View From the Owner's Box: Tools, Programs for Auctions

At the heart of the Thoroughbred racing industry, Thoroughbred OwnerView hosts monthly conferences connecting owners and trainers with industry experts. The June 9 OwnerView panel, moderated by OwnerView project manager Gary Falter, dove into the experience in developing, offering, and using a variety of tools and programs to assist owners at the sales. The panel included Eric Mitchell, the bloodstock editor at BloodHorse; Reed Ringler with the Keeneland sales department; Tim Leith with The Jockey Club Information Systems; and Jacob West of Claiborne Farm and West Bloodstock. Mitchell talked about BloodHorse's sale guide Auction Edge, which compiles detailed performance statistics and sales histories through a sale horse's second dam. "With the Auction Edge you have two goals," Mitchell said. "To help you assess the talent of the horse that's in front of you and what the family may tell you about what that horse could potentially do. And then also, this information helps you get a ballpark idea of what that horse might be worth." West talked about the tools he uses to make a short list and how he continues to narrow down his choices at a sale. "I would say while I'm at the sale, the catalog page is more important," West said. "And then as I go home at night, I'm scouring the Auction Edge to just build up more of a case for a horse that I like, or maybe that I'm on the fence about. It's easy to go through and see the class of the family. I'm a firm believer in looking at the Equibase numbers. It kind of shows you, you know, speed, precocity, siblings and what they've done. We buy a lot of horses, so I always like to look back and say, 'Oh yeah, we bought a half brother, half sister to this horse,' and kind of compare them through that. So it's a very helpful tool for us." Leith described the benefits of the Equineline Sales Catalog app, which is an iPad product that offers a variety of features built around a sale company's catalog page. "We would go to farm offices and see individuals' offices just littered with bookshelves of catalogs. This tool allowed us to create that library on a single device," Leith said. "They can look up those historical ratings, everything is right at your fingertips, and you don't have to run back to the office and check old catalogs to do your research at night. It has really revolutionized the way individuals navigate the sales. And, I think there's a lot of things to come in the future." Ringler, who recently joined the sales team at Keeneland and focuses on client services, global recruitment, and sales development, said he uses the Sales Catalog app as a tool, along with reports from Equineline. "If you've got a broodmare that's selling, you might focus in on her produce record at the bottom of the page a little bit more," Ringler said. "But when we're looking at yearlings, you're going to have the sire on top of the first dam down to the second dam. And if it's a huge page like this, you never even get to the third dam on there. And that's where Equineline can help you out. But (the catalog page) is really kind of the bare bones to get started. This is just basic information that every buyer and seller has got to have going into an auction."