Trippi joins ranks of ex-Florida sires

The news that Floridas leading sire, Ocala Studs Trippi, has been sold to South African interests is yet another sign of a growing deficit in the states pool of established stallions. Trippi joins Successful Appeal, Macho Uno, Closing Argument, Yes Its True, Stormy Atlantic, and Exchange Rate as stallions who started in Florida but ended elsewhere.

It was not for lack of support that prompted the deal to send Trippi to South Africa. Trippi has had full books since entering stud in 2002. He averaged 76 foals in his first three crops. The 12-year-old son of End Sweep has since covered 100 or more mares annually. To paraphrase Ocala Studs Mike OFarrell in announcing the sale: The price was right.

The departure of Trippi moves the Ocala Stud longtime resident sire Montbrook into the lead as Floridas current leading sire. Montbrook added his 39th stakes winner to his portfolio when Jardin won the Grade 3 Schuylerville Stakes opening day at Saratoga. The bay daughter of Montbrook, who cost Padua Stables $425,000 at last Februarys Ocala Breeders Sales sale of 2-year-olds in training, has two wins in as many starts.

Put It Back standing in Argentina

In Colonial America, stallion owners would hitch a stud to a buggy and drive him to a farm where mares were domiciled. The fee, according to the archives of that era, was so much per leap. Bridlewood Farms resident stallion Put It Back is also on the road, but he travels by air.

George Isaacs, the general manager of Bridlewood Farm, negotiates Southern Hemisphere breeding engagements for Bridlewood stallions. Among the first of these to go was the late stallion Jules, sire of the millionaire Grade 1 stakes winner Peace Rules. Jules rotated between Brazil and Florida for several seasons. Put It Back has gone the Brazilian route, but not so this year, for he is standing his Southern Hemisphere season this year in Argentina after covering 158 mares earlier this year in Ocala.

The influence of both Jules and Put It Back was noted earlier this week in Brazil, where Rising Fever, a Brazilian-bred son of Put It Back, won the Group 2 Gran Premio Immensity. Rising Fever won the mile fixture by seven lengths. Third in that race was Queops Pyramid, a son of Jules.

Agnes Gold gone to Brazil

The Japanese-bred Agnes Gold, who as a 10-year-old son of Sunday Silence-Elizabeth Rose, by Northern Taste, is from the family of Fappiano, and has all the attributes to make a successful stallion, except, perhaps, a lack respect. The bay horse began his career in Japan where there is no shortage of Grade 1 stakes-winning stallions by Sunday Silence. The fact that Agnes Gold won a pair Grade 2 races and a million dollars in his homeland did not boost his credentials.

After three seasons in stud in Japan, he was flown to Roy S. Lermans Lambholm Stud for the 2007 breeding season. Due to quarantine complications he did he cover his first American mare until April of that year. There are a dozen foals from that abbreviated American crop and he covered 26 mares this year. But, if he is to leave an impression in North America, it will have to come from two small crops.

Agnes Gold, according to Eugenio Columbo, the noted bloodstock agent who negotiated the deal to import the stallion from Japan, will henceforth stand in Brazil

New rehab facility on way

This is the rainy season in central Florida it pours every day. Dodging the puddles in visiting the defunct Eclipse Award-winning breeding operation Farnsworth Farms, one could still see the old stallion barn, but not without noticing the construction going on in front of it.

There are no horses on Farnsworth Farms these days. It is being transformed into an equine rehabilitation facility and upon completion will be known as Kesmarc Florida. The $10 million facility is scheduled to open the first of next year.

Scheduled for completion by then is a 50-foot indoor swimming pool with a submerged treadmill, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and a number of therapeutic ways and means for rehabilitating horses.