Keeneland January sale features Generazio dispersal
LEXINGTON, Ky. – A dispersal for breeder Patricia Generazio, several active stallions including an Eclipse Award champion, and others make up an eclectic catalog as the breeding stock sale season continues with the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale, beginning Monday.
The catalog for the four-day sale comprised 1,618 horses as of Friday morning, through the latest round of supplemental entries. The sale is organized into two two-session books. While the prime attractions are likely to be in-foal broodmares and young broodmare prospects ready for the breeding season, which begins next month, the sale also includes yearlings, horses of racing age, stallions, and stallion prospects.
“Because the January sale is held at the crossroads of racing and breeding seasons, the auction is a terrific opportunity for horsemen to plan for the future, whether they are breeders who seek broodmares and broodmare prospects for the coming breeding season or owners and trainers focused on the track and want to obtain newly turned yearlings and horses of racing age,” Keeneland vice president of sales Tony Lacy said.
High-profile dispersals have helped bolster the January sale in recent years, and this year’s sale includes the dispersal of Generazio, who with her late husband Frank has been a prominent owner for several decades, with her runners, mainly homebreds, amassing lifetime earnings of more than $32 million. Generazio has campaigned Grade 1 winners Discreet Marq and Presious Passion, as well as multiple graded stakes winners including Disco Partner and Pure Sensation. The Generazio program was presented with a lifetime achievement award for excellence in the New York-bred program in 2020.
“The quality of their program is in the strength of their mares and their ability to produce high-caliber racehorses with limited opportunity in terms of the stallions that they were bred to,” trainer Christophe Clement said in a release announcing the dispersal. “You can really see this with how many successful homebreds they have campaigned over the years. What they’ve accomplished is extraordinary.”
Denali Stud, as agent, will handle a January consignment of 54 horses from the Generazio dispersal. These include stakes winner Mischievous Dream, who is from the family of Presious Passion.
A number of horses from the family of Discreet Marq – who sold for $2.4 million to Moyglare Stud at the conclusion of her racing career – are on offer in the dispersal’s Book 1 selections, including her winning half-sister Marquet Legacy; stakes-placed Image of Noon; and stakes-placed Wave of Glory and her Goldencents yearling, who is a half-brother to stakes winner Treasure King. The dispersal’s Book 1 lots also include Pure Bode, who is a winning half-sister to Pure Sensation, and Sky Gazer, the dam of two stakes winners.
“We are grateful that Mrs. Generazio has entrusted us to handle this dispersal,” Denali’s Conrad Bandoroff said. “For buyers, this is an incredibly exciting opportunity to tap into these black-type families that have never been offered at auction.”
The Keeneland January sale also will include six stallions from Brad Kelley’s Calumet Farm operation, one of the nation’s leading breeders by earnings and which has regularly entered stallions in public sales to cull its operation. All six stallions, who are being consigned by Zach Madden’s Buckland Sales, as agent, were still entered in the sale as of Friday morning. In many cases, stallions entered in public sales are acquired in private sales prior to auction time. That was the case with another of this year’s Keeneland January stallion entrants, as Crestwood Farm entered Jack Milton in the catalog, and he has already been privately acquired to stand in California.
Calumet’s entries include Eclipse Award champion turf male Big Blue Kitten, a son of late leading sire Kitten’s Joy. Since entering stud in 2017, Big Blue Kitten has sired two stakes winners, including graded stakes winner Cellist. Another prominent son of Kitten’s Joy is on offer in Arlington Million winner Real Solution, who from his first five crops of racing age is the sire of five stakes winners, including Mexican champion Lagartijo.
Also on offer from the Calumet operation are multiple graded stakes winner Optimizer (by English Channel), the sire of graded winner Opalina; multiple Grade 1-placed stakes winner Mr. Z (Malibu Moon), who is the sire of Grade 1-placed stakes winner Eminent Victor from his first crop; Group 2 winner Producer (Dutch Art); and multiple graded stakes winner Hence (Street Boss), who entered stud in 2022.
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