Fasig-Tipton yearling sale has gains in average, median

A $180,000 Harlan's Holiday half-brother to Double Down Vinman led selling Wednesday at Fasig-Tipton Midlantic's Eastern fall yearling sale in Timonium, Md. The auction ended with increases in average and median prices.

After Wednesday's second session, the auction had sold 332 yearlings for $6,149,600. That was down 2 percent from last year, when a 17-percent larger catalog produced $6,273,800 in gross receipts for 392 yearlings. But the 2011 median shot up by 73 percent, from $5,350 last year to $9,250, and the average price advanced by 16 percent, from $16,005 to $18,523.

Buy-backs this year were 26 percent, down from last year's 30 percent.

Wednesday's session-topper, and the second-most expensive horse at the overall sale, was a bay Pennsylvania-bred Harlan's Holiday colt that Mr. and Mrs. Rick Abbott's Charlton agency sold to Barlar, LLC. The colt's half-brother by Out of Place, Double Down Vinman, has earned $466,428 and is a stakes winner. The yearling's dam is the Smart Strike mare Christmas Strike, a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Christmas Kid.

The sale-topper for both days was a $200,000 Hard Spun colt from Barbaro's family. Bradley Thoroughbreds bought that dark bay or brown colt, who is out of Grade 1-placed stakes winner Lucky Lavender Gal. A Carson City mare, Lucky Lavender Gal is a full sister to Barbaro's dam, La Ville Rouge, and already has produced Grade 3-placed Lavender's Lad and the stakes-winner Lavender Lass. The Fasig-Tipton sale yearling is a half-sibling to both of those runners.

Paramount Sales, agent, consigned the Kentucky-bred colt.