Jockey Club Gold Cup favorite Mineshaft, who will stand his initial season in 2004 at Lane's End, will have a stud fee of $100,000. That is the most expensive fee announced for a new stallion in 2004, outstripping previous leader Vindication's $50,000 fee.
Ubetshedid, dam of the popular millionaire gelding Best Pal, was euthanized at Golden Eagle Farms on Sept. 12 at the age of 23, the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association has announced. The King Pellinore mare was euthanized due to declining health.
Ubetshedid's most successful foal was Best Pal, the California-bred Habitony gelding who attained hero status in his home state. Best Pal won 17 stakes, including six Grade 1 races, and earned more than $5.6 million from 1990-96.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Keeneland's 12-day September yearling sale, which ended late Saturday with a record average and median, surprised almost everyone with its strength.
The auction was the only Keeneland sale dedicated to yearlings in 2003 after the auction house, citing a lack of horses due to mare reproductive loss syndrome, decided to cancel its July sale this season.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Keeneland's 12-day September yearling auction ended its surprisingly strong run on Saturday with dramatic gains across the board.
Topped by a $3.8 million Gone West filly that Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum bought from Three Chimneys, agent, the marathon sale ultimately closed with steep increases of 30 percent in gross receipts and 29 percent in the average price, and a 13 percent gain in the median.
Virginia's sire power will surge in 2004, with the addition of Black Tie Affair and Bop.
Horse of the year Black Tie Affair, a 17-year-old son of Miswaki, is due to arrive at Blue Ridge Farm in Upperville in mid-October. A gray stallion, Black Tie Affair returns to U.S. soil after standing the past six seasons in Japan, and will be offered on a private contract basis. Shares, which include a bonus breeding season each year, are still available for $10,000.
The success of Florida's yearling auction last month is attributed to the demand for the get of Florida's new stallions, who ultimately generated yearling averages many times their respective stud fees. The Ocala Breeders Sales Co.'s fall mixed sale, which starts Oct. 13, has another group of Florida stallions ready to make their mark. These are the graded stakes winning stallions whose first foals are weanlings.
The racing achievements of New York-breds have made the headlines on numerous occasions this year, so it was only fitting that a New York-bred caused a bit of a stir at Keeneland's September yearling sale.
At the opening session on Sept. 8, a Storm Cat colt bred and foaled at Barry Schwartz's Stonewall Farm in Granite Springs, N.Y., set the record for a New York-bred yearling sold at auction. The colt sold for $1.6 million, and was bought by bloodstock agent John Ferguson, an advisor to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum's Godolphin Stable.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Casual observers of Kentucky's Thoroughbred marketplace might not have noticed when Jacobo Nahmad started signing tickets at Keeneland's September sale this week. But Keeneland's mid- to lower-level sellers did.
Nahmad, a Mexican textile manufacturer, has been buying inexpensive yearlings at the auction since 2000. So far this year, he has purchased 15 for $472,000, paying from $13,000 to $75,000 each.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - As the Keeneland September yearling sale wound down toward its Sept. 20 ending, sellers were seeing far lower prices than at the earlier sessions that put the auction on a near-record pace. But there was still at least one six-figure lot as Thursday's 10th session headed into the late afternoon.