2024 European Pinhooking Analysis

The 2024 European Breeze Up Sales market has been characterised by a strong upper level and relatively weak middle and lower market.

We evaluated pinhooking returns between yearling purchase and 2yo sale. Incorporating £15,000 keep as a pinhooking cost between initial purchase and subsequent sale. To aid analysis all currencies were converted to GBP (£)

Across 1004 horses offered from yearling pinhook to 2yo sale we found that average return per lot without incorporating keep was £19,253. Incorporating £15,000 keep, average return per lot was £4,253 per lot.

Due to higher priced lots skewing averages, median is probably a better market indicator. Median return exc. keep was £5,250 and including keep was -£9,570

Looking at the distribution of pinhooking returns we can see that the profits are characterised by the sharp curve at the front — the top 10% (or 100 lots) sold across all sales drove most of the returns.

Top Performing Purchasers / Pinhookers

Norman Williamson of Oak Tree Farm returned as our top performing pinhooker across the European Breeze Up Sales. Returning an average Pinhook P&L of £224,197 (keep included) from 9 yearling pinhooks. Overall Williamson returned a positive P&L on 5/9 pinhooks.

Margaret O’Toole, a sometime partner of Williamson and Oak Tree Farm, returned second highest in our pinhook rankings, returning an average P/L of £192,266 from 8 pinhooks. O’Toole made a profit on 6/8 of her pinhooks once keep had been incorporated.

Greenhills Farm had a startling Breeze Up season, kicked off with two 525,000gns lots selling at the Tattersalls Craven sale. Overall they returned an average P&L per pinhook of £137,778 across their 19 lots offered. 5/9 lots returned as a profitable individual pinhook.

Glending Stables followed up the Vandeek-driven successes of 2023 with another strong showing across the sales in 2024. Returning an average per pinhook of £89,544, headlined by their showcase Galileo colt at the Tatts Craven sale — returning £1,050,000. It wasn’t just all about the Galileo colt however, as 7/12 of their pinhooks offered returned a profit.

The young duo of Adam Potts & Danny O’Donovan recorded a highly successful breeze up season, returning an average profit of £68,598 across 12 lots offered. 8 of the 12 pinhooks showing a positive return.

Overall, our top performing pinhookers who returned an average per lot offered of more than £10,000 were as follows.

Vendor Buy Backs or Lots that were unsold as yearlings were not a profitable venture. Across 214 lots we found that they made an average loss per lot of £10,759.

Returns by Breeze Up Sale

The elite Tattersalls Craven and Arqana sales drove the majority of pinhooking profits overall. Arqana leading the way with an average return of £22,375 per lot, with Craven close behind at £21,524 per lot. The middle market sales at the Tattersalls Guineas meeting, Goffs and Tatts Ireland were a harder market for pinhookers. Overall those sales averaged a small loss per pinhook, and those coming away with profit did very well.

Performance of our Yearling Ratings

As ever, i like to take the opportunity to evaluate the performance of our yearling ratings. Usually i am doing this based on track results, but evaluation of pinhooking performance would also be a valuable exercise.

Of lots offered across the main Breeze Up sales, we had yearling biomechanic ratings for 469 of them.

The table below shows the performance of our ratings above / below certain ratings thresholds. Those yearlings rated in the higher ratings thresholds of 70%+, 80%+ and 90%+ showed a small profit return per lot once keep had been incorporated.

The lower rating thresholds were effective at identifying unprofitable horses. 30 horses rated less 10/100 as a yearling lost on average £25,301 per lot. 85 horses that were rated below 20/100 lost an average of £10,391 per lot.

In terms of individual ratings bands, it was strangely the 60–69 rated yearlings that were the most profitable. Across 50 lots offered they returned an average of £18,268 per lot.

Of course i’d prefer if the top rated band of 90%+ returned the best profits this year. But it fits with the overall dynamic of the market this year; you either had to hit the supremely profitable lots otherwise you were just churning away.

In terms of the profitable highly rated yearlings, here’s the group. Headed by the Adam Potts/ Danny O’Donovan King of Change filly at Goffs, whom we had rated as a 97.96% elite yearling. Those guys really did a fantastic job across all the sales this year !

As a disclaimer, please note that i was not involved in purchase of any of these horses!

For further details you can contact me at racingsquared@gmail.com