TIMONIUM, MD – After a two-day break, the under-tack preview of the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale resumed under sunny skies Sunday morning in Timonium in what was billed as a 'gallop only' session with no officially timed breezes. Originally scheduled for three days, the under-tack preview was delayed a day by weather before beginning with a first session last Wednesday. It was suspended about halfway through Thursday's second session when a fatal breakdown on the track was followed by an intense rain storm. With some 240 horses galloping through nine sets Sunday, the marathon session began at 8 a.m. and concluded at 4:30 p.m.
“I think they made the right decision,” bloodstock agent John Dowd said of foregoing timed workouts when the preview resumed Sunday. “As buyers, we buy yearlings on the end of the shank. We get to look at 2-year-olds that are trainining and see them move, they are already broke. They are further down the road than if we had bought them as yearlings, and invested the time and training.”
Dowd who was in attendance during all three days of the preview said the change did not interrupt his process for evaluating horses on the track.
“My process is more to see the way horses move and the way they gallop out, not totally because of how fast they go, but mechanically how they move. And we still get that opportunity today,” he said.
When the last horse in the last of nine sets walked off the track Sunday afternoon, buyers and agents faced the prospect of comparing horses who worked over the sloppy going last week and those that galloped Sunday.
“That's going to be difficult,” admitted bloodstock agent Alistair Roden. “It was hard to handicap in the first place because it was a sloppy track. So it was hard to get a handle on it, and then you go from a sloppy track to a fast track where they are galloping.”
Watching horses who have been readied for a breeze, but instead gallop down the lane presented its own challenges, according to Roden.
“You are looking for the stride, the movement and some of these horses get choked up and you don't get to see them move because they are trained to go to the pole and break off,” he said. “So if [galloping previews] is something to do in the future, it's something that consignors will probably have to have a different approach. Some of these horses have come from other sales and they get to the pole, they know what they are doing, they are breaking off and going fast.”
While there were no official times listed, stopwatches could be heard throughout the grandstand and, despite the advertised 'gallop only' session, many horses were breezing.
“A lot of these horses are breezing,” confirmed bloodstock agent Pete Bradley. “There are a lot of :10 2/5s and :10 3/5s. What I think is interesting is that a lot of them are going quick without the whipping and driving that we see on a regular day. And in some ways, I can see the horse's movement better because they are not scrambling down the lane.”
A gallop-only preview will force buyers to recalibrate their expectations, Bradley said.
“We are all one-trick ponies in a way, we get used to a certain system,” he said. “So now we have to step back and say, when we watch horses work at the racetrack and they go in :12, :24, :36, we say that was a good work. Here my brain isn't functioning right to get around that. Maybe by the time I watch the videos and I take in the whole day and who the consignors are and where they starting, I will make some changes in how I look at it. But it's still going to have a different feel then those who go in the standard style we do at 2-year-old sales.”
Bradley concluded, “Bad moving horses are easy to pick out. Is it going to be tough to differentiate the very good and the good ones? Yeah. I think it's going to make my job tougher. But I think it is an interesting exercise today and I might even learn something from it.”
Suzanne Smallwood of Equix still needed to provide her clients with the company's ProStride stride-length data even without official breeze times.
“There is still a lot to gain from watching them go today,” Smallwood said. “Because we do the stride-length calculations and we sell that, we still have to get a final time, a breeze time. I am having to clock them so we can put in the stride length calculations. So it's a little more work because usually Fasig-Tipton is clocking. It's an extra step.”
ProStride ranks each horse using its average stride length and breeze time. Smallwood said the calculations from Sunday's session would be adjusted based on what the horse was doing on the track.
“The data will be different because at a gallop the timing is different then it is in a breeze,” she explained. “But as long as you have your notes and you know the horse really did a slow gallop, or this consignor elected go more of an open gallop, and then a couple are doing a little bit more than that, then you know how to interpret everything. There is not anything easy. Everybody still has to do their homework. And that's the bottom line. Everybody out here is still doing their homework and still needs information to help them sort through the horses to decide what they want to go look at in the barns.”
Ocala horseman Jimmy Gladwell, along with his wife Martha, watched the action from high up in the grandstand throughout the preview.
“I think [Fasig-Tipton president] Boyd [Browning] has made the right decision to go with the gallop out with no timed workouts,” Gladwell said. “I think it's going to make it a little more difficult to sort through them. But at the end of the day, I think it's the best thing for the horses and the riders and the sale at this time.”
Gladwell is a patriarch of a family of pinhookers and said he still thought timed breezes were an important part of the 2-year-old sales process.
“When you take these horses to the next level, it is a race and the faster horses win the races,” Gladwell said. “We have seen Mucho Gusto work a bullet here and go on to be a graded stakes winner, we've seen Gamine work a bullet here and go on and be a Grade I winner. So it's nice to see them separate themselves. We've been doing it a long time, everybody wants to throw up, 'Well the horse went in :11 flat and was a stakes horse,' but that's the unusual situation. The faster horses and the better horses usually separate themselves on the racetrack. Which makes it easier for the buyers. But that's not going to happen here, so the buyers are going to have to be a little sharper.”
Of the additional homework buyers will have to put in ahead of the Midlantic May sale Tuesday, Gladwell said, “It turns into a conformation situation. If you go to the Saturday afternoon races, there are bad movers who win graded stakes. There are good movers who are slow. So it's going to turn more and more into conformation, more like a yearling sale. I think you've got a lot of great buyers and agents out here, so I think they will sort through them all and make the right decisions, but it will be a little tougher job.”
Gladwell has been pinhooking 2-year-olds for four decades. Of the evolution of the auctions and the increased safety measures, he said, “When we started out 40 years ago at Hialeah, the horses were breezing and there were maybe a mixture of them that were galloping. They were breezing in sets. So that really hasn't changed. There has been one speed at the 2-year-old sale and that's wide open, as fast as they can go. In the past five years, they have eliminated spurs, they've eliminated hitting horses behind the shoulder after they break off, no hitting them when they gallop out, much less medication than ever before. So everything is evolving in the right direction. We've always got more to do, just like at the racetrack. As HISA has come in, it's made a big different on the breakdowns, and I feel like these changes that we've made are going to be very positive in the long run. And we've still got work ahead of us.”
Asked if HISA should be policing the 2-year-old sales, Gladwell said, “I think if we can do a little better job self-governing, I think everybody is under the microscope right now, the industry leaders that I've spoken to, everyone is looking for more ideas and opportunities for making it safer for the horses and better for the riders. I think we can do a good job ourselves, without HISA's involvement.”
The Midlantic May sale will be held over one session to be held Tuesday at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. Bidding is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.
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