DEL MAR, Calif. – The gross and average prices of Sunday’s Paddock Sale at Del Mar will provide conventional barometers for the 44-horse sale.
Another assessment of the Sunday evening event will be its long-term impact through the number of horses who remain active in Southern California, and whether the first-year event can attract new owners to the sport.
WATCH LIVE VIDEO: Del Mar Paddock Sale
Ice Box, the winner of the 2010 Florida Derby who stood his first year at stud in 2012, will be moved from Calumet Farm in Lexington, Ky., to Three Chimneys in Midway, Ky., for the 2013 season, Three Chimneys announced on Thursday.
A son of Pulpit out of the Tabasco Cat mare Spice Island, Ice Box covered 94 mares at Calumet during the 2012 breeding season, according to Three Chimneys. He stood for $7,500 live foal, and his fee will remain the same for 2013, Three Chimneys said.
Sherriff’s Deputy, dam of 2007 and 2008 Horse of the Year Curlin, was euthanized at Fares Farm in central Kentucky because of complications of laminitis, the farm announced Thursday. Sherriff’s Deputy was 18.
Sherriff’s Deputy, who was by Deputy Minister out of the Bates Motel mare Barbarika, was not bred in 2012, according to the farm. Her most recent foals include a weanling by Distorted Humor and a 3-year-old Smart Strike colt, Deputy Striker, who is a full brother to Curlin, the farm said.
He is no longer led, prancing, from his paddock to the breeding shed. Sales pavilions no longer echo with invigorating auctioneers’ sing-song as his yearlings sell for seven-digit figures. And Overbrook Farm, which he helped thrust into the international racing spotlight, dispersed its stock more than two years ago.
Storm Cat – now 29 – is a living legend, residing far from the spotlight at his Overbrook home in Lexington, Ky.
Houston, a high-priced yearling who won several graded stakes and sired 13 stakes winners, died April 12 at the age of 26 at Ren-Mar Thoroughbreds in California, where he had been pensioned, according to reports.
Purchased for $2.9 million at the 1987 Keeneland July sale, Houston won the Grade 2 Bay Shore Stakes, the Grade 3 King’s Bishop Stakes, and the Grade 3 Derby Trial. As a stallion, the son of Seattle Slew out of the Quadrangle mare Smart Angle sired 570 horses of racing age, 280 of which won. His progeny won $14.8 million.
The catalog for the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s August yearling sale was made available on the company’s website on Monday, the company announced. The three-day sale, which includes a one-day selected session, is scheduled to run from Aug. 21-23 at the company’s Ocala sales grounds in Florida.
The Tuesday select-session catalog includes 188 horses, and the Wednesday and Thursday open sessions include 563 yearlings. The select session will start at 1 p.m. Eastern, while the two open sessions will start at 10:30 a.m. each day.
The Tattersalls July auction in Newmarket, England, ended Friday with across-the-board declines after 402 horses brought about $7,772,965, down 20 percent from last year, when a much larger catalog sold 452 horses. The average price fell 9 percent to about $19,336, and the $10,647 median was off by 7 percent. But buy-backs were just 11 percent, down from 13 percent. Group 3 winner Esentepe sold to agent Tom Goff for 220,000 guineas, or about $355,740, to top the three-day sale which featured horses in training and fillies and broodmares. . . .
I’ll Have Another is bound for stud duty in Japan next year, and it is possible that some foals from his first crop in 2014 will be California-breds.
Owner Paul Reddam, who campaigned I’ll Have Another to wins in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, said earlier this week that he has not ruled out acquiring broodmares bred to the stallion and sending them back to the United States.
While he emphasized that the plan is only in the discussion stages, Reddam said he was enthusiastic about the potential of racing the first crop by I’ll Have Another.
Owner Kip Colvin announced Thursday that his world record-breaking gelding Mandurah has retired after injuring a tendon. An 8-year-old by A. P. Indy, out of Morning Pride, set a world record at Monmouth Park in 2010 when he went a mile in 1:31.23. Mandurah won seven of 25 races and finished second twice, earning $164,357. Colvin is developing a small retirement facility in Piperton, Tenn., and he said in a tweet Thursday that Mandurah will stay with Dr. Foster Northrop until relocation to Tennessee. . . .
