Badgers Bloodstock brings ‘Moneyball’ big data to Easter
While several regular international visitors to the Warwick Farm complex have had to forego participation in this year’s Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, at least one agency with an impeccable pedigree have seized on the digital version of the auction as a real opportunity.
The father and son team of Grant and Tom Pritchard-Gordon will be burning the midnight oil from their Newmarket base, armed with inspection reports from local allies, their own experience and expertise, as well as what they hope will be a key edge in terms of their pre-sale research.
“We were planning on attending the sale and hoping to buy a number of yearlings for international and local buyers,” said Tom Pritchard-Gordon.
“That went pear-shaped with coronavirus but we have done a lot of big data research into the sale, looking at the results of every single horse over the past 15 years and seeing if we could find some trends in that regard.
“At one stage we felt that, with us not being able to attend, we wouldn’t be able to add much information for our clients. But with it now going digital, we have had time to get some feet on the ground in Australia, get all their notes on the conformation of the horses and then combine that with all the information that we’ve got ourselves.
“We’re hopeful that, along with speaking to the vendors themselves, we’ve got enough information to be quite busy in the coming four or five days.”
The Pritchard-Gordons work under the Badgers Bloodstock banner, one synonymous with success in the southern hemisphere thanks to their purchase as a yearling of Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) heroine Miss Finland (Redoute’s Choice).
Such a rich pedigree might lead the pair to let their name be the calling card for both potential and returning clients but the Badgers team have refused to rest on those well-furnished laurels.
Explaining their innovative use of what might be termed “Moneyball” data – the Michael Lewis book of the same name explored the stats revolution in baseball – Tom Pritchard-Gordon said: “It’s very much an additional thing and something which, over the last couple of years, we’ve really focused on.
“We’ve seen the impact of big data in so many other sports and racing has so much of it available that, if you can get big enough numbers then you can find trends there that will surely help you out when it comes to looking at yearlings, mares, any aspect of bloodstock.
“It is something we’ve really focused on in the last two years and we are beginning to see some benefits of doing so.
“Having a decent sample size is important as is the ability to customise your research, using the likes of Arion, Wetherbys, all these sources you can work against and it gives you some kind of an angle.”
Having put in hours of number crunching, their inability to attend the Easter sale could have spelled the end of the Badgers Bloodstock interest in next weekend’s events but, with the online bidding system and the aid of plenty of strong coffee, they are ready to do battle for their chosen lots.
“We’re in the process of whittling down the catalogue at present rather than [figuring out] the actual process of bidding online. We’ve never actually bought from Inglis online before but I’m confident it will be user-friendly.”
Redvers, Gold to be missing from buying bench
While the Pritchard-Gordons have been able to wrangle in-country help ahead of the sale, the almost complete halt of long-distance air travel has led David Redvers to shelve his plans to buy this weekend.
And the Tweenhills Farm principal and Qatar Racing advisor is nervous about how things will go for Inglis in what is an unprecedented set-up for a major yearling sale.
“I would have gone and was due to fly today (Tuesday),” said Redvers.
“A yearling sale is a very difficult sale to hold as an online sale. I can see the merits of a ready-to-run sale online because you have so much more to go on, so much more information. With a yearling sale, so much of what you see as a professional buyer is down to close inspection.
“It’s not something you can see on a video and that makes it very difficult with international buyers. Obviously there are some very good agents and trainers down there who will have done a lot of the on-farm looks already, and that will help people. I think it’s a huge gamble and I shall be watching rather than partaking.”
Redvers will be involved as a vendor and warns anyone expecting to steal a bargain that selling at any price was not an option.
He said: “We do have some yearlings that we are selling which, everyone of them, are proper, smart Easter sale yearlings and we’re not going to be entering into a fire sale. We’ll be putting sensible reserves on them. We’ll be watching but I would be quite nervous about the concept.”
Another familiar figure who will be missing from the virtual ring is Shadwell’s Angus Gold, though his inability to get to Australia without first undergoing mandatory quarantine is not the sole reason.
“Sheikh Hamdan normally buys a few horses down there but David Hayes moving to Hong Hong is one factor,” said Gold. “Secondly, we’ve suddenly got a lot more mares that have come on stream down there in the last few years and we’ve ended up with more homebred yearlings.
“So he intimated to me back in November or December that he probably wasn’t going to buy yearlings in the southern hemisphere this year, and we didn’t go to Magic Millions.
“I would normally have gone to Australia after Dubai to look at the homebreds and the stock we have there anyway and I was hoping to call into the sales and have a look at the stock and talk to him if there was something I thought would be good to have.
“It’s a great shame and I feel incredibly sorry for all of those guys down there that work so hard to get their yearlings there, and for the sales company who are keeping it all on track.
“They’ve had lots of people looking with inspections on the farms as numerous as ever, if not more so. It’s just a question of whether trainers and agents can persuade owners to buy horses at this time, when everything is so uncertain.”