Outside of the million-dollar lots and the bidding wars, the novelty of the theatre of the auction ring can fade quickly over the course of a yearling sale.
When you are powering through 270 horses a day, balancing the needs of vendors, who want to give their horse its best chance to get sold, and buyers, who want every chance to bid, can lead to the usual 120 seconds per lot extending to three or four minutes.
Over a day, it can mean that rather than a sale concluding at a respectable hour of 6pm as scheduled, the last horses are still being put through closer to 7:30pm.
On Sunday at the Classic Sale, a deliberate strategy by Inglis to speed up the auction process yielded quite a remarkable impact.
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