OBS spring sale keeps rolling with two seven-figure 2-year-olds in second session

A $1.75 million Medaglia d'Oro colt and a $1.3 million Mendelssohn colt led the way as the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co.'s spring sale of 2-year-olds in training hit its midway point with momentum on Wednesday evening.

OBS reported 178 juveniles sold on Wednesday, the second of four sessions overall, for gross receipts of $25,855,000. In last year's comparable second session, 196 horses sold for a total of $21,614,500. Last year's four-session sale finished with a record gross of $73,907,900. This year's sale has grossed $48,414,000 through two sessions, tracking well ahead of the $39,977,400 grossed at this point last year.

Wednesday's average price was $145,253, rising 32 percent compared to $110,278 in the comparable 2021 session. The median skyrocketed 74 percent, to $78,500 compared with $45,000. As with the first day of the sale, every figure improved but the buyback rate, showing a selective marketplace. The buyback rate was 19 percent, compared to 12 percent in this session last year.

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The session-leading Medaglia d'Oro colt was purchased by Red Baron's Barn and Rancho Temescal from the consignment of de Meric Sales, as agent. The colt had worked a furlong in 10 1/5 seconds during the under-tack preview show on the Ocala Training Center's all-weather Safetrack surface.

The colt is out of the unraced Ghostzapper mare Eltimaas, making him a half-brother to four winners, chief among those Breeders' Cup Sprint winner and Eclipse Award champion Drefong, who is now a leading young sire in Japan.

Eltimaas herself is a half-sister to Eclipse champion juvenile Action This Day. Grade/Group 1 winners Cannock Chase and Star Catcher appear on the catalog page, as does the hard-knocking millionaire Bankit.

A colt from the first crop of the globetrotting Mendelssohn was purchased by Mitsu Nakauchida later in the session. Mendelssohn, by Scat Daddy, won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf; on dirt, he was a Group 2 winner at Meydan and multiple Grade 1-placed in the U.S.

This colt, from the consignment of Scanlon Training and Sales, as agent, worked a furlong in 10 1/5 seconds. He is out of the unraced Malibu Moon mare Grace Is Gone, who in turn is out of Grade 1-placed Grace Anatomy, dam of stakes-placed Retro. This is the female family of champion Soaring Softly and of Grade 1 winner Plenty of Grace.

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