Every August, the best yearlings bred in New York State are offered at the Fasig-Tipton sale on East Avenue in Saratoga.

In 2019, the average price for a yearling at the sale was $87,000, with the sale topper going for $775,000.

In 2021, the top seller brought $495,000, the average rising to $91,000. At Saratoga in the summer, New York-breds are in demand.

But in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, that sale didn’t take place. Instead, New York-breds were folded into a yearling sale that took place in Kentucky in early September.

And so Sterling Silver, a 2019 New York-bred by the Maryland-based stallion Cupid, missed the opportunity to be showcased at the premier sale of horses bred in New York.

That was not the best news for her breeders, Mallory and Karen Mort of Gallagher’s Stud Farm in Ghent, Columbia County, but it might have been a very good thing for the man who bought the filly, Mark Anderson.

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