Fasig-Tipton Midlantic's two-day juvenile auction at Timonium, Md., opened at just the right time Monday. The sale got a boost on Saturday when graduate Afleet Alex captured the Preakness Stakes at nearby Pimlico. Afleet Alex cost $75,000 at last year's edition of the auction.
Whether because of Afleet Alex, who is the catalog cover horse this year, or the generally strong juvenile market, the auction's opening session posted some high prices in its early hours.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Owners Philip and Marcia Cohen have sold an equity interest in their Kentucky Derby runner-up Closing Argument.
Dennis Narlinger's JMJ Racing and Becky Thomas and Lewis Lakin's Sequel Stallions have purchased the interest on the eve of the Successful Appeal colt's expected start in Saturday's Preakness Stakes. Narlinger, Thomas, and Lakin teamed up earlier this year to bring Read the Footnotes to Ocala, Fla., where he now stands at stud under the Sequel Stallions banner.
The board of directors of the New York Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund Corporation has approved the immediate distribution of $314,000 in supplemental stallion award funds based on 2004 purse earnings at New York tracks.
The payment raises the total amount paid in 2004 stallion awards to $2,217,057. The supplement increased the percentage paid for stallion awards from the standard 7 percent to approximately 8.5 percent of purse money for finishing first through fourth in all races run in New York in 2004.
Jeff Schwietert is a pedigree connoisseur who follows his own counsel. The manager and part owner of the 170-acre Four Horsemen's Ranch in Anthony, Fla., Schwietert has developed a breeding program he calls "the total package" concept. He has to appreciate a stallion's racing record and pedigree, but also factors how a particular stallion fits with the mare he is considering.
The Barretts May sale of 2-year-olds in training, held last Tuesday in Pomona, set records in average and gross price, but the California-breds sold at the sale were not the principal choices for top buyers.
Of the 14 horses that sold for $100,000 or more, only two were California-breds. Both of those were sold to Mercedes Stable - an Afternoon Deelites colt for $200,000 and a Sir Cat filly for $100,000. The sale-topper was a Siphon colt purchased for $350,000 by Narvick International.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - When he saw the replay of Giacomo's winning trip in the Kentucky Derby, Duncan MacDonald was not surprised by the colt's fancy, ground-saving footwork. Piloted by Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, Giacomo weaved neatly around horses and darted through narrow spaces as if he was a Ferrari: fast, responsive, and agile. It was something MacDonald, the broodmare manager at Mill Ridge Farm in Lexington, had seen before - albeit in a less polished form - back in the early spring of 2002, when Giacomo was a foal cavorting around his dam.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The series of basaltic columns in Northern Ireland that make up the rock formation the Giant's Causeway stand immovable against the worst that weather and time inflict. That ability to stand firm under pressure also proved the hallmark of the racehorse named Giant's Causeway.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Two-time sprint champion Housebuster has died in Virginia. The 18-year-old Housebuster was standing at stud at O'Sullivan Farms in Charles Town, W. Va., but was shipped to a Virginia veterinary clinic on Sunday, when he died, according to Donna Hayes, manager of the syndicate that owned Housebuster.
Housebuster's cause of death was unknown as of Wednesday morning, Hayes said, adding that the syndicate would ask for a necropsy.
"All I know is that he's not here anymore, and it breaks my heart," Hayes said. "It was very, very quick."
The Barretts May juvenile sale got under way Tuesday in California with an $85,000 Lake Austin filly the session-leader early in the auction's single session.
The filly, offered as Hip No. 79 by the Sunrise Stable South agency, had the co-fastest quarter-mile work during the weekend's preview, covering the distance in 21 seconds. Stanley Ryan purchased the filly, a daughter of the unraced Red Ransom mare Red Royalty.
