Lexington Sale Profile

The Lexington sale is set for the first week in October with a reduced number of yearlings from previous years, about 100 less than two years ago, and this year the sale includes a number of Indiana breds as the Kentucky breeding industry, as well as the industry as a whole, experiences a continued drop in yearling registrations. This year the total has dropped to below 8,000 foals in the North American crop of 2013 and next year will see another big drop with the damaging effects of the Ontario government debacle hitting home.






This year will see a big increase in Ontario breds at Lexington with the first crops of Big Jim, Vintage Master and Manofmanymissions well represented in addition to the hot sire of the year Sportswriter. These yearlings would mostly have sold in Ontario in previous years but many breeders have opted to try their luck in US sales at both Lexington and Harrisburg.






Also among the first crop trotting sires is a small group of yearlings by Broad Bahn including a nice pedigreed filly called Trendy Broad that will be worth looking over. On the pacing side Roll With Joe will debut his first yearlings and he will have a hard time filling the boots of his full brother Bettors Delight based on the mares he had to work with. Bettors Delight stood in Ontario in 2012 and he has a large group of Ontario eligibles on the Lexington list and another even bigger group in Harrisburg. A lot of these were foaled in the United States as breeders still had confidence in his ability to produce top shelf racehorses despite being evicted from New York to make way for his upstart brother.






Lexington Trotter Profile


Lexington Pacer Profile






For those of you not familiar with the Sale Profile format the numbers you see in the chart are cross statistics. The first pair under the 1st Dam Sire column shows the number of times that cross has been tried in terms of foals of racing age, then the percentage success rate in producing $100K winners. For instance The Yank by Always A Virgin shows 12 0 meaning 12 crosses of Always A Virgin to mares by Jennas Beach Boy and 0 % top winners. The second pair under the 2nd Dam Sire No Nukes is the cross of Jennas Beach Boy to No Nukes and it shows 100 crosses with a success rate of 22%. Generally a 15% success rate is considered acceptable.


To the right of the sire line columns, which by the way are colour coded to identify which sire lines are in the pedigree of the mare, you will see several columns headed by a letter A,H,K,M or O. These relate to the presence of special mares in the back pedigree and a 1 under any column identifies the dam of the yearling as having that mare doubled up in the dam's pedigree. For a full explanation of the significance of maternal influences you can download my book Queen Among Queens from the PM Online library.






For those of you needing help in short listing the best yearlings to look at in Lexington and Harrisburg I can prepare lists based on any criteria such as sex, gait, jurisdiction, or sire along with my ratings. They won't necessarily guarantee you a world champion but they will prevent you from making a costly mistake in buying the wrong yearling. Great race horses like Somebeachsomewhere, Bettors Delight, Lis Mara, Donato Hanover, and many more have been included in previous sale lists for Harrisburg and Lexington. Email me for further information at norman@pedigreematching.com