FIRST season sire Drefong made a highly profitable start to his career in the Japanese bloodstock arena.

The American import had 13 foals from his first crop pass under the auctioneer’s rostrum and 12 of those were sold for an average price of ¥57 million (€468,000).

The three-time Grade 1-winning son of Gio Ponti covered a book of 207 mares for a fee of ¥3 million (€24,800) in 2018. His fee remained unchanged for this year.

The highest price Drefong to sell was lot 344 for ¥250 million (€2 million), sold to Toyomokuzai from the consignment of Northern Farm.

The imposing colt marked a staggering return of over 83 times the advertised stud fee.

The fevered foal session provided substantial year on year gains across the board. The 194 lots sold generated an 18.5% increase in session aggregate with an average price of €410,000, an increase of 25.2% on 2018. The clearance rate improved from 88.7% in 2018 to 89.8 for the 2019 renewal.

Deep Impact once again was the leading sire and foundation for the record breaking 2019 Select Sale. Any progeny of the seven-time champion sire will always garner huge commercial interest and inevitably huge prices in Japan.

The demand for progeny of Deep Impact is continuing to intensify as his future continues to remain uncertain.

He was forced to miss the majority of the 2019 breeding season due to a neck injury, and his expected date of return to covering duties is unclear.

Over the two sessions Deep Impact was responsible for 28 lots, 26 of which sold for an aggregate of ¥3.9 billion (€32 million), equating to 18.1% share of total sale turnover. They averaged €1.2 million with a median of €1 million.