‘Nobody could have predicted the strength of this week’s trade’

THE 2021 yearling sales season has certainly rebounded in some style as highlighted by the massive gains recorded at our Orby and Sportsman’s Sales a few weeks ago.

However, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the strength, buoyancy and gains of this week’s Autumn Yearling Sale.

Of course the highlight has been the one-off draft from Derrinstown which accounted for 24% of takings and we feel privileged to have handled these classy yearlings from the estate of the late Sheikh Hamdan who was such a wonderful and respected supporter of our sales.

His consignment would have graced any catalogue and naturally dominated the leader board with eight of the top 10 prices.

However, even without the Derrinstown stars the Autumn Sale has been a cracker with a stunning 92% clearance rate and statistics that comfortably surpassed all recent renewals of this sale to underline the vibrancy of the Goffs yearling season.

Take them away and the two days still enjoyed a 76% rise in average and a 320% leap in turnover to clearly illustrate the strength throughout.

The demand we enjoyed has been driven by a truly international buying bench with a flood of overseas buyers headed by a 50-plus strong group from Eastern Europe and significant parties from Scandinavia, Germany and Italy taking on spirited bidders from the UK and Ireland, all of whom were attracted to Kildare Paddocks by our passionate Purchaser Attraction Team led by Joey Cullen, working in tandem with our network of international agents and the team at Irish Thoroughbred Marketing; how lucky we are to have the assistance of the latter group as they provide an invaluable and unique service to those who choose to sell in Ireland.

As the sale closes we can reflect on vibrant, strong and extremely positive renewals of all three parts of the Irish National Yearling Sale, each of which graphically made our case for us that Irish breeders can sell, and sell extremely well, to the world at Goffs.