$250K Barretts purchase headed for stakes

ARCADIA, Calif. – Milton Freewater, a maiden race winner at Los Alamitos in April, was bought for $250,000 at the Barretts May sale of 2-year-olds in training at Del Mar on May 27. The colt is not far from his stakes debut.

Trainer Doug O’Neill said earlier this week that he is looking to run Milton Freewater in the $100,000 Everett Nevin Futurity at the Oak Tree at Pleasanton meeting July 3.

“He’s very professional,” O’Neill said. “I’ve only had a couple of days, but he seems like a special horse. When he won, he did it the right way.”

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Milton Freewater, a California-bred colt by Creative Cause, was purchased by O’Neill’s brother, bloodstock agent Dennis O’Neill, on behalf of Head of Plains Racing and Danny Kramer. Milton Freewater was the second-most-expensive horse purchased at the one-day sale and is likely to be the first runner from the sale to appear in a stakes.

The owners and trainers of four other horses that were listed as purchased at the sale said earlier this week that they are pointing their runners to races at the end of the Santa Anita spring-summer meeting, which ends July 10, or the Del Mar summer meeting, which begins July 15.

The most expensive horse at the sale was a Florida-bred Candy Ride colt purchased for $290,000 by Sophia Shah, daughter of owner Kaleem Shah. The colt will be trained by Bob Baffert, but is unlikely to start until Del Mar.

Baffert also will train a California-bred Lucky Pulpit filly bought by George Bolton for $150,000. The filly is not expected to race until Del Mar. Both are being given brief rests.

“We’ll send them out for awhile and we’ll see them at Del Mar,” Baffert said.

There were two fillies purchased for $120,000 – a California-bred Desert Code filly bought by Blinkers On Syndicate, and a Kentucky-bred Tapizar filly bought by Gary Broad.

Scott Sherwood of Blinkers On said the Desert Code filly has joined trainer Jeff Bonde at Pleasanton. Sherwood said the filly will be trained there and could be sent to race in Southern California, depending on how she progresses.

“If she shows the talent, she’ll be here,” he said. “We’d like to give her a shot with statebreds.”

The Tapizar filly has gone to Broad’s ranch in Southern California for a rest, trainer Scott Hansen said.

“She looks good,” he said. “It’s standard procedure to give them a few weeks.”

Milton Freewater was bred by the husband and wife team of Patty and Mike Harrington. Patty Harrington was the owner and trainer of Milton Freewater when the colt won a maiden race at 4 1/2 furlongs April 22 at Los Alamitos.

The Harringtons often race homebreds who are by stallions they raced. Among the stallions they raced are Creative Cause, Empire Way, and Swiss Yodeler, a former leading stallion in California.

Milton Freewater was the first winner for Creative Cause, who was trained by Mike Harrington. Creative Cause, who stands at stud in Kentucky, was third in the 2012 Preakness Stakes. Milton Freewater is out of Lovehi, who was third in the 2007 California Breeders’ Champion Stakes at Santa Anita. She was owned and trained by Patty Harrington.

“I raised Lovehi, so that was like selling my child,” Patty Harrington said earlier this week of Milton Freewater.

“We put a reserve of $200,000 on him. I was glad to get $250,000.”