Arqana are to be congratulated on the success of its August Yearling Sale. This auction produced a welter of satisfactory statistics, notable among which was the popularity of Darley’s first-season sires.
Several top-class horses were represented by their first yearlings at Deauville, including one stallion sure to prove popular among buyers there: the former Deauville specialist Whipper. However, even his ‘home ground advantage’ was not enough to keep exciting young Darley sire Shamardal from the top spot among the freshmen’s averages, five of his yearlings selling for an average of €163,000 and a median of €170,000. The similarity between these figures shows that Shamardal’s sales-ring success came not from one stand-out son, but from a solid demand for his offspring, which bodes very well for the future stud career of this multiple Group One winner.
Following Shamardal in the table were Oratorio and Whipper, with one other first-season sire posting a six-figure average: Dubawi, whose stock’s average for the entire sale was €109,167. Winner of the Irish 2,000 Guineas in 2005, the impressive son of Dubai Millennium clearly now holds the advantage in the sales-ring battle of the Guineas winners, the average for the stock of that year’s English 2,000 Guineas winner Footstepsinthesand being roughly two thirds that of Dubawi at €68,375.
One place behind Footstepsinthesand in the table of first-season sires by average at Deauville came Country Reel, who is now looking a real bargain at the fee of €4,500 at which he has stood since his retirement to Haras du Logis in 2006. This fee makes his average of €54,400 and median of €50,000 look particularly creditable.
