Ithinkisawapudycat keeps paying off for Ashview Farm

The Lyster family’s Ashview Farm bought Ithinkisawapudycat, a stakes-placed broodmare prospect by Bluegrass Cat, for $240,000 at the 2012 Keeneland November breeding stock sale. She has since paid for herself many times over.

Ithinkisawapudycat was bred to Tapit for her first mating, and the ensuing foal was Sweet Loretta, who sold as a weanling for $750,000 and became a Grade 1 winner.

Her second foal, the Tapit colt Airtouch, earned the second-highest price of the 2016 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July yearling sale, bringing $450,000. Later that year, Ashview sold the mare in foal to Constitution for $2.2 million at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale.

The run of commercial success continued on Tuesday at the Keeneland September yearling sale when Bridlewood Farm bought the mare’s final Ashview-bred yearling, a Street Sense filly, for $750,000. The transaction brought to a close a run at auction for Ithinkisawapudycat that cleared $4.15 million between herself and her first three foals.

“We have three things that we go after [in broodmares]: pedigree, conformation, or race record,” Gray Lyster said. “We’ve got to have two of three, and we usually can’t afford three of three.

“She had a dynamite physical and a nice family, and she had an okay race record. She was black type, but she didn’t blow off the doors. If she’d have also been a graded stakes winner, we wouldn’t have been able to afford her at the $240,000 range.”