A $300,000 Halo's Image colt was the session-topper at Tuesday's opener for the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's March select 2-year-old sale in Florida. Trainer Michael Machowsky, acting as agent, signed the ticket.
The session, the first of two, sold 98 lots for gross receipts of $6,255,000, down 9 percent from last year, when 108 horses sold for $6,876,500. Average rose slightly this year, climbing just $156 to $63,827.
To breed and own a Maryland-bred Horse of the Year is a rare accomplishment, unless you happen to be Robert E. Meyerhoff. When the roll call of 2001 Maryland-bred champions was sounded last week, a Meyerhoff homebred headed the list - for the fifth time since 1986.
Meyerhoff's homebred Grade 1 winner Include was unanimously voted Maryland-bred Horse of the Year, adding to an unprecedented streak that began with Include's sire, Broad Brush (in 1986-87), and continued with Valley Crossing (1993) and another son of Broad Brush, Concern, in 1994.
The Ocala sales and racing festival gets under way Monday with six black-type stakes worth an aggregate $370,000.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, 407 selected 2-year-olds in training will be sold by Ocala Breeders' Sales Company.
The inaugural Adena Springs South auction of its 2-year-olds in training will be held on Thursday. That sale, with 70 horses cataloged, will also be conducted by the OBS, but on the Adena Springs South premises about a 20 minutes north of Ocala.
The New York Thoroughbred Breeders has hired trainer Dennis Brida, the former president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, as the organization's new executive director it was announced Friday.
Brida, 53, will begin his duties with the NYTB, which has offices in downtown Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on April 15.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Surely there's no better way to increase a stallion's success than to send him far, far away. For instance, Afleet was sold to Japan and immediately had a flurry of stakes winners. Following his sale to Japanese breeders, Forty Niner had not only more stakes winners but also a classic winner and led the national sire list by earnings. Doyoun went to Turkey and since has had two winners of the Breeders' Cup Turf, as well as European champions.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Bien Bien, a top turf horse of the early 90's and sire of millionaire Bienamado, died on Tuesday morning, apparently of a heart attack, at Kirtlington Stud in England.
Bien Bien, a 13-year-old Manila horse, collapsed immediately after covering a mare, Kirtlington representative Ruth Morley said.
"The one comfort is that it was quick," she said. "It was quite a shock for us."
A Mr. Greeley filly posted the day's fastest work, breezing an eighth-mile in 10 seconds, at Monday's under-tack preview for next week's Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's select 2-year-old auction.
The Monday show featured Hip Nos. 205 through 407 for the auction, which is set for March 19-20 at the OBS facility in Ocala, Fla.
The Mr. Greeley filly, a daughter of the Dixieland Band mare Dixieland Blues, is in the Shanbally Acres consignment.
Dan Hayden is in the middle of his first breeding and foaling season as the manager at Sugar Maple Farm in Poughquag, N.Y., and he has the battle scars to prove it.
Hayden, 28, and two other other farm employees had just finished delivering an unusually large foal recently, an A. P Jet filly, when the foal's mother began to suffer from cramps in her uterus. The mare began thrashing around the birthing stall and clipped Hayden on his forehead with her hoof. Luckily, Hayden suffered only a small gash, and the foal and her mother came through the ordeal no worse for the wear.
With spring looming, thoughts turn to 2-year-old racing, which in New York usually gets under way early in April.
Last year, the state's leading first-crop sires - Chequer, Ormsby, and Abaginone - ranked among the nation's top 50 such stallions.
This year, another group of New York-based freshman sires, some with very fancy pedigrees and solid racing records, are waiting to show off their first crops.