Barretts kicks off season with mixed sale

The Barretts January mixed sale Wednesday is the first of six auctions the sale company will hold in Del Mar, Calif., this year, the organization’s first full year of operating on the grounds of the racetrack.

Typical of such sales, Wednesday’s includes a wide array of consignments: stallions, broodmares and broodmare prospects, horses of racing age, 2-year-olds, and yearlings. The sale begins at 11 a.m. and offers 196 horses in the main catalog and 12 supplemental entries, before withdrawals.

The listings include the stallions Big Bad Leroybrown and Vronsky; Chokecherymary, an 8-year-old stakes winner at Santa Anita who sells as a broodmare prospect; yearling prospects from the first crops by Champ Pegasus, Shanghai Bobby, and Smiling Tiger; and 2-year-olds from first-year stallions Coil and Empire Way.

Other yearlings include a colt by Big Bad Leroybrown who is a half-brother to the active stakes winner Poshsky and a colt by First Samurai out of Hisse, a multiple stakes winner at Evangeline Downs, Fair Grounds, and Louisiana Downs.

The 2-year-olds will sell toward the end of the sale and include a filly by Paddy O’Prado who is a half-sister to Johnny Eves, winner of the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita in 2007, and a colt by leading California stallion Unusual Heat out of Ode to Elaine, a multiple stakes winner in Arizona and New Mexico.

Barretts moved its base of sales operations from Pomona, Calif., to Del Mar last spring, and held four sales there from May through October. Wednesday’s sale will be followed by a select sale of 2-year-olds in training March 30; a sale of 2-year-olds in training May 25; the paddock sale of race-ready horses July 16; a yearling sale in August; and a fall sale of yearlings and horses of racing age Oct. 17.

The date of the yearling sale has not been finalized. In 2015, the January sale and select 2-year-olds in training sale were held in Pomona.

At the 2015 January mixed sale, 248 horses sold for $2,104,800, an average of $8,487, according to sale company records. The number sold rose from 224 in 2014, a year in which the gross reached $1,944,900 and the average was $8,683.

Last year, the top seller was Stormy Gigi, a stakes-producing mare in foal to Kodiak Kowboy, purchased for $50,000 by Ron Stolich. The strongest category for the sale was 2-year-olds, with 64 horses selling for an average of $11,086, according to sale company records.