Fasig-Tipton’s Florida select 2-year-old sale enters a new era Thursday. After 25 years at Calder Race Course in Miami, the auction has a new home at the Palm Meadows Training Center in Boynton Beach, and sale officials hope that the new setting for a new season of Thoroughbred sales might be symbolic of returning optimism in the market.
WinStar stallion Bluegrass Cat, 2010’s second-ranked freshman sire, will shuttle to Chile for the 2011 Southern Hemisphere breeding season, the central Kentucky farm has announced.
He will stand at Haras Don Alberto, a stud farm owned by Liliana Solari.
Grade 1 winners Yankee Victor and The Groom is Red have died in Korea within the last month, according to a blog covering Korean racing and breeding. Both Yankee Victor and The Groom is Red were 15 and stood at stud on the Korean island of Jeju.
The blog Horse Racing in Korea reported Feb. 27 that The Groom is Red was euthanized after “sustaining multiple fractures in a paddock accident” on Jan. 27 and that Yankee Victor died of colic on Feb. 1.
Four juveniles worked an eighth-mile in less than 10 seconds during Fasig-Tipton's Monday under-tack preview for the March 3 Florida select 2-year-old auction.
Hip No. 49, a filly by 2010 leading juvenile sire More Than Ready, had the fastest work over an eighth-mile, 9.6 seconds. The dark bay or brown filly is out of the unraced Unbridled's Song mare Spring Unbridled. She's consigned by W. D. North Thoroughbreds, represented by Steve Venosa's SGV Thoroughbreds agency. She is from the immediate family of Group 3-placed stakes-winner Kid Mambo.
Grasshopper, a Grade 3 winner who was runner-up to Street Sense in the 2007 Travers, has retired to stud at Lane’s End Texas in Hempstead, Tex.
His fee has yet to be announced.
The 7-year-old Grasshopper is by the late Lane’s End sire Dixie Union, who died last year, and raced as a homebred for Lane’s End owner Will Farish, E.J. hudson, and the estate of James Elkins, Jr. He retires with $848,852 in purse earnings.
Fasig-Tipton Texas has cataloged 167 horses to its 2-year-olds in training sale that will be held at Lone Star Park near Dallas on April 5.
The under-tack program will be on April 3. The start time for both the workout show and the auction will be 10 a.m. Central.
The catalog features the offspring of a wide variety of stallions, including Afleet Alex, Distorted Humor, First Samurai, Indian Charlie, Lawyer Ron, Speightstown, Songandaprayer, Tapit, Tiznow, and Valid Expectations.
The catalog is smaller than a year ago, when 223 lots made up the book.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Scouting for 2-year-old prospects last year, trainer Doug O’Neill and his team came up with more than a gem when they acquired Maggie McGowan, an unraced filly. They wound up with the half-sister to a champion.
Clear Mandate, a multiple Grade 1-winning mare whose first three foals sold for a total of $9 million, was euthanized on Feb. 19 at Hagyard Equine Medical Center outside of Lexington, Ky., following complications of foaling, according to Pete Cline, the farm manager at Shawnee Farms, where Clear Mandate resided.
Clear Mandate had produced a foal by Tiznow on Feb. 11, but she had perforated her uterus during the foaling, according to Cline. She was sent to Hagyard, but the 19-year-old mare was unable to fight off an infection, Cline said.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – California owner and breeder Marty Wygod and the Kentucky breeding farm Lane’s End have purchased an undisclosed interest in top older horse Twirling Candy, winner of the Strub Stakes on Feb. 5.
There was no indication that the 4-year-old Candy Ride colt, a homebred that races for Jenny Craig’s Craig Family Trust, would retire.
“We look forward to his continued success on the race track and his next career as an exciting new addition to the Lane’s End stallion roster,” Lane’s End owner Will Farish said in a release announcing the purchase.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Horse of the Year Zenyatta was bred to Bernardini on Wednesday at about 8 a.m., according to a notice posted on Zenyatta.com.
That site is maintained Dottie Ingordo Shirreffs, the racing manager for Zenyatta’s owners Ann and Jerry Moss and the wife of Zenyatta’s trainer John Shirreffs.
