Fasig-Tipton Midlantic's May 2-year-old auction ended Tuesday afternoon with losses after a quiet final session.
The two-day auction sold 246 juveniles for $10,497,500, down 33 percent from last year's gross for 327 horses. This sale's average price, $42,673, was 11 percent lower than last year's, and the $25,000 median also was off by 11 percent. But buybacks improved sharply, ending at 23 percent as compared to 34 percent in 2008.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Vision Racing and Sales turned a big profit - and fast - on May 11 when it sold Hip No.o40 for a sale-topping $300,000 at the Barretts May juvenile sale in Pomona, Calif.
Vision Racing, a partnership managed jointly by Brandon and Diannah Perry in Kentucky and John and Jill Stephens in Florida, paid $110,000 for the Tiznow colt at the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's March 2-year-old sale. But instead of keeping him to race as they initially planned, the Vision team pinhooked him two months later.
The colt's buyers at Barretts were Gary and Wendy Broad.
Eight horses worked an eighth-mile in 10.20 seconds to top the work tab Wednesday at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May juvenile sale's first under-tack preview.
The workouts took place at the fair grounds in Timonium, Md., where the second and final previews also were to be on Thursday. The auction at the Timonium sales pavilion will take place on May 18-19.
The Barretts May 2-year-old sale in Pomona, Calif., ended Monday evening with declines across the board. That followed a general trend seen in this year's juvenile market, where double-digit decreases were common.
The one-day Barretts May sale grossed $4,511,000 for 123 horses, down 42 percent from last year's total of $7,816,400 for 147. The 2009 average price dropped 31 percent, falling from $53,173 to $36,675. Median declined 17 percent, from $24,000 to $20,000.
But the buy-back rate improved from last year's figure of 33 percent to 29 percent.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Gone West, a Grade 1 winner who went on to sire champions, will be pensioned at the end of this breeding season, Mill Ridge Farm announced Friday. The 25-year-old Mr. Prospector horse is showing signs of age-related decrease in fertility .
As a $550,000 yearling purchase last September, the Storm Cat colt who sells as Hip No. 55 at Monday's Barretts May sale of 2-year-olds in training is a gamble for consignors Randy Hartley and Dean De Renzo.
The Florida horsemen bought the colt themselves last September at Keeneland, knowing that as part of one of the pensioned stallion's last crops he could prove attractive at a 2-year-olds in training sale.
The question on Monday is whether that enthusiasm will extend to potential buyers in a soft market for 2-year-olds in recent months.
Fasig-Tipton will auction Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird's 2-year-old half-brother at its upcoming Midlantic juvenile sale in Timonium, Md.
The company announced Tuesday that consignor Cary Frommer has added the colt, sired by Yonaguska, to her 25-horse consignment for the
auction, which takes place May 18-19.
Mine That Bird, who won the May 2 Derby at 50-1, is a son of Birdstone and the unraced Smart Strike mare Mining My Own.
Virginia-based breeder and consignor Leon Clay Camp died Sunday night at his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 78.
Camp owned Glenmore Farm and consigned a record-priced Saratoga yearling in 1984 when agent Tom Cooper paid $4.6 million for a Northern Dancer-Bubbling colt later named Parlando. The price is still the record for the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling sales.
Camp and his wife, Barbara Pease Camp, who died last October, were married for 50 years. Together they operated Glenmore in Virginia and then in Lexington, Ky., before returning to Virginia in the 1990s.
When the New York Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund holds its next regular board meeting on May 7, an old topic is likely to come under discussion again: how to continue paying statebred breeders' awards at advertised levels even as the number of New York-bred races has increased and handle, the fund's main source of income, has dropped.