The Age of Foals: does the month of foaling influence future performance?
As part of a recent research paper we spent time investigating whether the month of foaling in Southern Hemisphere horses had any influence on subsequent racetrack performance. In the study, we evaluated the race records of 16,376 horses offered at public auction in Australia between 2015–2021, their month of foaling and whether this had any relationship to subsequent performance outcomes.
This dataset is taken from Australian yearling sales only, featuring the Inglis Classic, Premier and Easter Sales and the Magic Millions Adelaide, Perth, Gold Coast and National yearling sales.
In our sample dataset, September was the most popular foaling month, with 6000 of the 16,376 yearlings being birthed that month. Subsequently followed by October with 5,005 and August with 3,961.
We will get to the racing performance aspects later. But first let’s evaluate whether the month of foaling had any impact on success in the sales ring.
We found that yearlings born particularly early in July, or later in October and November were decidedly less fancied in the sales ring than yearlings born in August or September. Yearlings born in August were sold through the ring at a 79.07% ratio, vs. those in November at 73.32%.
The average sales price peaked for August born yearlings at $107,531 per yearling vs. an average of $73,810 October foals and $64,001 for November foals. A buyer should be hoping for a August or September foal in order to maximise returns within the ring.
A further distinction emerges when we compare the sales records of Males vs. Females. Females showed a distinct higher ratio of being Passed In than Males, this increasing to 30.38% of November-born fillies being Passed In. Comparative to 24.46% of Colts born in the same month.
Racetrack Performance
In our research we observed that commercially offered yearlings born in August had the highest ratio of runners to yearlings offered at 85.10%. The outlier months of July (77.01%)and November (81.78%) with the lowest returns.
% of Winners and % of Stakes Winners peaked with the August-born yearlings, they returned a 61.27% winner ratio and 4.32% of them went on to become stakes winners. At the very top level, there was a minute difference between the September born horses and August born horses, September born returning the highest proportion of Group Winners at 2.22% and Group 1 winners at 0.58%.
Looking across the sexes we observed some distinct differences in performance returns.
The month of foaling seemingly had little or no difference on the performance outcomes of Colts. Colts born between August — November had a marginal difference in the return % of winners; 64.57% in August vs. 62.11% in November. At the elite levels this dissipated however, with no clear correlation between Foal month and %Group Winners or %Group 1 winners amongst the Colts.
Fillies did show a distinct performance differential. Fillies both in August made the track 83.00% of the time vs. 77.46% of the time for November births. The August fillies were 57.50% winners vs. 47.28% for the November fillies. At a Stakes and Group level the results were also noticeably, 4.82% Stakes Winners vs. 2.21% and 2.54% Group Winners vs. 1.01%.
What value plays could we find in the market?
The contrarian buyer should always be trying to find a way of going against the prevailing thinking within the market. As in the end, this is where the value is. We evaluated the Price per Winner, Price per Stakes Winner and Price per Group Winner to identify value opportunities within the categories above.
We calculate each of these metrics by taking the total spent outlaid in the market vs. the returns in each category of Winners, Stakes Winners, Group Winners and Group 1 winners.
The August foals were the most expensive per winner, requiring a buyer to outlay $175,497 of capital on average to return a winner, $5.01m per Group Winner and $22,417 per Group 1 winner. September foals were the most expensive in terms of returns per Stakes Winner at $2,528m per Stakes Winner. You can see where i’m going with this…
The November foals, although the poorest performing category in terms of racetrack performance, yielded value for the contrarian buyer; returning a winner every $113,200 of spend, a stakes winner per $2.11m, Group Winner every $3.85m and Group 1 Winner every $14.11m.
For the venture capitalists amongst us the breakdown on the Colts might be of interest. Our research study showed that you were getting distinct value between the November colts vs. the August and September colts.
Now i’ll veer off on somewhat of a tangent here onto a purely hypothetical path. The colts there are returning a Group 1 winner roughly every $20m of spend; although you see a distinct improvement in the September Colts at $16.09m per Group 1 Winner and November colts at $14.16m per Group 1 winner. Speculate that if you manage to find a stallion out in the market then you could be rewarded with selling that horse at a $20m — $30m figure and I think it’s fair to say that a Group 1 winning colt is a prospective stallion. For a venture capital fund, these angles into the market are potentially very interesting to explore.
