Ladies’ Classic winner Royal Delta, the only 2011 Breeders’ Cup winner to be offered at Kentucky’s November sales, came from Churchill Downs to Keeneland’s auction ring Tuesday and blew the roof off the market, selling for $8.5 million to Benjamin Leon’s Besilu Stables.
Gio Ponti, the three-time champion who finished fourth in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Mile, has been retired and will stand at Castleton Lyons, the Lexington farm that also raced him. He will have a fee of $20,000 in his first stud season.
Three Chimneys has announced it will raise 2001 Horse of the Year Point Given’s stud fee from $7,500 to $20,000 for the 2012 breeding season, a move that comes after an unidentified private investor committed 25 classy mares to him.
Fillies and mares from the late Ned Evans’s Spring Hill dispersal set the Keeneland November breeding stock market alight Monday and produced the highest broodmare price that auction has seen since 2007.
Twitter updates by DRF's Glenye Cain Oakford from the first day of the Keeneland November sale. Follow @DRFInsidePost on Twitter or on the home page of DRF.com for the latest updates.
The $2.3 million sale-topper Funny Moon led a parade of 13 million-dollar mares Sunday at the one-night Fasig-Tipton November auction, and they pushed the sale to huge gains in average and median over last year’s figures. The session sold 79 horses for $32,745,000, up 11 percent from last year’s $27,996,500 gross for 89 horses. The 2011 average price jumped 32 percent, from $314,567 last season to $414,494, and median roared up by 54 percent, from $130,000 last year to $200,000.
Stacelita, who finished 10th as the 9-5 favorite in Friday's $2 million Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf, has been sold to Terry Yoshida and will be retired to become a broodmare in Japan, trainer Chad Brown said Saturday morning.
Hat Trick, currently ranked third among freshman sires, will move from Walmac Farm to Gainesway Farm in 2012. Both are in Lexington, Ky. Gainesway has purchased what it termed "a significant interest" in Hat Trick, a 10-year-old Sunday Silence horse, but did not disclose the percentage it now owns.
The success of summer and fall yearling sales have officials confident about Fasig-Tipton November and Keeneland November.
Godolphin's Grade 1-winning A. P. Indy horse Girolamo has retired from racing and will make his stud debut in New York, Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum's Darley organization announced late Wednesday afternoon.
