AN excellent week at Goffs drew to a successful close yesterday evening as the company’s two-day Sportsman’s Sale concluded with a much improved set of results.

A feature of the yearling sales season has been the notable upswing in demand at this level of the market and the trends that were in evidence at the likes of the Somerville Sale and at Tattersalls Ireland last week manifested themselves once more.

Strong demand at all levels of the market, a good clearance rate and a major input from the breeze-up fraternity all played their part over the last two days.

Just one indicator of the strength of the market can be gauged from the level of activity from €50,000 onwards. Twelve months ago there were 22 horses who made at least €50,000 over the two days of the Sportsman’s Sale but that number had increased to 37 at the time of writing yesterday evening.

This translated in a strong set of results and with just over 30 lots still to come under the hammer on Friday evening the aggregate for the sale was running at €9.7 million having come in at just €7 million last year. Admittedly this indicator was always likely to jump forward given that the catalogue increased in size by around 29%.

However, the increase in numbers did nothing to prevent sweeping gains in the average and median. Again, with around 30 lots remaining, the average was running at €25,381 and this was lying 23% in advance of the 2021 tally. The median jumped from €16,000 to €22,000 which is an increase of just over 37%.

All told, these figures make for impressive reading and round off an excellent week for Goffs who can now look forward to next month’s November Foal and Breeding Stock sales with a considerable degree of optimism.

Record price

The clear standout of this year’s Sportsman’s Sale was a €300,000 filly from the first crop of Ten Sovereigns whose price eclipsed the previous record for this sale which had stood at €240,000 and was set 15 years ago.

The filly was consigned by Goffs chairman Eimear Mulhern’s Abbeville Stud on behalf of her breeders Peter and Carol Henley and Eric McDonnell, and she was bought by Kilfrush Stud manager David Ryan.

The latter signed his purchase down to Rabbah Bloodstock/Kilfrush and reported that plans for this filly would be decided in due course. The filly herself hails from the very popular first crop of Aidan O’Brien’s top class dual Group 1 winner Ten Sovereigns and she had plenty to recommend her on pedigree as her siblings include this season’s Commonwealth Cup fourth Cadamosto.