Yearling from Smart Strike's final crop sells for $90,000

Regardless of whether the final yearling by leading sire Smart Strike offered at the Keeneland September yearling sale is successful on the track or as a stallion, one thing that does appear assured is his future home.

Smart Strike covered just five mares prior to his death in March 2015, resulting in four foals. One of those was offered in Keeneland’s elite Book 1 on Monday, with California-based owner Gary Broad needing to go to just $90,000 to acquire the colt.

Broad purchased his Oakmont Ranch in Murrieta, Calif, for $7.7 million at public auction in 2007, and uses the farm as the base for his operations, with Scott Hansen as his trainer.

He also keeps breeding stock and retired runners on the property – including his graded stakes winners Buzzards Bay and Mr Gruff. Oakmont has developed its own retraining program for retired horses that are sound enough and mentally appropriate to be geared toward second careers as hunter/jumpers or in dressage. A number of Oakmont graduates have gone on to show on the Southern California “A” circuit.

Broad told Daily Racing Form that dropping horses into claiming races instead of retiring and rehoming them is “part of the game I don’t like,” and that, “the owner is responsible for the horse.”

Broad’s purchase is out of the stakes-winning A.P. Indy mare Cascading, a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Streaming and several other stakes horses, from the family of blue hen Better Than Honour.

“We actually had two mares in foal in the final crop, and unfortunately, one of the foals died,” said John Sikura of Hill ‘n’ Dale, which co-bred and consigned the colt. “It’s always sad to see the last of a crop sell by a world-class sire.”