Top Line Sales riding a wave coming into OBS spring juvenile sale
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A little more than a decade in, Top Line Sales has found its place among the top ranks of the 2-year-old in training consignors.
Jimbo and Torie Gladwell’s operation, which sold juveniles for the first time in 2012, counts a number of seven-figure horses among its graduates. Those include an Uncle Mo colt who topped the 2022 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s spring sale at $2.3 million, the sale-topping price and finishing as the second-most paid for a 2-year-old in North America last year. Now named Arabian Knight, the colt is an unbeaten graded stakes winner.
This year, the Gladwells opened the season strong, saying they were “blessed beyond measure” to sell a Good Magic colt for a record-tying $2 million to lead the OBS March sale. The operation comes back around to this month’s edition of the OBS spring sale with a consignment of 55 juveniles.
The Top Line juveniles are part of the catalog of 1,221 horses cataloged at OBS’s flagship spring sale, which takes place over four sessions from April 25-28. A seven-session breeze show is preceding the auction, which is considered something of a bellwether for the national market. The auction typically offers the largest catalog of the season and offers a broad spectrum of horses for buyers at all levels.
OBS opened the North American juvenile sale season last month, with its expanded three-session March sale finishing with 460 horses sold for gross receipts of $71,110,500, compared to 374 bringing $49,371,633 in 2022.
Top Line consigned the sale-topping Good Magic colt, who sold for $2 million to bloodstock agent Donato Lanni on behalf of Amr Zedan’s Zedan Racing. His price equaled the record $2 million paid for Chestertown at the 2019 edition of the March sale. With that colt leading five seven-figure lots, the March sale’s average price finished at $154,588, a gain of 17 percent from 2022. The median was unchanged at $75,000.
“Horses were shopped hard, and the top horses in our consignment had not just one or two people bidding, but it felt like multiples,” Torie Gladwell said. “The middle market was extremely tough. I felt like the agents who were there had orders for the best horses and were probably waiting for April to start shopping for the middle-market types.”
The March sale-topping Good Magic colt had breezed a furlong, the traditional yardstick for these sales, in a co-bullet 9 3/5 seconds on the Ocala Training Center’s all-weather Safetrack surface. Torie Gladwell said that breeze show performance can be a key factor in showcasing a horse to the marketplace – and that presenting the horse at their best is not always in a consignor’s control.
“One of the hurdles we are always dealing with that’s out of control is the weather,” she said. “A strong wind – head or tail wind – makes a significant difference in times. When a headwind hits a horse in the face, they can completely stop trying.”
As of Thursday, through five of the seven breeze show sessions preceding this spring sale, a filly by Mendelssohn and a colt by Frosted shared the bullet time for a furlong, both working in 9 3/5 seconds on the Safetrack.
The Florida-bred filly, consigned by Off the Hook, as agent, is from the second crop of the globe-trotting Mendelssohn. She is out of the unraced Lonhro mare Caroline Victoria, dam of two winners from as many starters. Grade 1 winner American Theorem appears on the catalog page.
Matching the time was the Frosted colt, a Kentucky-bred who is consigned by Longoria Training and Sales, as agent. He is out of the Indian Charlie mare Handwoven, dam of two winners from three starters. Handwoven is a full sister to stakes-placed Auspicious, dam of stakes-placed Bobby Bo.
Behind those two, a logjam of 25 juveniles were tied for the next-fastest time at 9 4/5 seconds. That included two from the Top Line consignment – a filly from the first crop of champion Vino Rosso, and a colt from the second crop of Belmont Stakes winner Tapwrit.
Among the juveniles to work a quarter-mile, a smaller group that does grow as the season progresses, a Speightstown filly easily held the 20 1/5-second bullet, with three tied behind her at 20 3/5. The Kentucky-bred filly, consigned by All Dreams Equine, as agent, is out of the Revolutionary mare Last Dance, whose first runner is a winner. Last Dance is out of a full sister to Canadian Triple Crown winner and blue hen Dance Smartly, among other stellar relations.
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