A tour of central California stallion farms earlier this week kept breeders Larry and Marianne Williams and their farm manager Dan Kiser on the go for several days.
This weekend, they plan to stop that travel, head back to headquarters in Parma, Idaho, and watch one of their leading fillies attempt an upset in Sunday's $150,000 Hollywood Oaks at Hollywood Park.
The Fasig-Tipton auction house has cataloged 407 yearlings to its July select yearling sale in Lexington, Ky. The auction will take place Tuesday and Wednesday, July 13-14, at Fasig-Tipton's Newtown Paddocks facility.
The sale will open with a freshman sire session, featuring 144 yearlings by first-crop sires only, on July 13. Catalogs will be available online and in company offices starting June 7.
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Nappelon, the dam of champion Ginger Punch, died May 31, according to The Blood-Horse.
An 18-year-old Bold Revenue mare, Nappelon was owned by Beth Ann Brown-Gambone of Our Farm in Norristown, Pa.
Nappelon won Aqueduct's Grade 2 Comely Stakes in 1995 and the 1996 Owners' Day Dash Stakes at Delaware Park. Her first foal, the Broad Brush gelding Rawston, set a track record on the fair circuit in a career that spanned 35 starts, and Nappelon was the dam of another winner, King Cool, by Touch Gold.
Twenty-five horses from Stonewall Farm and its related entities are among 34 horses added to the June 15 juvenile and racing-age sale at Ocala Breeders' Sales Company in Ocala, Fla.
Stonewall recently signed an agreement with Fifth Third Bank that will put many of the Midway, Ky., farm's broodmares and young stock through the auction ring. Meg Levy's Bluewater Sales agency is acting as receiver for the bloodstock, but the Leprechaun Racing agency will handle the consignment at the OBS auction.
Chinook Pass, the oldest living Eclipse winner at age 31, died Tuesday in Maple Valley, Wash.
The champion sprinter of 1983, Chinook Pass was euthanized Tuesday morning after showing signs of heart failure, said Jill Hallin, who was the gelding's caretaker since 1988.
"He had increased respiration and a high pulse," Hallin said Tuesday afternoon. "At 31, the vet said it's just old age disease. He wasn't in any distress or pain or anything like that. I didn't want it to get to that point."
LEXINGTON, Ky. - One thing Kurt Butenhoff is not worried about is whether Ice Box can get the Belmont Stakes distance.
The man who bred the fast-closing Kentucky Derby runner-up and likely Belmont favorite has good reason to like the colt's chances over 1 1/2 miles: Butenhoff bred Ice Box with stamina in mind.
"I think a lot of stamina has gotten lost in American breeding stock, and both stamina and soundness are the two things I've got in mind when I'm breeding racehorses," Butenhoff said.
The three-day select portion of Australia's Magic Millions national broodmare sale ended Tuesday with mixed results as gross increased sharply but average prices fell 8 percent.
The select sale ran one day longer this year, three days instead of 2009's two sessions, and sold 709 horses as compared with last year's 556. That fueled an 18-percent rise in gross. Last year's auction grossed approximately $16,331,280, a total that climbed to about $19,294,800 this season. But the average dropped from about $47,200 last year to about $43,653.
Darley Australia, the Southern Hemisphere division of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum's global breeding and racing empire, will cut some jobs after posting a loss of about $23 million last year, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Hilmer Schmidt, who raced Grade 1 winner Golden Bri, died May 26 in Brenham, Texas. He was 85.
Schmidt also had longstanding ties to the Florida breeding and racing industry, where he owned and operated Indian Hill Farm in Ocala. In addition, he was a past president of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders' and Owners' Association, and one of the founders of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company.
Golden Bri's greatest career victory came in the Coaching Club American Oaks at Belmont Park in 1995.
INGLEWOOD, Calif.- It was not easy for California breeder Tom Stull to watch the Fran's Valentine Stakes at Hollywood Park last weekend.
As much as he focused on the filly he owns, U R All That I Am, he also kept his eye on You Lift Me Up, the race's heavy favorite whom he bred and then lost via claim in 2008.
The result was not what bettors expected. U R All That I Am had an ideal trip under jockey Rafael Bejarano and won the one-mile turf race by 2 1/4 lengths over Woman Warrior. You Lift Me Up could only finish fourth.