Starting with the humble beginning with 4 horses in his draft in their first year, Blake Ryan racing has grown every year at an exponential pace. This year Blake broke into the top 10 at the prestigious Inglis Ready to Race sale. It must be an exciting time for Blake to be performing in such an exponential manner during these times. He has the expertise to back this achievement; however, we wanted to hear from him about it and also his plans for the future.
Ryan speaks with The Impact about his sale-topping purchases and the Thoroughbred industry in general:
Q: What were the highlights of your sales in the Ready2Race Sale?
A: From a selling point of view the highlights were
Popular colts at the sale and I think they made their worth.
Q: What made these horses special - pedigree nicks, confirmation, or something else?
A: Just nice, straightforward colts with good pedigrees behind them, that most importantly breezed well. The Shalaa colt is a beautiful colt with a strong, active Aga Khan pedigree behind him that has more a European shape to him.
The Deep Field colt breezed the fastest time in the history of the sale, & the Capitalist colt is a really strong 2YO type that breezed in fast time and had a really good way about him.
Q: What has your past experience been with this sale? How do you feel this year was better?
A: The sale this year was quite a hard sale off the top, with Covid-19 enforcing what has happened throughout Singapore, Korea etc (ceasing racing for a period and recommencing at a restricted level )definitely impacting the all-important middle market of which those jurisdictions are a
vital part of in this sale format. We sold quite a few lots at a loss this year but as a vendor, you simply must meet the market and sell in my opinion and we were lucky enough with a few of the higher-priced lots balancing the sale out for us. Hopefully, that middle ground can rebound in 2021 and beyond.
Q: Historically who were some of your top graduates?
A: We’ve had 4 to the races already from last years’ draft alone and the 4 have all Won races so that’s very pleasing to see, including a horse by the name of Relentless who is being targeted at Group racing in Singapore coming up.
Q: Will you be exhibiting at other sales in 2020? And if yes, could you please tell us about your sale highlights?
A: No.
Q: How do you feel the industry has changed or not over the course of 2020?
A: In Australia, we are very fortunate to have such a strong racing and breeding industry with good leadership from both Administrators and the participants that we have been able to continue virtually uninterrupted throughout 2020.
Q: And finally, where do you see innovation and growth within the Thoroughbred industry?
Hope this is possible.
A: The most important thing we need to do as an industry is to attract new people to the sport, the next generation. Highlight the great things our industry does for both animal welfare, rural communities, for example, teach people about how to bet/do form properly, therefore growing turnover, which equals returns to the industry, which equals maintaining prize money levels etc. Finding a way to bring people up close to Create an understanding of how we as tick and how things work is probably the best way of engaging the next generation of would-be Trainers/Jockeys/owners/punters in my view.