ARCADIA, Calif. - Joey Franco, a four-time stakes winner in 2003, has been named California-bred champion older male and champion sprinter and is a leading contender for the horse of the year title, which will be announced Monday in Sacramento.
Joey Franco earned the two divisional championships through voting conducted by the members of the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association.
There was some ambivalence going into the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's sale of 2-year-olds in training Tuesday. Mike Gill, last year's leading buyer with 32 purchases for $2.9 million, had served notice that because of a brouhaha with the management of Calder Race Course he would not attend Tuesday's sale, nor the Fasig-Tipton 2-year-old auctions to be held at Calder later this month.
New York's breeding industry is still reeling from the sudden death of breeder and owner Jerry Nielsen, who suffered a heart attack on Feb. 2.
Nielsen, 69, was unanimously elected to a second two-year term as president of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders last month.
Dennis Brida, executive director of the NYTB, said Nielsen was a unique individual.
"He always was steady, nothing upset him," Brida said. "He also was one of the kindest people I knew. He never had an ax to grind with anybody. He's going to be sorely missed."
A blockbuster sale at Timonium in the dead of winter? It had happened in the past, and the numbers sizzled once again at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic winter mixed sale on Monday.
Compared with 2003, which was an off year for this auction, the gross ($1,303,000) soared 175 percent and the average price ($9,871) was up 123 percent. The median ($5,000) increased 67 percent.
Edward Evans's Spring Hill Farm near Casanova, Va., suffered a double blow last month with the deaths of Grade 2 winner Withallprobability and her Grade 3-winning daughter With Ability.
Evans said Wednesday that Withallprobability died Jan. 14 at the Kentucky Equine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center after a lengthy battle with laminitis. She was 16. The mare's 6-year-old daughter, With Ability, died after fracturing a pastern.
Consignor W.D. "Willie" North hit one straight out of the park in the final minutes of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's select 2-year-old sale at Miami's Calder Race Course on Tuesday night, selling a $1.6 million colt that shattered the auction house's previous record for a 2-year-old and helped lift the sale across the board.
The Ocala Breeders' Sales Company kicked off the select 2-year-old season with a spate of expensive juveniles topping the bill at its one-day auction at Calder Race Course on Tuesday.
As of 6 p.m., a pair of $500,000 colts by Horse Chestnut and Siphon were the day's top lots. Michael Tabor's agent, Demi O'Byrne, signed for both.
The late Jeanne Vance's bloodstock will be dispersed this year, starting with 11 racing-age horses that the Eaton Sales agency will offer at Keeneland's April 2-year-old sale.
That first draft from Vance's stable will consist of juveniles and older horses of racing age by such stallions as A. P. Indy, Danzig, Deputy Minister, Fusaichi Pegasus, Kingmambo, Storm Cat, and Lemon Drop Kid, the 2000 champion older male raced by Vance and her husband Milton "Laddie" Dance, who died in December 2002. Jeanne Vance died on Dec. 15, 2003.
Angel Fever, dam of 2000 Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus, died Friday after a paddock accident at Arthur Hancock III's Stone Farm, the farm announced Monday.
According to a statement issued by the farm, 14-year-old Angel Fever fractured her pelvis, severing a major artery. Angel Fever, a daughter of Danzig and the Halo mare Rowdy Angel, was in foal to Seeking the Gold.