LEXINGTON, Ky. - After posting losses at Monday's opening session, the second and final day of selling at the Barretts May juvenile auction Tuesday in Pomona, Calif., produced a $170,000 early leader.
At 5:30 p.m., the $170,000 leader was a Smokester filly that Miller Thoroughbreds bought from Mary Knight, agent. The filly is a daughter of the Afleet mare Ultrafleet.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - A total of 45 juveniles are set to go on the auction block Thursday in the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society's annual 2-year-olds in training sale at the Woodbine Sales Pavilion.
Major consignors include agents Richard Hogan, Hill 'n' Dale Sales Agency, Huntington Stud Farm, and Cameron Training Center.
Hogan has 2-year-olds by Saint Ballado, Cape Town, Lit de Justice, and Lord Carson. Saint Martin, a Saint Ballado colt, is the first foal of a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Spellbound.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Globally influential stallion Danehill, the sire of North American champion turf mare Banks Hill and multiple Group 1 winner Rock of Gibraltar among many other stakes winners, died Tuesday in a paddock accident in Ireland.
The stallion was 17 and died after flipping over backward and hitting his head. The horse was being hand-grazed in his paddock at the time of the accident, according to a Coolmore statement.
TORONTO, Ontario - Twenty-two Thoroughbreds died Friday in a fire that destroyed a barn at Woodlands, a farm and training center in Hillsburgh, Ontario.
Gail Wood, a consignor and breeder who is the proprietor of Woodlands, said an emergency call was placed at 6:11 p.m. Friday, and that while the fire department responded promptly, flames had engulfed the building by 6:30 p.m.
Four horses were rescued from the blaze.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A chance meeting in Nebraska 25 years ago brought Bill Casner and Ken Troutt together. Each had placed a claim on Great Bear Lake at the old Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack, and Casner, then a 25-year-old claiming trainer, won the two-way shake.
Neither man could have known at the time that those few minutes over the claim box would change their lives forever. Over the next 25 years, their association would make them enormously wealthy and eventually put their names in the history books as breeders of 2003 Kentucky Derby winner, Funny Cide.
OCALA, Fla. - P.A. "Tony" Everard, who bought Funny Cide as a yearling, is the second Florida-based pinhooker in three years to snare a Kentucky Derby winner. Two years ago, Monarchos, pinhooked by Murray Smith, won the Derby.
Everard bought two yearlings at the 2001 Saratoga sale of New York-breds - Funny Cide and one by Eastern Echo - and sent them to the New Episode Training Center in Ocala, Fla., owned by Everard and his wife, Elisabeth.
New York was not the only state to challenge tradition with a classic winner on the first weekend in May. The Pennsylvania-bred filly Russian Rhythm upset a heavy favorite and 18 other rivals to win England's Group 1 1000 Guineas on May 4, the day after Funny Cide's Kentucky Derby triumph.
Not surprisingly, the phones have been ringing nonstop at the offices of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the city where this year's Kentucky Derby winner, Funny Cide, was born.
Last Saturday at Churchill Downs, Funny Cide became the first New York-bred to win the Kentucky Derby in the race's 129-year history. The Distorted Humor gelding was born at Joe and Anne McMahon's McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds on Fitch Road, about a mile from Saratoga Race Course.
There were two distinctively different previews last week for the Barretts May sale of 2-year-olds in training, which will be held Monday and Tuesday.
The conventional preview was held on Thursday and Friday at Fairplex Park on the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, featuring sale prospects breezing a furlong or a quarter-mile.
Across town at Hollywood Park, another preview of sorts was held on Wednesday and Thursday, when a few of the prospects ran in maiden races over 4 1/2 furlongs.
