Foal Pinhooks: Biomechanics as a Pinhooking Strategy

2023 was the first year that we used our biomechanics and conformation models to evaluate foals. Previously we had predominantly been using these analytical techniques on yearlings and 2yos as our main focus.

I’ve always been a bit weary about using this as a foal evaluation technique, as the coverage of videos and images is lower at the foal sales. You’re also further away from racetrack performance outcomes, such as what we are trying to model in our yearling and 2yo models. But we wanted to give it a go with some live testing to see how the foals we evaluated in 2023 performed as pinhook prospects as yearlings sold in 2024.

In context of the aspects above, we changed our target variable in our modeling approach to be “Commercially Profitable Pinhook” rather than “Elite Track Perfomer (Stakes Winner)”.

At the 2023 Goffs November Foal Sale we evaluated 213 foals through our walk biomechanics model and 190 foals through our Conformation Analysis Model.

This sale was a positive sale for foal pinhookers, of 582 foals purchased that were subsequently offered as yearlings, the average profit was €29,031 and the median €9,600. That’s against an average foal purchase price of €34,973 and median of €24,000. The average pinhook return across all lots was +83.0% by average and +40% by Median.

Of the 1041 foals offered at the sale, 126 were not subsequently offered as a yearling. Now that may be because they were retained to race or because they didn’t make it to the yearling stage. This has to be considered by potential pinhookers, as not all foal purchases will make it to yearling stage. We can use this as a base estimation that 12% will not be subsequently offered at a yearling sale.

Unsold Foals

332 foals at the 2023 Goffs November Sale were unsold through the ring, that’s a 31.89% of the total group offered. Foals that rated elite on biomechanics returned a sale ratio of 18 unsold from 213 evaluated, that’s 8.45%. Rating elite on biomechanics as a foal gave a significantly higher chance of sale than not.

53 foals that rated “Non Elite” on biomechanics went unsold, from the population of 213 that’s 24.88%.

Foals with Elite Walk Biomechanics

Foals that rated elite on biomechanics returned an average pinhook profit from foal sales price to yearling sales price of €31,997, with a median profit of €15,750 across all pinhooks. When keep is incorporated the average pinhook profit per foal was €16,997.

The best return was Lot 338 Space Blues x Ziarah, who was a €58,000 foal purchase by Repender Stud and returned €156,200 as a yearling. He was a 85.71 elite rated walker on foal biomechanics and also returned as elite from our conformation model. Here are our top rated foals from that sale on biomechanic scores and what they returned commercially as yearlings.

Conformation Model & Ratings

Our foal image conformation analysis model performed better than the walk biomechanics model in delivering profitable pinhook returns. Elite rated foals here returned an average of €37,785 profit per yearling from foal sales price to yearling sales price. When 15k keep is incorporated that returned €22,785, for a ROI of +61.68% on top of an average foal purchase price of €36,936.

Here’s how our foal ratings based on the conformation model performed:

Lot 397 Blue Point x Cobblestone was the highest returner. Rated 99.97/100 as a foal in terms of profitability prospects she was a €75,000 foal purchase, turned into a €580,000 yearling.

Here are our full ratings from the 2023 Goffs November Foal Sale.

We are providing ratings and analysis for all upcoming Northern Hemisphere Foal Sales. For further details please get in contact at racingsquared@gmail.com