For those who criticise the Australian thoroughbred industry for being too focused on two-year-old racing, it is worth noting that the number of horses raced in their juvenile season in 2023/24 was the lowest on record at just 2335, or just eight per cent of the active horse population.
The comparative figures means Australia’s two-year-old participation rate is half that of the United States, and less than a third of Great Britain and Japan.
While feature two-year-old racing generates plenty of Australian racing headlines, the stats tell us that Australian trainers are getting less and less inclined to race their horses at two.
As recently as 2020/21, the number of two-year-olds racing each year was 2840, but that number has dropped by 17.8 per cent based on the 2023/24 figures.
At the turn of the century, that number was 4014, or 12.7 per cent of all active horses, indicating a substantial long-term decline in the willingness of trainers to race their horses at two.
Having said that, the yearling sales circuit is tied to this two-year-old feature planning, with both major Australian sales companies, Magic Millions and Inglis, running sales series’ features relatively early in the two-year-old season. So too does New Zealand Bloodstock across the Tasman.
The marketing angle is obvious. Buy a precocious horse at a sale one year and return the next to contest for the riches on offer. These feature sales races have been placed well ahead of the two-year-old Group 1 juvenile races, the first of which, the Blue Diamond, is usually in late February.
While the restricted nature of these rich two-year-old contests, which are usually reserved for graduates only, means they are not internationally recognised as group races, they do carry Restricted Listed status.
But while this may incentivise trainers to get their horses up and about early, it is worth noting that of the 4100 yearlings sold in Australia in 2024, just 55, or 1.3 per cent, have won a race to this early point of their careers.
The art of unearthing an early two-year-old is something trainers like Gai Waterhouse have specialised in for a long time. Waterhouse has won the Magic Millions 2YO Classic on five occasions, either under her own name or in partnership with Adrian Bott, including with Storm Boy last year.
They also won the Inglis Millennium with Fully Lit and the Golden Slipper with Lady Of Camelot.
All-in-all last season, Waterhouse and Bott had 35 wins from two-year-olds and earned $11.3 million in prize money, or 37.6 per cent of their total. Two-year-old starters represented 14.8 per cent of their overall starters for the season.
So far this season, they have had six winners in the two-year-old ranks, including wins in the Breeders’ Plate, Maribyrnong Plate and the Golden Gift. They are represented with one runner, The Playwright, in Saturday’s Magic Millions 2YO Classic.
By far the majority of Tulloch Lodge’s star two-year-olds are sourced from the yearling sales. In the past four years, Waterhouse and Bott have purchased over $65.5 million worth of yearlings.
Unsurprisingly, they are the leading trainers when it comes to winning 2024 yearling sales graduates with those six winners, two more than Anthony and Sam Freedman, while Lindsay Park, Bjorn Baker and Tony Gollan have three apiece.
Most winners by trainer – 2024 yearling graduates
There are 29 individual trainers across Australia and New Zealand with winning two-year-olds which were sold in Australia as yearlings in 2024.
Darby Racing and Lindsay Park are the most successful yearlings buyers of 2024 as things stand, with three winning graduates to date.
Aushorse Investor’s Guide 2025
- More Races worth $1 million+ than Europe & America combined
- More than 140,000 Australians involved in racehorse ownership
The vendor with the most two-year-old graduates to have won this season is clearly Widden with seven, while Newhaven Park and Yulong have had four apiece. All in all, there are 35 vendors with winning graduates sold during the 2024 Australian yearling season.
The most represented sire among that subset of 55 winning yearling graduates is Snitzel with four, while Spirit Of Boom, I Am Invincible, Blue Point and Capitalist have three apiece. There are 34 different sires with winning two-year-old sales graduates this season.
The premium attached to ‘early’ runners in the Australian market is reflected in the inflated averages of those 2024 graduates who have already had success on the track.
The average price of those 55 winners was $241,391 while the median price was $150,000. This compares to an overall median average of $138,606 and $70,000 and through the 2024 yearling sales season.
But it is also worth noting that not one of the five two-year old Group 1 races in Australia in 2023/24 was won by a yearling sales graduate.
Most winners by sire – 2024 yearling graduates
