Top-quality horses touted for Yearling Sale
Published:Thursday | October 22, 2020 | 2:28 PMRobert Bailey/Gleaner Writer
President of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA), Howard Hamilton, said that despite the low number of the entries for next month’s Yearling Sale, there will still be a lot of top-quality horses in the exercise.
The much-anticipated Yearling Sale, which will be held at Caymanas Park on Sunday, November 15, will also be held live on a virtual platform for prospective buyers who are unable to attend the sale.
Hamilton told The Gleaner that a total of 66 horses have entered the sale compared to 134 last year.
He said a lot of these horses who have entered the sale are coming from excellent bloodlines of horses who were brought into the country from overseas.
“We have only 66 entries for the sale so far, but we still have quality horses for the sale because those that have been nominated are extremely good horses,” said Hamilton.
VIRTUAL SALE
“We are going to have a different kind of sale this year because with the COVID-19 virus, we can’t have crowd around, so we are going to have a virtual sale, which is happening all over the world where you can buy your horses online, and that is really innovation for us,” he said.
Last year’s event generated $173 million in sales and Hamilton, who is one of the owners of Ham Stables, is not expecting this year’s sale to surpass that amount.
“My farm alone will have about 20 horses at the sale and they are all top-quality horses and value for money for anyone who purchase these horses at the sale,” Hamilton stated.
A bay filly by Northern Giant-Buyabook was the top seller at the last Yearling Sale at $4.5 million.
Ian Parsard, owner of Paradise at Spring Village Farm, which has been operating since 2002, said he has entered 10 quality colts in this year’s Yearling Sale.
“I think that the quality will be there because some of these owners will still put back their horses through the sale, and you have breeders like myself where the vast majority of our horses pass through the sale,” Parsard said.
“Like anything else, you might have some of them that don’t come to the Yearling Sale, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t have good quality at the sale,” he said.