A dozen Maryland-bred yearlings who will step into Fasig-Tipton’s sale pavilion Monday and Tuesday for the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic fall yearling sale have already proven they can stand up to scrutiny. They earned placings in July at the Maryland Horse Breeders Association’s yearling show, which like the sale was at Timonium. That show, which was held for the 88th time this year, offers Maryland breeders a way to showcase their statebred yearlings. Classes for both males and fillies are further divided into those sired by Maryland stallions and those conceived out of state, and are judged by a horseman invited by the show committee. Class winners are then pitted against one another to select an overall champion and reserve champion. All yearlings exhibited, whether they place or not, are eligible for yearling show purse awards, with $20,000 awarded to the top four money winners racing as 2-year-olds and another $20,000 awarded the following year to the four highest-earning 3-year-old graduates. This provides another incentive to purchase these yearlings out of the Midlantic sale, which traditionally showcases yearlings eligible for a number of lucrative regional programs. The Maryland yearling show has marked the first public appearance for a number of stars, including Eclipse Award champions Declan’s Moon, Safely Kept, and Smart Angle; Kentucky Oaks winner Cathryn Sophia; and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner Sharing. At this year’s yearling show, judged by trainer Jonathan Thomas, a colt by Bandbox won the class for state-sired males, then claimed the overall championship title. Just behind him as reserve champion was a filly by Force the Pass, who won the state-sired fillies title and was named reserve champion. “She looks like she’ll be very fast,” Thomas said. “She just had the best muscle structure, and looked like a made horse already.” Force the Pass’s reserve champion, who was bred in West Friendship, Md., by Katharine Voss, is now entered in the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic yearling sale. The filly, who is consigned by Chanceland Farm, is from the first crop of Force the Pass, a Speightstown horse whose biggest victory came in the Grade 1 Belmont Derby. He stood his first season at Anchor and Hope Farm in Port Deposit, Md. The filly, who is out of the placed Dance With Ravens mare Corbeau, is from the immediate family of Grade 1-winning millionaire Max Player, Grade 2-winning millionaire International Star, Group 2 winner Seahenge, and stakes winners D C Dancer and Fools In Love. A colt by commercially popular freshman sire City of Light, who stands in Kentucky, won the yearling show class for colts and geldings by stallions outside the state of Maryland. He is entered at the Fasig-Tipton sale, along with an Air Force Blue colt who was third in that class, a Speightster colt who was fourth, and a Malibu Moon colt who was fifth. :: DRF BREEDING LIVE: Real-time coverage of breeding and sales Others who earned placings at the yearling show and who now appear in the Fasig-Tipton catalog include a Golden Lad colt who was second in the Maryland-sired colts and gelding class; a Long River colt who was fourth in that class; fillies by Great Notion and Divining Rod, who were third and fourth in the state-sired fillies class; and a Hard Spun filly who was third, a Unified filly who was fourth, and a Catholic Boy filly who was fifth in the class for fillies sired by non-Maryland stallions. Overall, the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale has 512 yearlings cataloged for its two-session sale, with Monday’s sale beginning at 1 p.m. and Tuesday’s action getting underway at 10 a.m. Midlantic director of sales Paget Bennett said the sale has “our strongest sire power in recent memory.” “Quality yearlings representing a wide variety of statebred programs will be on offer,” Bennett said. Bennett said that graduates of the Midlantic sale have more than 70 stakes wins or placings this year. Last year’s Midlantic yearling sale, topped by a $235,000 Mendelssohn colt, finished with gains across the board over the previous year, including record average ($29,578) and median ($20,000) figures. The buyback rate was an outstanding 16 percent. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.