Gilded Age can cap big month for Angela Renee
Grade 1 winner Angela Renee is the dam of a colt who sold for $1.75 million to rank among the top prices at the record-setting Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale earlier this month. That might look like a bargain if her son Gilded Age can best a strong lineup in the Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers Stakes later this week at Saratoga.
Angela Renee, by Bernardini, is out of the stakes-winning Deputy Minister mare Pilfer, herself a half-sister to multiple graded stakes winner India. That makes Angela Renee a full sister to multiple Grade 1 winner To Honor and Serve. The filly built on the strong family by winning the Grade 1 Chandelier Stakes as a 2-year-old in 2014. She placed in four other graded stakes during her 2- and 3-year-old seasons for breeder Siena Farm, including a runner-up effort in the Grade 1 Ashland Stakes.
Don Alberto Corp. purchased Angela Renee for $3 million at the 2015 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall selected mixed sale. She returned to race one more season in 2016, winning 2 of 3 outings, including the Lady’s Secret Stakes, before joining the outfit’s Kentucky broodmare band.
Angela Renee’s second foal is Gilded Age, by Medaglia d’Oro. The colt was a $600,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase by Robert Clay’s Grandview Equine, with breeder Don Alberto buying back in for a minority share. The colt was third in the Grade 3 Withers Stakes earlier this year – behind eventual Preakness Stakes winner Early Voting – before undergoing a long journey to finish 13th in the Group 2 U.A.E. Derby. He returned to action with an allowance win in July at Churchill Downs, and most recently was second in the Curlin Stakes at Saratoga to expected Travers foe Artorius.
“It’s a big mountain climb, but he seems to be getting better every race and we think he’ll like the distance,” Clay said.
As Gilded Age trained toward the Travers at Saratoga, noted bloodstock agent Mike Ryan signed the sales ticket on Angela Renee’s Curlin colt for $1.75 million at Fasig-Tipton’s Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion down East Avenue. The colt, who was consigned by Taylor Made Sales as agent for Don Alberto, brought the fourth-highest price of the boutique auction, with the demand stretching higher than Ryan had expected.
“If he’s a Grade 1 winner, he’s worth a lot of money down the road because he’s got a great stallion future,” Ryan said. “To be honest, we were thinking about a million, a million and a half, but when you get up to these kinds of horses, it’s very hard to split them. If they’re good, they’re good, and they’ll reward you. It was a little more than we thought we’d have to go to, but we thought he was the best colt in the sale, best bred in the sale.”
Ryan said he purchased Angela Renee’s colt on behalf of a partnership, and that, while plans have not been decided, he will eventually go to an East Coast trainer, with Derby dreams in mind.
“We put a group together; Jeff Drown is one of them and a couple of other guys,” Ryan said. “Hopefully, we’re looking toward the first Saturday in May. He’s the complete package; finding a hole in him is tough. Great pedigree. You hear the same old stuff all the time. I don’t like to use the phrase ‘ticked all the boxes,’ but I couldn’t fault him. He’s an agile horse for a big horse, very smooth, beautiful pedigree, came off of a good farm.”
The entire family behind Angela Renee was in hot demand throughout the Saratoga selected sale. West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford Racing went to $1.5 million for an Uncle Mo colt who is from the same immediate family, as he is out of Secret Sigh, an unraced daughter of India, whose foals include Japanese Grade 1 winner Mozu Ascot.
Angela Renee herself will continue to build on that particular cross, as she produced an Uncle Mo filly in April. She was bred back to Curlin for a full sibling to her Saratoga seven-figure colt in 2023.