series, one of the more pertinent questions that we are often asked at TrueNicks is how important is the racing class of the pedigree at hand in determining the success of a mating. While the TrueNicks rating of a yearling can be the same, the chances of a stakes winner occurring from one...
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With the William Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale (from April 8-10) just over the horizon, it's worth a look at the very eclectic mix of stallions that will be represented here by their first yearlings. It's an unusually mixed bag, including Northern Hemisphere shuttlers, both proven and unproven in their part of the world, as well as domestic stars ranging...
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When South Africa's Western Cape Breeders Club invited me to talk at their Thoroughbred & Equestrian seminar, I knew it meant one thing—an opportunity for another installment of Tapp's Travels, which I hadn't done since 2011 in Australia and New Zealand . The seminar coincided with the Cape Premier Yearling Sale in Cape Town Jan. 23-24. This gave me the opportunity...
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Hot on the heels of a Goffs Orby sale that saw an 11.8% increase in average, this week sees England's premier yearling auction, the Tattersalls October yearling sale . With that in mind, we thought we'd take the opportunity to review the European sires that have their first yearlings on offer in Book 1, which runs from October 8-10. We probably won't have to...
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Another Keeneland September sale, and another tweaked format. This year, the first catalog encompasses the first four days of the sale, with the whole catalog being of hypothetically relatively even merit and sorted alphabetically by dam as one continuous group. With only 875 cataloged, each session has just over 200 yearlings, which means proceedings won't kick...
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There is a French saying that translates as something like "the more things change, the more they say the same." Plenty has changed in the macro- and micro-economic climates since last year's Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling sale, but despite the various undercurrents, as far as numbers sold, totals, and average, we ended up more or less in the same spot as 12...
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With the first two major summer yearling sales in the books, we'll take a quick look at the top 10 commercial sires of 2013 by yearling average and ponder on the potential for them to extend their lines. The millennial stallion crop, whose first foals were born in 2000, included Awesome Again ( TrueNicks , SRO ), Indian Charlie, Elusive Quality ( TrueNicks ,...
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Coming off a 10.45% increase in average and a 20% improvement in median at the Fasig-Tipton July Sale, vendors at that company's Saratoga Yearling Sale , scheduled for Aug. 5-6, will be feeling optimistic. The upward trend in prices may be less welcome to buyers seeking value, but by way of compensation there is an awful lot of quality to choose from. Here we...
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The first major European yearling sale of the season is the Arqana Deauville August Yearling Sale , which commences August 17. Below we'll take a look at some of the European first year stallions who will have their first representatives, as well as taking a glance at the offspring of U.S. sires that are represented. Taking it alphabetically, the first of the...
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