Two-Year-Old Sales: Status Quo Or Radical Change?
One of the most hotly debated topics in the thoroughbred industry, particularly in context of the topic of equine safety, is the subject of the thoroughbred two-year-old in training sales. The first two-year-old in training sale was conducted at Hialeah Racetrack in Florida in 1952. Since that time tens of thousands of horses have exchanged hands through the two-year-old in training venue to include international champions and winners of the world’s greatest races to include the Kentucky Derby. However, the success of the runners from these races by horses sold at auction as two-year-olds has not tamped down the debate about how these sales are conducted with regard to under tack shows.
Perhaps the debate resounded the loudest when the sales numbers hit new highs and the under-tack times hit new lows. In the recent 2024 OBS April Sale, a filly equaled the track’s record for a quarter mile, hitting the wire at the record time of :20 1/5 seconds. The year the first juvenile breezed an eighth of a mile under ten seconds the industry poured news out all over its daily outlets, but now that figure is an industry standard. With the watershed of record numbers came the litany of complaints that the process is too harsh on young horses, the need for quick turn of profit by the principals is overwhelming safety practices, and the results are harmful for both the animals as well as the industry. In addition to the breeze times and the calendar constraints, medications and whips came into the discussion as the industry has been forced to do a hard self introspective.
The reforms to the two-year-old venue started dripping out in 2020 when Fasig-Tipton and OBS joined forces to change their policies on medications and both whip and spur usage during under tack shows. Since, sale companies have made slight changes to the sale calendars as well, pushing some sales later on the calendar, and eliminating others. And while those changes were welcome, a general consensus remains that these changes were not enough. Many players from all areas of the industry including owners, breeders, trainers, and agents, while they participate in these sales, quietly complain and opine about the less than ideal environment they present to the animals and the owners who still deal with sore horses and injuries from these early pressed athletes.
Radical change to the two-year-old in training format may require a new dawn. The sun may well have begun to rise on this new day with the emergence and acceptance of digital auctions in the equine sale market. The 2020 COVID pandemic made the entrance of the digital market a necessity, but innovation is now turning the digital equine market into an entirely new landscape truly capable of helping revolutionize industry standards such as the breeze-up juvenile sales. Truly THIS platform, BidXSell.com is the first tool offered to the thoroughbred industry that has potential to completely change the way juvenile sale can run. By offering complete flexibility for the seller, and peer-to-peer transactions intertwined with the power of an auction, BidXSell.com’s auction platform could make the sale of two-year-olds in training something dictated completely by the animal’s training status and the horse’s owner and trainer. Rather than trying to pigeon-hole a horse into a sale date, making the colt or filly work at a break-neck speed potentially before they are ready, the BidXSell.com platform will let an owner or trainer offer a horse, or a barn full of horses, in a month and on a day that best suits him and his investment. In the hands of the owners and trainers, BidXSell.com could begin a new era in two-year-old sales in which trainers at specific training centers and specific regions could co-op their offerings to build mini two-year-old in training auctions. In the hands of owners and trainers, BidXSell.com can additionally offer the flexibility of allowing breeze shows to happen on turf or other all-weather surfaces. If a group of juveniles is being pointed for a specific regional circuit or revenue program, they can be worked on a track in that circuit in order to allow sellers and buyers alike to view these horses in context with the specific racing they may be pointed toward. The flexibility this platform offers will allow for every aspect of the two-year-old sale process to be transformed at the needs of the trainers and their horses.
Attention to improvement of the two-year-old sales by the industry as a whole reinforces a commitment to the welfare of the horses, their riders, and their handlers. Certainly, early developing horses that suit training sales are one of the revenue drivers of the retail equine sale industry. Now, the industry is making an effort to move away from the long-held status quo. However, with the digital marketplace now firmly in place, BidXSell.com puts a formidable tool in the quiver of the stakeholders to not only reform these venues but do so in a somewhat radical way that very much benefits those stakeholders and their equine investments directly.