On Day 11, the last day with comparable figures, the average price was 60 percent higher this year than last. And the median price, often considered a better measure for the bottom end of the market, was up 67 percent. You'd think all this money in the air might have horse folk in Lexington, the breeding capital of the world, overjoyed. Instead, the predominant emotion seems to be cautious optimism. The big money has the industry buzzing about shades of the '80s and worrying that crash must follow boom.
Many breeders are wary of rushing to commit their four-footed and financial assets.
There is, after all, two years of risk between breeding a mare and leading a yearling into the ring. Buyers can come and go,'' said Shannon Neibergs, an economist at the University of Louisville who has studied the equine industry. Industry watchers have been crunching the numbers every way they can for insight. As Bell points out, there is greater depth in the ranks of big buyers. The three biggest, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Coolmore and Eugene Melnyk, controlled more than a fifth of the dollars spent at this sale.