Sunnyfield Farm's very good month could continue on Showcase Day

New York-breds have stolen the stage at the top level this year, with runners like Audible, Diversify, Mind Your Biscuits, and Voodoo Song winning in Grade 1/Group 1 company. Statebreds will have the stage all to themselves on Friday at Saratoga as the track hosts New York Showcase Day, featuring six stakes for statebreds worth a total of $1.25 million.

Breeder Joanne Nielsen’s Sunnyfield Farm in Bedford, N.Y., is coming off a star turn at both Fasig-Tipton yearling sales in Saratoga earlier this month. The operation gets the chance to take a bow during Friday’s state showcase card, as Fasig-Tipton graduate Red Zinger, who is stakes-placed although still a maiden, goes in the $200,000 Funny Cide Stakes for juveniles. Red Zinger, from the first crop of Will Take Charge, is trained by Gary Contessa for Harold Lerner. He was a $170,000 purchase out of last year’s Fasig-Tipton New York-bred yearling sale.

Nielsen has been involved with New York breeding and racing for four decades. Her late husband Gerald was president of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders. Sunnyfield graduates include Grade 1-winning millionaire Capades and multiple graded stakes-winning millionaire Upstart. In order to support the New York industry, Joanne Nielsen typically sends her yearlings through Fasig-Tipton’s statebred auction, including Upstart, who raced for Ralph Evans, who currently campaigns Diversify. But in 2016, Nielsen bred two of Sunnyfield’s eight mares to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in his first season at stud. The quality of the resulting yearlings led Nielsen, in concert with Francis and Barbara Vanlangendonck’s Summerfield Sales, which advises her and consigns her yearlings as agent, to split them up at the sales. One of the yearlings, a half-brother to Upstart, went to the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, while the other, a filly, was sent later in the week to the Fasig-Tipton New York-bred yearling sale.

“You always need to be in the top end of your sale,” Francis Vanlangendonck said. “Joanne loves to support [the New York program]. Really, I didn’t want to have two American Pharoahs in the same consignment, so we split them up. It could have gone either way and been fine.”

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The placement of both American Pharoah yearlings proved prudent. The colt sold for $1 million to Coolmore’s M.V. Magnier, with Bob Baffert acting as agent. The filly, from the family of Grade 1 winners Denman’s Call, Evening Jewel, and General Challenge, sold for $450,000 to pinhookers Randy Hartley and Dean De Renzo

Francis Vanlangendonck gave the credit to Nielsen’s team at Sunnyfield

“Joanne’s the one who did it,” he said. “Her crew got the horses ready, they sent them to me, and we showed for three days. You can’t have horses like that without people like them.”