Fasig-Tipton resumed its Midlantic May 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale preview Sunday with a modified “gallop only” session following weather delays and a track incident earlier in the week.
The preview, originally scheduled for three consecutive days, was interrupted Thursday when a fatal breakdown occurred, followed by heavy rain that rendered the track unusable. Sunday’s marathon session ran from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., featuring approximately 240 horses across nine sets.
“I think they made the right decision,” bloodstock agent John Dowd said of the decision to forego timed workouts. “As buyers, we buy yearlings on the end of the shank. We get to look at 2-year-olds that are training and see them move, they are already broke. They are further down the road than if we had bought them as yearlings.”
Dowd, who attended all three preview days, maintained that the format change didn’t disrupt his evaluation process.
“My process is more to see the way horses move and the way they gallop out, not totally because of how fast they go, but mechanically how they move. And we still get that opportunity today,” he explained.
The unusual format created challenges for buyers attempting to compare horses who worked over sloppy conditions earlier in the week with those galloping Sunday.
“That’s going to be difficult,” admitted bloodstock agent Alistair Roden. “It was hard to handicap in the first place because it was a sloppy track. So it was hard to get a handle on it, and then you go from a sloppy track to a fast track where they are galloping.”
Roden noted that horses prepared for timed breezes often behave differently when asked to gallop instead.
“You are looking for the stride, the movement and some of these horses get choked up and you don’t get to see them move because they are trained to go to the pole and break off,” he said. “If [galloping previews] is something to do in the future, it’s something that consignors will probably have to have a different approach.”
Despite the “gallop only” designation, stopwatches could be heard throughout the grandstand as many horses were effectively breezing.
“A lot of these horses are breezing,” confirmed bloodstock agent Pete Bradley. “There are a lot of :10 2/5s and :10 3/5s. What I think is interesting is that a lot of them are going quick without the whipping and driving that we see on a regular day.”
Bradley suggested the format might actually provide some advantages for evaluating movement. “In some ways, I can see the horse’s movement better because they are not scrambling down the lane.”
The modified preview format requires buyers to adjust their evaluation methods, Bradley added.
“We are all one-trick ponies in a way, we get used to a certain system,” he said. “Bad moving horses are easy to pick out. Is it going to be tough to differentiate the very good and the good ones? Yeah. I think it’s going to make my job tougher. But I think it is an interesting exercise today and I might even learn something from it.”
Suzanne Smallwood of Equix faced additional challenges collecting data for the company’s ProStride stride-length analytics.
“There is still a lot to gain from watching them go today,” Smallwood said. “Because we do the stride-length calculations and we sell that, we still have to get a final time, a breeze time. I am having to clock them so we can put in the stride length calculations.”
Smallwood explained that her team would adjust their calculations based on each horse’s activity level during the preview.
“The data will be different because at a gallop the timing is different than it is in a breeze,” she said. “But as long as you have your notes and you know the horse really did a slow gallop, or this consignor elected to go more of an open gallop, then you know how to interpret everything.”
Jimmy Gladwell, an Ocala horseman with decades of experience in the pinhooking business, supported the decision while acknowledging its limitations.
“I think Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning has made the right decision to go with the gallop out with no timed workouts,” Gladwell said. “I think it’s going to make it a little more difficult to sort through them. But at the end of the day, I think it’s the best thing for the horses and the riders and the sale at this time.”
Gladwell emphasized that timed breezes remain valuable for the sales process.
“When you take these horses to the next level, it is a race and the faster horses win the races,” he said. “We have seen Mucho Gusto work a bullet here and go on to be a graded stakes winner, we’ve seen Gamine work a bullet here and go on and be a Grade I winner.”
The modified format shifts evaluation criteria closer to yearling sale standards, according to Gladwell.
“It turns into a conformation situation. If you go to the Saturday afternoon races, there are bad movers who win graded stakes. There are good movers who are slow. So it’s going to turn more and more into conformation, more like a yearling sale.”
Reflecting on four decades in the business, Gladwell noted positive safety developments in recent years.
“In the past five years, they have eliminated spurs, they’ve eliminated hitting horses behind the shoulder after they break off, no hitting them when they gallop out, much less medication than ever before,” he said. “So everything is evolving in the right direction.”
When asked about potential HISA oversight at 2-year-old sales, Gladwell expressed confidence in industry self-regulation.
“I think if we can do a little better job self-governing, I think everybody is under the microscope right now,” he said. “I think we can do a good job ourselves, without HISA’s involvement.”
The Midlantic May sale will be held in a single session Tuesday at the Maryland State Fairgrounds, with bidding scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.
