The two-day Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's June 2-year-old sale ended Wednesday with strong gains across the board, including a sale-record average of $23,550.
A $200,000 Successful Appeal filly bought by Carrol Castille was the session- and auction-leader. Norman Casse's Cardinal Hill Farm agency sold the filly, who is out of stakes-placed Half Mast, a Tunerup mare who has produced four winners from four starters so far.
Smarty Jones's racing plans for the remainder of the year are set, but his future beyond that - including where he will stand at stud - were still unclear as of Wednesday afternoon.
Smarty Jones, trained by John Servis, is pointing for the Sept. 6 Pennsylvania Derby at Philadelphia Park, the Oct. 2 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont, and the Oct. 30 Breeders' Cup Classic at Lone Star Park.
The Ocala Breeders' Sales Company opened its June 2-year-old sale Tuesday, with a $110,000 Lost Soldier filly the session's early leader.
Sold as Hip No. 194, the filly is a daughter of the unraced Salt Lake mare Tooosalty. She went to Buzz Chace, agent. Niall Brennan, agent, sold the filly on behalf of the John Franks estate.
Currently named Not Tooosalty, the filly is a half-sister to stakes winner Cupid Season and winner The Dempsey Look. She had breezed an eighth of a mile in 10.40 seconds during the auction's under-tack preview last weekend.
A colt by Stormy Atlantic posted the fastest quarter-mile time at the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's under-tack show on Sunday in Ocala, Fla. Hip No. 282's time of 21 seconds was the fastest over the distance for the under-tack show, which ran Saturday and Sunday to showcase 2-year-olds on offer at the company's juvenile sale, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. Hip No. 282, a chestnut son of the Pentelicus mare Blaze DeWitt, was to sell through the agency of Tony Bowling and Bobby Dodd. Three 2-year-olds shared the under-tack show's fastest eighth-mile time of 10.20 seconds.
Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky., has privately purchased an interest in the breeding rights to Grade 2 winner Strong Hope and will stand the colt at the end of his racing career, the farm announced Monday. The 4-year-old colt's owners, Eugene and Laura Melnyk, plan to race him for the rest of the season before retiring him to Claiborne for the 2005 season.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Birdstone's Belmont Stakes win on June 5 will be most famous for ending Smarty Jones's Triple Crown bid and his unbeaten record. But it was also a redemptive moment.
Birdstone, one of the nation's top juveniles last year, had been lackluster this spring. His Belmont victory not only restored a measure of his success but also brought some to his sire, Grindstone, the 1996 Kentucky Derby winner, whose most recent book of mares had been buoyed by Birdstone's performances as a juvenile.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Every sport has traditions, but no sport has a sense of time and continuity like horse racing. The 136th Belmont Stakes shows the link between horses and families, with the winner, Birdstone, bred and raced by Marylou Whitney and her husband, John Hendrickson.
The curtain comes down on the 2004 Florida calendar of 2-year-olds in training auctions Tuesday and Wednesday with the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's June sale. There are 500 2-year-olds cataloged along with 33 horses older than 2. The second and final under-tack session is scheduled for Sunday at 8 a.m. Monday has been set aside by the OBS to give buyers a chance to look over the sales horses.
