Super Bowl prompts changes to sale

The Ocala Breeders' Sales Company has announced a major change in its 2007 schedule of 2-year-olds in training sales. The selected sale that had been scheduled for Feb. 6, usually held at Calder Race Course, will be transferred to the OBS home site in Ocala and delayed a week to Feb 13. The rationale behind this change is that Super Bowl XLI will be played on Feb. 4 at Dolphin Stadium, which is located less than a mile from Calder Race Course, and the crowds in the area would make it hard to conduct a sale two days later.

"There was no way we could handle the logistics of this sale with the Super Bowl next door," said Tom Ventura, the general manager and sales director for the OBS. "Hotel rooms for consignors, OBS personnel, and buyers will be hard to come by."

Ventura noted that Super Bowl Sunday would have been the day earmarked for the final under-tack show.

Concomitant with this change is a change of schedule for the annual OBS Racing Festival. The one-day program featuring six stakes races with combined purses of $380,000 is usually held in March in conjunction with the OBS March selected sale of 2-year-olds in training. It will be advanced in 2007 to Feb. 12, complementing the next day's auction.

Yearling time is here

Almost two months to the day after the last of Florida's '06 2-year-old sales went into the statistical annals, yearlings again take center stage. The OBS yearling sale is a five-day auction that runs Aug. 21-25. Meanwhile, the focus is on Fasig-Tipton's Kentucky July yearling sale, and 76 of the 477 yearlings cataloged for the July 17-18 sale are Florida-breds.

Of the Florida stallions in this sale, seven of them will be represented by first crops. These seven are: Essence of Dubai (two colts and one filly), Full Mandate (three colts and two fillies), Gulf Storm (one colt), Macho Uno (three colts), Milwaukee Brew (one colt and one filly), Pure Precision (one colt), and Repent (four colts and two fillies).

The 2000 Eclipse champion juvenile colt, Macho Uno, standing at Adena Springs South, is the sire of a varied trio of colts. The first, Hip No. 32, is a chestnut colt foaled in Kentucky. The next, Hip No. 63, is a gray or roan colt with Florida-bred credentials, while Hip No. 102, also a gray or roan colt, comes with registered Pennsylvania-bred benefits.

Two of these first-crop stallions won Grade 1 races: Macho Uno (Breeders' Cup Juvenile) and Milwaukee Brew (Santa Anita Handicap). Except for Pure Precision - who has a sprinting pedigree and lived up to it - the remaining stallions earned their black type at middle distances and beyond.

The Saratoga Fasig-Tipton selected yearling sale, Aug. 8-9, has cataloged 180 lots. Only eight of these are Florida-breds and of these Florida-breds, none are by stallions currently standing in Florida.

A good day for Snow Ridge

Snow Ridge, a chestnut horse by Tabasco Cat-Snow Forest, by Woodman, who stands at Padua Stables, sired his first two winners on July 1. Snow Lady, a daughter of Lady Oxmoor, by Digression, won her maiden for her breeder, Padua Stables, at Calder Race Course going 4 1/2 furlongs. That same afternoon at El Commandante in Puerto Rico, Snow Tax won her maiden going a half-mile. Bred by Brent Fernung, Snow Tax is out of the Ghazi producer Ghazarun.

Snow Ridge, who stands for $5,000, is a multiple-stakes-winning sprinter whose victories include the Grade 1 San Carlos.