A PINHOOK COULD PAY DIVIDENDS! Internationally, the two prongs to pinhooking involve the purchase of weanlings for later sale as yearlings, or the purchase of yearlings for ready-to-run auctions. Every practitioner of the dark art has stories of their greatest successes, whether turning a fabulous profit, or finding a graded stakes-winner.
Oscar Foulkes writes that buying for RTR has been the dominant form of pinhooking in South Africa, with many opportunities to buy yearlings - although I found future Gr2 stakes-winner Wonderwall on a broodmare sale. The weanling to yearling market has been much less active, but it has its own stories, none bigger than the purchase of Vercingetorix as a weanling by the Riverton
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grooms, and his sale as a yearling for R1.4 million. This week’s CTS auction is an attempt to develop that market, both on the part of the sales company, and by the vendors. We don’t yet know if that market will ever grow to the level of pinhooking for RTR, but if we don’t make quality weanlings