Sobering start to Goffs Orby Sale as Brad Spicer takes home Camelot yearling
Plenty will have been left wondering if they were witnessing the new normal at Doncaster on Wednesday as the relocated Goffs Orby Sale got off to a sobering start compared to the giddy highs seen in recent years. However, Brad Spricer of Melbourne based Spicer Thoroughbreds had cause to cheer, taking back to Australia a Camelot (Galileo) colt for £160,000.
It almost goes without saying that a great deal has changed, within the racing and breeding world and far beyond, since day one of last year’s Orby Sale, when 11 lots fetched €400,000 or more and three yearlings broke into seven-figure territory at Kildare Paddocks. Just two lots brought £400,000 or more on Wednesday.
Tellingly, all but two of the buyers who signed for those headline lots last year were absent in South Yorkshire, with names such as Godolphin, Shadwell and Westerberg missing from the list of purchasers.
Year-on-year comparisons are not straightforward given fluctuations in currency, and given the sale is only at the halfway point the trends in evidence on Wednesday remain subject to change.
But the bare facts show that turnover reached £11,504,000, having been €23,059,500 at the corresponding session in 2019 (a drop of close to 45 per cent). The average was £69,720, compared to €123,315 last year (down 38 per cent), and the median was £50,000, against €75,000 12 months ago (down 27 per cent).
However, a clearance rate of 81 per cent, with 165 of 203 offered yearlings changing hands, suggests vendors were prepared to meet the demands of the current market.
Spicer, who bought Lot 124, the Camelot colt out of Edwinstowe (Shamardal), in conjunction with bloodstock agent Alex Elliott, tweeted his delight at the purchase, who will be trained by Lindsey Smith at Warrnambool.
He will be hoping that the colt follows in the path of another, now notorious, Camelot colt, purchased out of a British yearling Sale and taken to Australia to race, in Saturday’s Underwood Stakes (Gr 1, 1800m) winner Russian Camelot.
In what was a buyers’ market, Spicer purchased the colt, whose grand dam is German Champion three-year-old filly Lady Marian (Nayef), for Australian clients, with the horse heading to Australia in the next six weeks where he’ll be broken in.
Another Australian in buying action at Goffs was Scone trainer Sam Kavanagh, who teamed up with Byron Rogers to secure lot 112, a son of Ulysses (Galileo) out of the unraced Pivotal (Polar Falcon) mare Diyavana for £80,000.
The top lot for Day 1 was lot 12, an Invincible Spirit (Green Desert) colt out of Aimhirgin Lass (Pivotal), who was knocked down to Ben McElroy for £420,000.