Cartier Million Sale: Valentine Lamb goes to Goffs on Friday, and his front page article is about two people. One is Goffs managing director Jonathan Irwin. The second is not named, but described by Lamb as “one forlorn figure who runs a well-known middle of the road bloodstock operation’’.

Irwin is in a good mood about the week at Goffs: “It now has to be the best yearling sale in the world.’’ Lamb crunches the numbers. The Cartier Million Sale, in its second year, sees the average improve slightly to 93,018 guineas, although with a higher number of yearlings (266) than last year. The Premier Sale has a larger number of lots, 527. The aggregate rises to 5.35 million gns, but the average goes down from 14,556 last year, to this year’s 11,075 gns.