Sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association's annual Thoroughbred yearling show. The event is more than just a series of seven conformation classes for Maryland-breds, it's also a chance for breeders to put their horses up for racing-related bonuses.
Dixie Chatter, a stakes winner each of the last three seasons, has been retired from racing and will stand the 2010 breeding season at co-owner Marty Wygod's River Edge Farm in Buellton, Calif., Wygod said on Thursday.
Dixie Chatter made the final start of his career in the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile at Hollywood Park on May 25, finishing fifth, two lengths behind Thorn Song. Dixie Chatter emerged from that race with a tendon injury, according to Wygod and trainer Richard Mandella.
The two-day Inglis Australian weanling and broodmare sale got off to a quick start Thursday in Sydney with the session-topper bringing about $948,000 on opening day.
That was the price for Polar Success, winner of the 2003 Golden Slipper and dam of Australian stakes-placed Polaway, at the select broodmare session. Inglis made the purchase on behalf of an unidentified local client. Twin Palms Stud consigned the 9-year-old Success Express mare as agent for the late Stanley Johnson and his son Bruce, who announced in April that the family would disperse its bloodstock.
Ben Walden Jr. and Patrick Madden, partners in the Lexington, Ky., farm Hurricane Hall, have purchased the operation's stallion management company and will relocate three of Hurricane Hall's four stallions.
Artie Schiller, winner of the Breeders' Cup Mile; Bellamy Road, a Grade 1 winner; and Teuflesberg, a Grade 2 winner, will move to Walden's new Pauls Mill farm near Versailles, Ky., in mid-July. Plans for the fourth stallion, English Channel, have yet to be settled, according to an announcement Walden made Monday. English Channel is owned by Brad Kelley and James Scatuorchio.
There is a little bit of magic tied up in the history of Rapid Release, the fourth choice on the morning line for Sunday's Queen's Plate at Woodbine.
A flashy chestnut gelding who could become trainer Roger Attfield's record ninth Plate winner, Rapid Release was foaled at the famed Windfields Farm that closed down last year.
His dam, Bail Money, was the stable star for the Sackatoga Stable, the high school buddies who used the money they received when Bail Money was claimed from them to buy their eventual Kentucky Derby winner Funny Cide.
First, he made a habit of winning stakes throughout the nation with California-breds. Then, he bred and trained a California-bred filly who set a world record for 4 1/2 furlongs at Keeneland in April 2007.
This week, breeder-trainer Wesley Ward's California-bred 2-year-olds went international - and made history.
Tuesday, the Ward-trained California-bred Strike the Tiger won the Windsor Castle Stakes at the Royal Ascot meeting in England, becoming the first American-trained winner of that historic race meeting.
Hilary J. Boone, owner of Wimbledon Farm in Lexington, Ky., and the breeder of Grade 1 winner Chelsey Flower and sire Mt. Livermore, died Wednesday. He was 91.
Boone, an insurance executive and longtime member of the Humana Inc. board, founded Wimbledon in 1971 on about 300 acres located south of Lexington. He named it Wimbledon to honor another sport he loved, tennis.
Ron Bamberger, executor of the estate that raced and now owns a minority stake in Lawyer Ron, has dropped his lawsuit against Stonewall Farm after receiving payment for two stallion seasons to Lawyer Ron, according to Bamberger's attorney, Craig Robertson.
For the first time in its 40-year history, the Canadian-based Sam-Son Farms will sell a group of yearlings at auction this summer.
The group of five, including a colt by A.P. Indy out of the champion filly Catch the Ring, will be offered at the Saratoga selected yearling sale on Aug. 10 and 11.
"We are in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to the economy," said Rick Balaz, who has taken over managing Sam-Son since the death of his wife, Tammy Balaz, daughter of the late Sam-Son founders Ernie and Elizabeth Samuel, "and there are a lot of farm expenses to pay."