Harness racing got its newest "million dollar baby" during Monday night's opening session of the 2025 Lexington Selected Yearling Sale, as HIP 70 Dejeuner, a Walner filly consigned by Kentuckiana Farms as agent, was purchased by Winning Key Inc. for $1 million. Bred by Marvin Katz and Al Libfeld, Dejeuner is the third foal out of the Father Patrick mare French Cafe, who earned $228,331 and took a mark of 1:52 3/5 during her career. French Cafe's initial offspring was the Muscle Hill daughter French Champagne [$589,356, 1:51 4/5], and French Cafe is out of 2008 Hambletonian Oaks champion Creamy Mimi. "My investment is to go on to make her a broodmare eventually. I'm in this for the fun of it," said Patty Key, whose late husband was prominent owner and breeder Robert J. Key. "This gives me a chance to actually enjoy the racing part because previously my husband had so many horses that it just wasn't fun anymore. It became just constant stress and making decisions, and he started to lose interest and focus. After he passed, I had to reinvent the stable and the whole entire breeding program. His horses were starting to die out and the pedigrees just weren't there. It's not going to be a big operation, but it's going to be a quality operation where I can breed the best to the best and enjoy selling." Noel Daley, who trains New Jersey Sire Stakes champion Emmas Mystery CCL for Key, will also train this one, and while he signed the ticket, he wasn't expecting it would be for the price it would up being. "We picked out five for them, but you wanted the residual value for them as a broodmare. I wanted something that can do it on the track as well, so we were looking for something that could hopefully do both," Daley offered. "That wasn't the number we were talking. We talked this afternoon and she said 'what do you think?' I said 'I'm hoping $275,000-$300,000, but I'm thinking probably more $400,000.' She said 'I'll sit behind you and I'll just tap you and tell you.' I didn't expect for one minute that I was going to keep tapping at that number. That was pretty crazy." Three of the four $1 million yearlings have been sold at the Lexington Selected Yearling Sale, and co-manager David Reid was delighted with the result. "You can't do it without the breeders and the consignors. It's very rewarding to do that tonight, but there's a lot of hard work, a lot of luck and everything has to line up," Reid remarked. "As they say, you have to tick all the boxes. When it happens, it's fascinating and it's fantastic for all sides. Mrs. Key, she's retooled her program. It started three or four years ago and God bless her." Coming in behind Dejeuner at $900,000 was HIP 94 Turtle Dove. Another Walner filly, Turtle Dove was bred by Sunset Stables LLC. and Steve Stewart, and she is the first foal out of When Dovescry (1:50, $2,097,822). She was consigned by Hunterton Sales Agency as agent. "I'm tired after that. It was too stressful," said Jeff Snyder, who purchased Turtle Dove with S R F Stable and Marcus Melander will train. "It was higher than I was thinking. We thought $800,000 but then it went up to $900,000. It's the same partnership as Apex. When Dovescry was great, one of the best ever, so we decided to take a shot. It's tough to spend that kind of money, but hopefully with her pedigree we'll have some residual value as well. "She looked very powerful, good-looking. We had her checked out every which way. We looked at her four or five times, looked her in the eye and we said 'okay, let's go for it.'" HIP 4 Tyndall, a Gimpanzee filly, got things off to a quick start during the session after she was purchased by Martinez Equine as agent for $800,000. Also bred by Stewart and partners and consigned by Hunterton Sales Agency as agent, she is a half-sister to Mission Brief and Tactical Landing. "All the speed that we as harness people are enjoying right now is coming from this page. Tactical Landing showed not only speed on the track, he showed a lot of courage. Mission Brief is now the dam of Apex, and the other sister is the dam of Go Dog Go, so if there's anything happening in the game, it's happening on this page," noted Ernie Martinez, while adding that Per Engblom will train Tyndall. "This is the last foal of the mare. Individual-wise, I think she's as good as any of them. Yes, she could be bigger, but we don't get the pleasure of having a beauty contest, we get the pleasure of having a performance contest. I like her chances. "I thought $650,000 was going to catch her, but I wasn't going to let her go. The page is too hot and worth too much. She's worth this much every day of her life. We've already pieced out probably 75 percent of her." ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter Buoyed by having the night's second- and third-highest priced sellers, Stewart's Hunterton Sales Agency had the top gross and the second-highest average among consignors. "It's pretty nice. We knew we had a lot of nice horses," Stewart offered. "A lot of times we judge our horses by the opinions of the people that look at them. Instead of telling everybody, we let them tell us. Everybody said, 'oh you're going to have a great sale,' and so you kind of keep your expectations in check, at least I do, because there's nothing worse than getting too fired up and then it goes the other way on you, which it does sometimes. We did have a lot of nice horses, a lot of trotters like a lot of people. The mares have produced and we've bought a lot of new mares - Fire Start Hanover and some of them. It's a lot of work but it's very, very rewarding. We've got a lot of great help and I'm very fortunate. "Steve Jones has done very good and Crawford. If you take a nice horse in there, there's money for it, that's for sure. That's very encouraging for breeders and the business. It wasn't always like this. We've done it for 45 years. You have to constantly improve. Hopefully you raise good horses, get a good reputation, be honest and fair with people and try to steer them in the right direction buying horses so you get people to come back. Jeff Snyder buys Apex for $525,000 and he's the best colt in the country, God knows what he's worth and comes back and buys another one from us for $900,000. You build confidence in the buyers by selling them good horses basically." Stewart and his farm have also gotten a further boost by what his horses like Maryland, Apex and Endurance have shown on the track over the last couple of years. "To be honest, what happened last Saturday night was more impressive to us than what these horses sold for. Finishing first and second in the Mohawk Million, you can't do any better than that," he said. "Because you're doing that, then it feeds off itself. It's no different than a trainer that wins a lot of races, he's going to get a lot of horses to train; a stallion that produces a lot of really good horses, he's going to have a lot of mares to breed. It works that way, which is the way it should be. It wasn't always like this for Cindy and I. There were plenty of times we'd have one horse on the first day and maybe it didn't sell so well. You get discouraged for one night, but you have to play the game. You have to step up and spend money. What we've done is partnered up with a lot of people to be able to buy more mares, higher-priced mares, and it's worked very well." Leading the colt side of the ledger was HIP 50 Valorous at $575,000. Purchased by agent David McDuffee, by Alrajah One, and consigned by breeder Cameo Hills Farm, he is the first foal out of Dan Patch and O'Brien Award winner Venerable ($1,187,798). "Venerable is one of the best horses I ever had. This is an outcross stallion potentially, and he's a beautiful colt," McDuffee stated. "I'll bring a couple of guys in with me, I probably won't keep the whole thing, but I'll have a good chunk of it. You can't win without getting in. I don't buy that many colts at that level, but I thought he was kind of special. He's a beautiful horse, there's no question about that. I've been watching him since he was born. "We weren't walking away. We were a long ways from done with him. The price was what I hoped it would be. I thought it would be a little more." McDuffee also said that the horse will likely be trained by Nifty Norman. Overall, the session finished down off last year's record average ($181,675 this year versus $190,547 in 2024), and the gross also dipped to $21,801,000 for 120 horses sold from $22,294,000 for 117 horses sold a year ago. Despite that, Reid was still very pleased with how things went. "We talk about it all the time, and you really can't make light of it, the breeders who are having successful sales now are reinvesting into the game. The residual value right now has been holding up very well over the last number of years," he said about the strength that trotting fillies showed. "The crowd was great and I thought the energy was great. I think the auctioneers did a great job keeping a good pace. I'm happy to have it in the books and walking around and talking to the consignors, everyone seemed generally happy. It's a great marketplace. The place was packed, everyone was here and you have internet bidding. The marketplace will tell you what your horse is worth and I'm satisfied with tonight's results." Reid also added that there should be something for everybody throughout the rest of the week to look at and bid on. "If you work the grounds and you go through the consignments and do your homework, I think you'll be rewarded. It's always good to sell horses on the top but there's going to be a lot of them sold in the middle, and you've just got to be prepared to pull the trigger," he said. "It's going to be very interesting to see how the market does hold up, what the depth of it is, jurisdictionally, pacing versus trotting. Just being on the sales grounds, I sense the market is going to be good. Do I think we're going to repeat last year? Doesn't have to happen. "Saturday we started showing, Sunday we showed, and all the buyers are here, the number of lookers are here, the traffic is here. I think it's consistent year-over-year. You have a little bit of a change of sires. You don't have a lot of first crop sires on the pacing side, so it's just going to be how things even out. People are going to find the level of what they want to buy and participate in and we'll go from there. I'm looking forward to a good day tomorrow. We start off with the charity breedings, which is a great cause. Hopefully that'll get us off to a good start and we'll have a good day tomorrow and the rest of the week." The sale now switches to an afternoon "post time" Tuesday through Thursday at 1 p.m. (EDT). As Reid mentioned, Tuesday's session will start with the Breeders Crown Charity Challenge auction for stallion shares and then HIPs 131-358 will go through the ring. --quotes by Derick Giwner--