Grade 1 winner Nonsuch Bay sells for $210,000

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Grade 1 winner Nonsuch Bay provided the buzz Sunday at Keeneland’s November breeding stock sale, where she was the only six-figure horse at the auction’s seventh session. Nonsuch Bay brought $210,000 from SF Bloodstock.

Cumulatively, the first seven session of the 13-day auction had sold 1,664 horses for a combined $132,349,800, which was down 9 percent from last year at the same point. Through last year’s seventh session, 1,545 horses had sold. The 2010 seven-day average stands at $79,537, down 16 percent, and the $35,000 median was off by 22 percent.

The seventh session alone grossed $4,845,000 for 279 horses, a 20 percent decline in aggregate compared with the equivalent session last year, when 260 horses sold. The average price fell 25 percent to $17,366, and median dropped by 40 percent, from $20,000 to $12,000.

Cataloged in foal to A P. Warrior, Nonsuch Bay was part of the Stonewall Farm consignment. Bluewater Sales, the court-appointed receiver in Stonewall’s bankruptcy, was the consignor.

Nonsuch Bay earned $747,078, including the Mother Goose Stakes, in a distinguished career that also featured victories in the Grade 2 Nassau County Breeders’ Cup Stakes and back-to-back wins at 4 and 5 in Gulfstream’s Banshee Breeze Handicap. Now 11, Nonsuch Bay is by Mr. Greeley.

The session’s top five prices Sunday were for mares, but Nonsuch Bay was the only mare to break the $100,000 mark. The session’s second highest price was the $85,000 that Josham Farms paid Pam and Marty Wygod (Lane’s End, agent) for the Bertrando mare Gentle Words. She is carrying a Candy Ride foal and already is the dam of Grade 1-placed stakes-winner Rush with Thunder, by Tribal Rule.

The session’s top-priced weanling was the Select Sales agency’s $77,000 Street Boss colt out of the stakes-placed Bluebird mare Ella Eria. The buyer signed as Uh Oh Farm. Street Boss’s first foals are weanlings this year.