Sierra Farm sells million-dollar yearling for late patriarch

Sierra Farm patriarch Ed Hudon died last Thursday, just a day after an American Pharoah colt bred and raised by his operation sold for $1.4 million to Larry Best’s OXO Equine to top a session of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale.

“I always wanted to sell a million-dollar horse, so when Ed died the next day, I feel like that was his last gift to me,” Hudon’s widow, Sharon, told Keeneland publicity.

Ed Hudon purchased the colt’s dam, the multiple Grade 2-winning Pulpit mare Bsharpsonata, for $375,000 out of the 2016 Keeneland November breeding stock sale.

The bay colt, foaled on May 13, 2017, was raised at Sierra Farm – and farm manager Michael Callanan said the colt was raised to be a tough racehorse.

“We like to stand behind our horses,” Callanan said. “We raise them tough. There was [another] gray American Pharoah colt. The two of them were literally turned out together right up to the day of the sale. They were kicking the living daylights out of each other right up to the sale. We try to raise racehorses, because we end up racing a lot of them sometimes.”

Sierra Farm, which has campaigned Grade 3-winning homebred Nessy, has a band of about 30 broodmares – including Bsharpsonata, the dam of Grade 2-placed Vigilante, Grade 3-placed Play It Loud, and stakes-placed Mihrab. Bsharpsonata is a half-sister to multiple graded stakes-winning juvenile Backtalk. The mare did not have a foal this season, but was in the first book for mares for champion Arrogate this year.