by Pete Denk

A day after buying multiple Grade 1 winner Island Fashion for $950,000, Japanese interests continued to play at the top of the market at the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale, although that ceiling was considerably lower than a year ago.

Naohiro Hosoda, representing Nobuo Tsunoda, went to $300,000 for the six-year-old Vicar mare Vestrey Lady to top Tuesday's session.

The Grade 3 winner is out of Episode, by Kris S., and is carrying her first foal, who is by Broken Vow. Vestrey Lady was consigned by Bernard McCormack’s Cara Bloodstock, agent.

Four mares sold for $1-million or more at last year’s sale, including three on the second day. Barring an unlikely emergence over the final four days of the 2009 sale, this will be the first time since ’04 that the Keeneland January sale did not have at least one seven-figure horse.

Keeneland reported 210 horses sold on Tuesday for $9,145,700, a 66.2% drop from the same day last year. Through two days, gross sales of $21,091,600 are down 56.4% from $48,414,100 a year ago.

At the conclusion of Tuesday’s session, Keeneland's Director of Sales Geoffrey Russell said he thinks year-to-year comparisons are not a good way to judge a breeding stock sale.

“We went from a million-dollar high to $300,000, so I think that’s a fair example. It’s obviously the quality of the catalog,” Russell said. “In November, when people were getting ready to enter these horses, they saw we were in a global economic crisis.

“But as a sale within a sale, I thought it was a very good session. …The buyers and sellers I talked to thought it had a good feel to it, for what was here.”

After two days, average is down 54.1% to $51,193, and median is down 53.8% at $27,000. The buy-back rate is 24.8%, compared with 26.9% at this point last year.

Tuesday’s session featured the top-priced yearling of the sale so far when Dromoland’s Gerry Dilger, representing Diagonal Bloodstock, went to $270,000 for a Speightstown colt out of the Belong to Me mare Treysta.

“He was the best horse in the sale,” Dilger said.

John Stuart’s Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services consigned the colt on behalf of Brad Kelley. Ben Walden Jr., acting as Kelley’s agent, bought Treysta for $165,000 at the 2007 Keeneland November breeding stock sale when she was carrying the Speightstown colt.

The colt was raised at Kelley's and Walden’s Hurricane Hall operation in Lexington.

“This yearling is the kind of horse that if he’s a good racehorse, he’ll be a valuable stallion, with [Grade 1 winner and dual classic-placed] Hard Spun under the second dam,” Stuart said. “He vetted perfectly.”

Pete Denk is sales editor of Thoroughbred Times