392 yearlings set for ring at Fasig-Tipton Midlantic fall sale

Both the champion and reserve champion of this summer’s Maryland Horse Breeders Association’s yearling show will return to the state fairgrounds in Timonium for this week’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic fall yearling sale.

The Midlantic sale, held over two sessions Monday and Tuesday, has a catalog of 392, including many yearlings eligible for the lucrative statebred programs around the region. While a sizeable portion of this year’s catalog was bred in Maryland, and there are the typical representatives from the center of the breeding industry in Kentucky, states such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia also are well represented.

“This year’s catalog [represents] a wide variety of national and regional sires and statebred programs,” Midlantic director of sales Paget Bennett said in a Fasig-Tipton press release. “Each year, the Midlantic fall yearling sale attracts new buyers based on recent graduate successes, which includes Spinaway winner Leave No Trace among more than 200 stakes wins and placings in 2022 and 2023. This is a sale not to be missed.”

Maryland breeders have a unique way to spotlight their statebred yearlings, and make them eligible for additional incentives, at the annual yearling show, which was held for the 89th time this past July. Classes for both males and fillies are further divided into those sired by Maryland stallions and those conceived out of state, and are judged by a nationally well-known horseman invited by the show committee. The four winners are then pitted against one another to select an overall champion and reserve champion. The Maryland yearling show has marked the first public appearance for a number of stars, including Eclipse Award champions Declan’s Moon, Safely Kept, and Smart Angle; Kentucky Oaks winner Cathryn Sophia; and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner Sharing.

All yearlings exhibited, whether they place or not, are eligible for yearling show purse awards, with $20,000 awarded to the top four money-winners racing as 2-year-olds and another $20,000 awarded the following year to the four highest-earning 3-year-old graduates. This provides another incentive to purchase these yearlings out of the Midlantic sale.

This year’s show was judged by trainer Ned Allard. From the individual class winners, he selected as the champion a colt from the first crop of Kentucky stallion Honor A. P., out of the Not For Love mare Flit. The colt, the second consecutive overall champion owned and bred by Dark Hollow Farm, had won the class for male yearlings foaled in Maryland but by out-of-state sires.

Allard’s reserve champion was Ann B. Jackson’s colt by Maryland stallion Holy Boss, who won the class for male yearlings foaled in Maryland and by a state sire. The colt also is out of a mare by the late perennial leading Maryland sire Not For Love, Barouchka.

“When you ask a trainer to look at horses, he’s looking for a good racehorse,” Allard said at the yearling show while making his selections. “They have to be good movers and have a good walk. You can accept some flaws, but these two seemed to be pretty clean with good walks. They stood out.”

Dark Hollow will offer its yearling show champion in its consignment of six yearlings at the Midlantic sale. The colt is a fourth-generation homebred for the farm, with his fourth dam being Safely Home, the dam of champion and Hall of Fame racemare Safely Kept. Dark Hollow’s consignment also includes another class winner from the yearling show, as a daughter of Northview Stallion Station resident Golden Lad was named the outstanding Maryland-bred filly by an in-state sire.

The Holy Boss colt, a June foal, will be consigned at the Midlantic sale by Marshall W. Silverman, as agent for Foxharbor Farm. The half-brother to stakes winners Artful Splatter and Taco Supream is one of 14 yearlings cataloged at this week’s sale for his sire, who stands at Maryland’s Anchor and Hope Farm.

Six other horses who earned top-three placings in their respective yearling show classes also are cataloged at this sale, including the Bolt d’Oro colt who was runner-up to the Honor A. P. overall champion in their class and the Mosler colt who was second to the Holy Boss in their class.

Last year’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic yearling sale, led by a $320,000 filly by Kentucky sire Uncle Mo, finished with 386 yearlings sold for gross receipts of $10,266,400. The average price was $26,597, an 8 percent drop from a record $28,845 in 2021, while the median also dropped 25 from a record mark, to $15,000 from $20,000. The buyback rate was 17 percent, relatively steady compared to 16 percent.

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