$1.8 million Win Win Win filly tops OBS March sale on final day

Freshman sires led the way on the third and final day of the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s March sale of 2-year-olds in training, with a $1.8 million Win Win Win filly and a $1 million Authentic colt bringing the curtain down on a breeze-up season opener with stable figures.

OBS reported that 447 horses sold over the past three days for gross receipts of $66,487,600, compared with 464 bringing $71,473,500 at the 2023 sale, which also was three sessions.

Five juveniles changed hands for seven figures this week – matching the number to do so at the 2023 edition, but not reaching that sale’s $2 million high-water mark. The cumulative average price finished at $148,742, ticking down just 3 percent from $154,038 last year. The median, considered a key figure in assessing market health, was unchanged at $75,000. The buyback rate was 25 percent in what has been a polarized and selective marketplace, compated to 21 percent last year.

The Win Win Win filly was purchased for $1.8 million by bloodstock agent Donato Lanni, on behalf of owner Amr Zedan, a prominent client for trainer Bob Baffert.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Zedan posited on the social media site X, alongside an image of the bay filly stretched out in her breeze during last week’s under-tack preview show. The filly blitzed a quarter-mile in 20 1/5 seconds on the Ocala Training Center's Safetrack, giving her the fastest quarter-mile time of the show.

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The filly’s $1.8 million price tag made her the overall sale-topper, with she and the Authentic colt sold Thursday joining a $1.2 million Tapit colt from Tuesday’s first session and a $1.5 million Not This Time colt and a $1.3 million Flatter colt sold Wednesday atop the leaderboard.

Win Win Win scored the biggest of his three stakes wins in the Grade 1 Forego Stakes in 2020. He stands at Ocala Stud, which bred his sale-topping filly in Florida and consigned her to OBS. She is out of the Union Rags mare Unamity, whose only starter is a winner. This is the immediate family of Grade 1 winners Discreet Cat and Discreetly Mine.

The Authentic colt who took the runner-up spot on Thursday’s leaderboard is the first seven-figure horse for the Spendthrift Farm sire, the 2020 Horse of the Year after winning the Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“I am sure this will be the first of many,” new owner John Stewart said of the price.

Stewart, a major new face on the auction scene, continued an upper-level buying spree that began last September by purchasing the colt in the name of his Resolute Bloodstock.

The Authentic colt, who worked a furlong in 9 4/5 seconds as part of a large group tied for the second-fastest time at the breeze show, was another prescient pinhook buy by Hartley/DeRenzo Thoroughbreds. The partnership purchased the colt from breeder Gainesway for $260,000 at the Keeneland September yearling sale. He became the outfit’s second seven-figure turnaround of the week, joining the Not This Time colt.

The Authentic colt is out of the stakes-placed Smart Strike mare Ruby Trust.

For hip-by-hip results from OBS March, click here.

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