The Continuing Education of a Yearling Buyer

by Trey Nosrac

There is a steep learning curve for those who entered the sport with no experience in harness racing. Reading pedigrees and evaluating conformation are extremely daunting matters. My first partnerships took place without understanding how to decipher these sales catalogs that my partner found so fascinating. To my first ears, all the talk about pedigrees, families, gold crosses and second mothers could have been in Mongolian. My eyes widened and then rolled at this gibberish.

Homeschooling myself using books, the internet, and some time spent jogging on the weekends, was my education. It was only after several years that the words on the sales pages and the pedigree puzzle became clear. Somehow, incredibly, opening up a massive catalog of yearlings and shopping for our annual horse has become the most enjoyable part of the sport for me.

For months before the yearling sales, my buddy and I get a little manic, making more lists than Santa gets and checking them two, three, and four times. I became one of those people spouting genealogical gibberish. Searching for dreams on catalog pages and sales videos is a great, hopeful time without training or vet fees.

If Treys knows one thing, it’s that he doesn’t know much about the exotic world of yearling selection. It would be a treat and useful to watch and listen to people who are experts. The pitch here is for education forums to learn and add to the fun of the annual yearling sales. All it would take is a pair of pedigree gurus and a streaming platform where they could browse through a series of fake yearling drafts in the catalogues.

Prediction broadcasts on drafts of other sports are everywhere. The hosts like to predict and the viewers enjoy the show. We could use a few of these energy platforms to further our research before selecting a yearling from the thousands on the market.

While I find it moderately interesting to listen to the hundreds of panels previewing other pro sports simulation projects, I would find it extremely interesting to listen to experts talk about pre-yearling sales analysis. Not just to hear what perspectives in a catalog they prefer, but WHY they love the horse. What do these experts see beyond percentages and apparent payoffs, or think they see, that most of us miss?

Psychologically, there is a strong attraction for these types of presentations. People like to predict things, have strong beliefs, and be right. Even though the pool of yearling buyers is small and somewhat insular, that doesn’t mean we can’t incorporate some of the business techniques that other sports use to engage fans and customers during the no-action period. of the season.

We all know people, maybe you’re one of them, who immediately take every catalog, the Ohio Select, Harrisburg, Lexington, etc., and meticulously go through the pages, underlining, marking, circling and doing lists. Real experts are looking for information that is not in the catalog. Then after the yearling videos, they make adjustments. In the end, they arrive at a rating and a price range.

Imagine if a few unbiased pedigree nerds separated a catalog into segments and analyzed Pennsylvania fillies on a webinar or podcast. As a potential one-year buyer, I’d be all over it. They would increase my knowledge and could encourage me to buy. I may or may not agree with them, but that would be fun.

The digital world has spawned passionate communities of people wishing to improve their knowledge in various niches. The in-depth research online is incredibly addictive, and the yearling selection webinars might be appealing to us and maybe a few others in the sports fandom. The creation of these new virtual communities to research and evaluate the horses put up for auction gives hope of finding some new participants. The ‘draught’ gate may hold more promise than asking young newbies to sit in the stands and fall in love with a chillingly slow sport.

There is a similarity between a sale of yearlings and the world of professional sports drafts. Today, in our data-driven age, sports drafts are big business. Fans live vicariously through their home team. Even if they don’t have money at stake, they want to find the diamonds in the rough, debate picks and sit on hot coals every draft day. Skinless in game, they love hunting. Imagine how interested those sports fans would be in hunting down a yearling and securing their horse and franchise with their own money.

If a few expert pickers were considering getting on their high horses to broadcast a series of yearling selection podcasts or webinars, I’d be in the audience having fun and learning.

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