Depth Chart

The 2023 yearling sales will go down as the year of the market readjustment. In fact, if last year’s yearling sales hadn’t been so bullish, we might not even be talking about a contraction at all. Demand in 2023 was so strong that it drove prices to record levels and then we had the added complication of the of the 10.45m guineas spend by agent Richard Knight on behalf of the defaulting Saleh Al Homaizi. Just imagine how that extra demand cascaded down through the various levels of the market.

Also, we had Sheikh Mohammed weighing in with a recently unprecedented £31.7m worth of spending, a sum that was unlikely to be repeated this year and indeed was not, falling over £10m short. So the average price paid across all the main yearling sales in France, Britain and Ireland in 2022 stood at £77,444, some 23% ahead of the previous year’s £62,836. This year that average reached £69,001, well short of last year, but crucially ahead of the average price in 2021.

Against this backdrop we can judge how individual stallions fared. Remarkably, as a group they did pretty well all considered. Counter-intuitively, the sires costing £10,000+ produced improved profitability figures in 2023 compared to last year. The reason for this is that the cost of production went down for the latest crop of yearlings. The average advertised fee for this year’s crop stood at £28,587, which was 4.1% lower than the average of £29,806 last year.

Stallions priced up to £9,999

In the sub-£10,000 category, it was no surprise to see Havana Grey and Sioux Nation come to the fore. It was impossible not to be impressed with Havana Grey’s progeny this year. He’d done plenty with his first group of two-year-olds last year, siring 43 individual winners including three at G3 level, but this year he has done even better. Among his 36 second-crop juvenile winners so far is the dual G1 winner Vandeek, who is rated the best two-year-old sprinter in Europe following victories in the G1 Prix Morny and G1 Middle Park Stakes. The Whitsbury stallion is also sire of G2 scorer Jasour and French G3 scorer Elite Status. Whereas this year’s yearlings were produced off a fee of just £6,000, those coming from next season’s covers will need to sell a good deal better given his new fee of £55,000. With an average profit of £72,000 and a 93.5% profitability, he is the clear winner among this cohort.

His chief rival last year was Sioux Nation, and he too falls into the category of cheaply produced yearlings selling after he’d created a favourable impression with his first runners, after his 50 individual winners last term featured a pair of G3 winners, plus Matilda Picotte, who trained on to win the G2 Challenge Stakes and G3 Sceptre Stakes this year. Like his first crop, Sioux Nation’s second group of two-year-olds also features two G3 winners, the Acomb Stakes winner Indian Run and Round Tower Stakes winner Letsbefrankaboutit. As many as 16 (76.2%) of Sioux Nation’s 21 yearlings sold made a profit.

It is another son of Scat Daddy in first-season sire Sergei Prokofiev who produced the third best average profit, although it must be borne in mind that like his stud companion Havana Grey (63%) and Sioux Nation (52%), most of Sergei Prokofiev’s first-crop yearlings (55%) were pinhooked so his overall profitability is very much theoretical.

Stallions priced from £10,000 to £19,999

Here, the clear leader is Ballylinch’s Dubawi stallion New Bay. His 2023 yearlings are from the first crop produced after his first two crops did so well 2020 and 2021, featuring group winners New Mandate, Saffron Beach, Bayside Boy and Bay Bridge. His yearling average has soared this year to €127,000 and his average profit is well clear of anything else in the fee group, as is his number of profitable yearlings, which stand at 81.8%. Expectations will be high now that New Bay is among Europe’s elite sires.

The leading freshman in this category is Darley’s Earthlight, whose yearlings average of £90,920 compares very favourably to his initial fee of €20,000. Only the more expensive fellow Darley stallions Pinatubo and Ghaiyyath, plus Coolmore’s Sottsass recorded higher average prices in the sales under review. We should also commend the French pair Zarak and Galiway, who both delivered profitability scores over 70%, second only to New Bay.

Stallions priced from £20,000 to £49,999

Both Blue Point and his fellow Darley stallion Too Darn Hot were easily the pick of the new intake of stallions in 2020, based on the quality of their first books. But whereas Too Darn Hot’s first yearlings outsold Blue Point’s, the positions are reversed this year with Blue Point’s yearlings averaging £154,000 compared to Too Darn Hot’s £119,000. Both have done brilliantly with their first runners, but in the minds of buyers the two G1 winners by Blue Point – not achieved by a European first-season sire since Sadler’s Wells in 1988 – clearly outrank Too Darn Hot’s single winner at the highest level.

Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère winner Rosallion is of course an ideal advertisement for his young sire. Not only is he a G1 winner, but the fact he will surely get a mile next year could be crucial to how breeders and yearling buyers perceive Blue Point going forward. And in G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Sprint winner Big Evs, he surely has a top-notch sprinter in the making. No wonder then that he was one of only eight European stallions to record an average profit of over £100,000 in any fee category.

The tried and trusted pair of Teofilo and Camelot show up very well, both siring plenty of profitable yearlings, but this is the cohort that features most of the best first-season sires at the yearling sales this year. Pinatubo, Ghaiyyath and Sottsass were all very popular. Pinatubo, like Blue Point a son of Shamardal, posted the highest average profit and the highest percentage of profitable yearlings of any freshman sire. Ghaiyyath enjoyed some big prices, including 19 six-figure yearlings and one for over a million bought by his owner Godolphin.

Stallions priced from £50,000 upwards

Among the elite stallions, it was as ever a straight fight between Dubawi and Frankel and it was Dubawi, buoyed by eight purchases by Sheikh Mohammed, who ended up with the highest average price, and the most profitable yearlings with 18 of 20 making the fee plus £20,000 upkeep costs. The Darley stallion sired a record-equalling five juvenile group winners this term, headed by the G1 National Stakes winner Henry Longfellow and G1 Racing Post Trophy winner Ancient Wisdom, himself a €2 million Arqana graduate. Frankel, who looks assured of regaining his Britain and Ireland sires title this year, posted the biggest average profit of the group and it was no surprise to see the Juddmonte sire’s fee rise from £275,000 to £350,000 next year.