Recent years have seen a surge in New York-breds successfully facing open company at the top levels of the game, including wins or placings in the Breeders’ Cup and the Triple Crown series. Among those standouts was Effinex, a Grade 1 winner who knocked heads with the likes of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Effinex returned to his home state to begin his stud career, but died suddenly after standing just one season, at age 7. Eight yearlings from his first and last crop will be featured at the Fasig-Tipton New York-bred yearling sale, which rides a wave of momentum from the strong program into this renewal on Aug. 11 and 12 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Effinex, by Mineshaft, raced as a homebred for Russell Cohen, who famously named the horse in reference to a tumultuous relationship with his ex-wife, and was trained by Jimmy Jerkens for most of his career. Effinex won the 2014 Empire Classic against New York-breds and earned statebred horse of the year honors in 2015, as he regularly faced top-level company with solid results. He won the Grade 3 Excelsior, won the Grade 2 Suburban over multiple Grade 1 winner Tonalist, and later finished third in the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup behind Tonalist and Wicked Strong. Effinex then finished second to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland, beaten 6 1/2 lengths while earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 112. Champion Honor Code was third, followed, in order, by Keen Ice, Tonalist, Hard Aces, Frosted, and Gleneagles. Effinex was the only member of the field who was not a Grade 1 winner. But that changed in his subsequent start, when he earned his signature victory, defeating Hoppertunity by three-quarters of a length in the Grade 1 Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs. The following year, Effinex won the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap and another edition of the Suburban, was second in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, and was third in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap. He retired at the end of that season with more than $3.3 million in career earnings. Effinex retired to Questroyal North in Stillwater, N.Y., just up the road from Saratoga, for the 2017 breeding season. He covered 110 mares that season, according to The Jockey Club’s Report of Mares Bred. That summer, Effinex was relocated to McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds to continue his stud career. However, in October he died in his stall of a pulmonary aneurysm. “It’s one of the most difficult moments and days of my life,” Cohen told Daily Racing Form at the time. “He just did everything so easy and was so cool. He was gorgeous.” Effinex’s eight yearlings in the New York-bred catalog include a colt out of stakes winner Queen Amira, the dam of stakes-placed Lupo’s Way; and yearlings out of stakes winners Double Mint and Margies Smile. In addition to the late Effinex, other New York-based stallions with their first crop of yearlings represented in the catalog for the Fasig-Tipton New York-bred sale are graded stakes winners Laoban, by Uncle Mo; and War Dancer, by War Front. New York’s longtime leading sire Freud again makes his presence felt with seven yearlings in the catalog. Leading New York sires Bellamy Road and Big Brown along with breakout young successes Central Banker and Mission Impazible also are represented. Last year’s New York-bred auction was led by a sale-record $600,000 Pioneerof the Nile colt as it bested the records for gross, average, and median established just the year prior. The two-day auction finished with 172 yearlings sold for gross receipts of $18,492,000, a gain of 14 percent from 2017. The average price was $107,512, soaring 21 percent, and the median was up 9 percent to $76,000. New York-breds in ‘open company’ While the Fasig-Tipton New York-bred yearling sale provides a showcase for the Empire State’s breeding program, a number of statebreds instead are ticketed for “open company” at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale the week prior. A dozen New York-breds were cataloged, prior to initial outs, for this year’s select sale, including several from a prominent state breeding program that has already made auction headlines this year. Chester and Mary Broman, perennial leading breeders and owners in New York, have begun to downsize some of their Thoroughbred holdings as they look ahead to preparing their estate. A Tapit colt out of their Grade 1-winning homebred Artemis Agrotera drew a high bid of $2 million at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s March sale of 2-year-olds in training, establishing a sale record. L.E.B signed the ticket for West Point Thoroughbreds, Rob Masiello, and Siena Farm. The Bromans later retained a one-third share in the colt, named Chestertown for their farm in New York. The Bromans, with Sequel Thoroughbreds acting as agent, had half of the dozen New York-breds set for the open Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale prior to outs, including an Uncle Mo filly out of Artemis Agrotera. The Bromans, who have long developed this family, also will offer a Pioneerof the Nile filly out of a half-sister to Artemis Agrotera. Also among the New York-bred offerings in the select sale is a half-brother to multiple Grade 1 winner and statebred horse of the year Diversify. The More Than Ready colt, bred by Fred W. Hertrich III and John D. Fielding, is consigned as agent by Taylor Made Sales. The bulk of the yearlings cataloged for the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected sale were bred in Kentucky, but in addition to the 12 New York-breds, there are eight Florida-breds, six Ontario-breds, five Pennsylvania-breds, three each bred in Louisiana and Virginia, and two each born in Ireland and Maryland.