Filly a $5.2M world record

A $5.2 million King Kamehameha filly set a world foal or weanling record on Tuesday and jump-started the Japan Racing Horse Association's summer foal sale at the Northern Horse Park on the island of Hokkaido.

The Tuesday session was the first of two selling foals and followed the company's first yearling sale on Monday, which set a Japanese yearling mark of $1.79 million for a Pivotal colt out of Veil of Avalon. Both the top-priced yearling and the world-record filly foal involved the same connections: seller Katsumi Yoshida's Northern Farm and buyer Nobutaka Tada.

The $5.2 million filly's price beat the previous foal record of $4.5 million that Fusao Sekiguchi paid for a Dance in the Dark-Air Groove colt at the horse association's 2004 summer sale. Northern Farm was the consignor of that colt, too.

The sale was to continue on Wednesday with the second and final foal session.