A $1,424,063 mare led the way at Wednesday's third session of the Tattersalls December mare sales in Newmarket, England.
Agent Anthony Penfold's Penfold Bloodstock purchased the session-topper, Irish-bred Velvet Moon, from the Voute Sales agency. Velvet Moon, offered in foal to Daylami, is a Group 2 winner herself and the dam of English Group 2 winner Moon Ballad. She is out of Park Special, who also produced the Italian Group 1 winner Central Park.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Klaus Jacob's Newsells Park Stud, Keeneland November's second-leading buyer with more than $15.9 million spent, added another filly to its stable Tuesday at the Tattersalls December mare sale's second session in Newmarket, England.
Newsells Park Stud signed for the English auction's second-day session-topper, an $813,750 Acatenango filly named Midnight Angel. The German-bred 3-year-old sold as a horse in training and went through the ring from Germany's Union Stud consignment.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Swan Queen, a $45,000 purchase by Lou Tucci, topped the 2002 Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society's winter mixed sale at the Woodbine Sales Pavilion on Saturday.
Schonberg Farm, as agent for Gustav Schickedanz, consigned Swan Queen, an unraced 6-year-old Regal Intention mare who is in foal to Langfuhr.
A total of 124 broodmares, yearlings, weanlings, horses of racing age, and a stallion share grossed $733,900, for an average of $5,919. There were 30 listed as not sold.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Tattersalls December foal sales, which produced a world record weanling filly price of about $2.9 million on Friday, ended Saturday with more records as gross, average, and median all rose sharply.
Topped by a Giant's Causeway half-sister to European champion Galileo who set the new weanling filly mark, the four-day foal auction sold 585 lots for $28,070,632. That was up 27 percent from last year's total on sales of 514 head.
First Class Gal was a finalist for Canada's outstanding broodmare two years ago but lost to Primarily. Lover's Talk was fourth in the voting for top mare last year behind the incomparable Dance Smartly.
But this year, First Class Gal and Lover's Talk are the leading candidates for the outstanding broodmare award, which will be presented at the Sovereign Awards ceremony on Dec. 7 in downtown Toronto.
On Dec. 1, 57 years ago, Elmer F. Heubeck Jr. arrived in Ocala to manage the only Thoroughbred nursery in north central Florida.
In the mid-1940's Ocala was a rural community of some 10,000. Heubeck was going to go to work for Carl G. Rose. Rose had migrated to Florida from Indiana and made a ton of money selling limestone to highway contractors. Once prosperous he turned his attention to real estate and horses.
West Virginia breeders have many reasons to give thanks. With purses at the tracks high and breeders' fund money filling the coffer, there is plenty of incentive to head to West Virginia.
Rene Moore has owned Naylee Farm near Summit Point with her husband, Dickie Moore, general manager at Charles Town, since 1988, and has seen the good times and not-so-good times for breeding and raising Thoroughbreds in the state. These are very, very good times.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The results of last weekend's most prestigious international races, the Grade 1 Hollywood Turf Cup and the Grade 1 Japan Cup, reinforced two principles of modern Thoroughbred breeding. First, Northern Dancer was the greatest source for premier international turf horses in the last century, and second, the preeminent families of breeding tend to produce the most consistent sires.