Fasig-Tipton sale: Breeders' Cup win raises price on Zagora to $2.5 million

A major catalog update helped raise the value of multiple Grade 1 winner Zagora, who brought $2.5 million at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall mixed sale on Monday night just three days after winning the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf.

The 5-year-old Green Tune mare, bred in France by Oceanic Bloodstock and Eric Puerari, is expected to return to the country of her birth, as she was purchased by Nicolas de Watrigant's Mandore International Agency. She was the second high-ticket purchase of the night for Mandore, which went to $1,525,000 to acquire Grade 1 winner Eden's Moon.

Oceanic Bloodstock consigned Zagora as a racing or broodmare prospect on behalf of owner Martin S. Schwartz.

"I think that's her fair market value," breeder Michel Zerolo of Oceanic said of the price. "[We] were hoping she would make $3 million or more, but the market decides what she's worth."

Zagora captured the Filly and Mare Turf on Friday at Santa Anita Park for her fifth graded stakes victory of 2012 and eighth graded/group win overall for her career. She won 10 of 22 career starts for earnings of $2,368,589.

Zagora’s Breeders' Cup win places the mare, who also won the Grade 1 Diana Stakes in 2011, in the conversation for the Eclipse Award as champion turf female.

"I would say she is the Eclipse Award winner," Zerolo said on Sunday. "I don't know how [they] are going to vote, but I would be heartbroken if she didn't get it. She's a wonderful filly because she's so consistent. Besides being really good, she's unbelievably consistent. She's never run a really bad race in her life."

This was the second time Zagora, who is out of the unraced Mtoto mare Zaneton, sold at public auction. She brought $139,394 at the 2008 Arqana Deauville August yearling sale. About two years later, Zerolo helped purchase Zagora for Schwartz, who sent her to trainer Chad Brown in the United States.

The last reigning Breeders' Cup winner offered at the Fasig-Tipton fall mixed sale was Awesome Feather, who brought a sale-topping $2.3 million in 2010 just two days after winning the Juvenile Fillies at Churchill Downs.