Eutrophia Farm dispersal brings $1.67 million

The dispersal of Elisabeth “Betty” Alexander’s Ohio-based Eutrophia Farm got the Fasig-Tipton horses of racing age sale off with a solid foundation Monday. The dispersal accounted for 22 lots – mainly mares, foals, and yearlings – selling for a total gross of $1,673,000, with an average sale price of $76,045. Taylor Made Sales Agency handled the consignment.

“The dispersal went unbelievably,” Taylor Made’s Leif Aaron said. “We had appraised the whole dispersal around $1.2 million and ended up bringing $1.67 million. Anytime you add the word ‘dispersal’ to the end of a sale, people come in droves, but I think what was really interesting about it was we’d never offered mares with foals before [at a racing-age sale], and the foals just looked fantastic, so it was really easy to go out and sell those when they looked as good as they did.”

The dispersal accounted for five of the sale’s top 10 prices, led by Kitness, a Storm Cat mare who sold with her Candy Ride colt to Ruis Racing for $205,000. Kitness, who sold carrying a foal from the first crop of Competitive Edge, hails from the family of champion Outstandingly, Grade 1 winner Sky Mesa, and Grade 3 winner Bernstein.

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The Eutrophia dispersal, in which horses were sold without reserve, helped the horses of racing age sale finish with a buyback rate of 21 percent, improving significantly from 32 percent last year. Removing the dispersal from consideration, the buyback rate finished at 28 percent.

Alexander and her late husband, Quentin, began breeding Thoroughbreds in 1970 and were often at or near the top of Ohio’s owner and breeder standings. They are best known for Magna Graduate, a multiple Grade 2 winner who earned more than $2.5 million.

- additional reporting by Joe Nevills