A filly by recently exported Belmont winner Empire Maker brought the only seven-figure price Thursday at Fasig-Tipton’s Florida select 2-year-old sale. Sold to Darley Stud owner Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum for $1.35 million, the bay daughter of the Pulpit mare Half A. P. had worked an eighth-mile in 10 seconds at the Monday under-tack show.
Two weeks before the Barretts March auction of 2-year-olds, the mood this year is better than in 2010.
The youngsters Lucky Pulpit and Papa Clem are likely to dominate California’s Thoroughbred stallions in book sizes this spring, with each expected to attract 100 mares. For many other stallion owners, the current breeding season will be a struggle to attract a significant number of mares. To drive business, some farm owners have continued a practice from recent years of discounting stud fees, or offering incentives on racing results of the offspring to lure mares to their stallions.
Pauls Mill Farm owner Ben Walden, Jr., has joined forces with selling agents Mark Toothaker and Jim Perrone to form a new consigning agency, Pauls Mill Sales.
Fasig-Tipton’s Florida select 2-year-old sale enters a new era Thursday. After 25 years at Calder Race Course in Miami, the auction has a new home at the Palm Meadows Training Center in Boynton Beach, and sale officials hope that the new setting for a new season of Thoroughbred sales might be symbolic of returning optimism in the market.
WinStar stallion Bluegrass Cat, 2010’s second-ranked freshman sire, will shuttle to Chile for the 2011 Southern Hemisphere breeding season, the central Kentucky farm has announced.
Grade 1 winners Yankee Victor and The Groom is Red have died in Korea within the last month, according to a blog covering Korean racing and breeding. Both Yankee Victor and The Groom is Red were 15 and stood at stud on the Korean island of Jeju.
Four juveniles worked an eighth-mile in less than 10 seconds early during Fasig-Tipton’s Monday under-tack preview for the March 3 Florida select 2-year-old auction.
Grasshopper, a Grade 3 winner who was runner-up to Street Sense in the 2007 Travers, has retired to stud at Lane’s End Texas in Hempstead, Tex.
Fasig-Tipton Texas has cataloged 167 horses to its 2-year-olds in training sale that will be held at Lone Star Park near Dallas on April 5.
