Flatter colt sells for $925,000 at Ocala Breeders' Sales Company sale

Kaleem Shah gave the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s select 2-year-old market a lift Wednesday morning, bidding $925,0000 for a Flatter colt. The colt, Hip No. 265, had the under-tack show’s co-fastest quarter-mile time, 20.6 seconds, last week.

Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert signed the ticket for Shah.

The price was the two-day auction’s highest and came on a day of moderate declines in median and a small decline in average.

OBS restructured the two-day sale this year, combining its February and March select sales into a single, 490-horse catalog. The new format made meaningful session-to-session comparisons difficult. After the final hammer fell, the auction had sold 244 horses for $25,563,000, up 44 percent from 2010’s aggregate for 167 horses. The two-day average price of $104,766 was down very slightly, falling from last year’s $106,383. Median fell 7 percent, from $75,000 last year to $70,000.

Buybacks also dropped, from 30 percent last year to 24 percent.

Eisaman Equine consigned the sale-topper, a son of the unraced Quiet American mare Silence Please. The colt is a half-brother to stakes winner Sky Music. The last time he was in an auction ring, he sold for $90,000 at Fasig-Tipton’s Saratoga New York-bred preferred yearling sale; Cobra Farm was the buyer.

“He was a very nice horse, and it was evident when people began to look at him that he was going to be special,” consignor Barry Eisaman said of Wednesday’s $925,000 session topper. “He was well received by everyone who buys high-quality horses, and they were all here. It was a situation where there was a wonderful colt in front of a group of like-minded buyers who wanted such a nice young prospect.”

Eisaman sold the colt on behalf of Cobra Farm. He said the colt would go into training with Baffert.

Flatter already is the sire of five racing-age crops and runners such as 2011 graded stakes winner Tar Heel Mom. But Wednesday’s bidders clearly were willing to take chances on young sires. Those with promising early records fared best: Lane’s End Bloodstock paid $500,000 for the Niall Brennan agency’s Bernardini half-sister to Grade 1 winner Dream Rush. Soldat’s young sire War Front had a $375,000 colt out of True Gritz that the Parrish Farms agency sold to agent Steve Young. Hartley/De Renzo sold a Silver Train half-brother to Grade 1 winner Mona de Momma to Rick Porter’s Fox Hill Farm for $350,000. Another at that price was Hip 403, a Hard Spun half-brother to Cherokee Triangle that Jess Jackson purchased from Scanlon Training Center. And First Samurai’s juveniles featured a $220,000 filly out of A Touch of Glory that Halcyon Hammock Farm’s agency sold to Mark Casse, one of three expensive horses the trainer bought.

Several of those were highly profitable pinhooks for their sellers. The Silver Train sibling to Mona de Momma brought just $30,000 last year as a yearling, and the $375,000 War Front-True Gritz colt previously sold for $42,000 as a yearling.

Some first-crop stallions also had notable prices in the auction ring. Earlier in the session, Casse picked up a $320,000 colt by the late Lawyer Ron, a son of Steal the Show offered by Classic Bloodstock. And Hip No. 277, Crupi’s New Castle Farm’s Half Ours colt out of Skyladysky, drew $275,000 from Will Wright.

Among the highest-priced juveniles sold Wednesday were Hip No. 329, a $450,000 Medaglia d’Oro-User History filly, another Casse purchase, from the Eddie Woods agency; Hip No. 371, a $400,000 Smart Strike-Aspen Tree colt that Jack Sims acquired from Excel Bloodstock, agent; Hip No. 453, a $350,000 Street Cry half-sister to Critical Eye, whom the Jerry Bailey agency sold to Hardacre Farm; Hip No. 407, a $340,000 Trippi-Burn Brightly filly that Ocala Stud sold to Smack Down Farms; Hip No. 463, a $325,000 Malibu Moon-Deputy Cures Blues half-brother to Wine Police that Casse bought from James Layden’s agency; and Hip No. 379, a $310,000 Tapit-Barsanti filly that Excel Bloodstock sold to Donver Stable.