Breeze well; sell well

On hearing that I was off to a horse sale Mrs Oakley’s goodbye lacked the usual wifely warmth. Something a touch minatory about priorities and the need to keep a roof over our heads. Not to mention a replacement for the aged BMW. But at the first Goff’s ‘breeze-up’ auction of the year, held at Kempton Park, I was tempted. The pinhookers’ two-year-old offerings looked so much the finished article.

Pinhookers back their judgment of conformation and pedigree by buying foals and selling them on as yearlings or, more frequently, by buying yearlings and selling them on six to eight months later as educated two-year-olds virtually ready to race. At a breeze-up sale you don’t just see the animals loping around a ring but going through their paces on the track.

This is the age of the ready-made, with racing’s new owners seeking quick results. So breeze-up sales are increasing. At Kempton that morning, vendors and would-be buyers (owners, bloodstock agents and trainers with late orders to fill, not in the suits they wear for Saturday TV but in windcheaters and jeans) clustered along the rails as well-formed two-year-olds, singly or ‘upsides’ in pairs, showed that they had been taught the basics and could perform them at reasonable speed — at least for a couple of furlongs.