Joltman wrote:The assessment of the sale is surprisingly upbeat per the BH article:
http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/ ... aging-note
A couple of qs about this rosie assessment -
- The Young dispersal - pumped an extraordinary number of top end horses into the sale. If the dispersal had not taken place I wonder what those numbers would have looked like.
"Not sold" count dropped by 20%. Is that based on the RNA count or does it include the number withdrawn? The last day probably ended in half an hour since so many were withdrawn.
jm
The BloodHorse has a way of saying that everything is rosie in the industry with no regard to whether or not that's actually true.
Although it was good that the RNA rate was down, what that basically meant was that sellers were letting their horses go for what they would bring regardless of how much money they made in the process. "Not Sold" is only those that go through the ring; it does not count those that are withdrawn.
The article you cited answered your other question: the gross for the sale was $159,727,800. The Overbrook dispersal accounted for $31,760,000 of that. Without the Overbrook horses, the gross would have been down 31% from 2008 rather than 13.9%.
Another interesting fact: last year's Nov. sale was held after the market had already crashed. This year's gross is down 56% from the gross in 2007, which is a more accurate accounting of what the TB market has done since the downturn.