All Equine All The Time

With the first 2-year-old sale in the books, fireworks lit up the Gulfstream Park paddock on Wednesday night with four horses selling for $1-million or more. Here are some quick observations made about this year’s Fasig-Tipton Florida Sale and the stallions represented in it. Tapit Tapit continued his reign as the king of North America: While Tapit only had three horses go through the ring and two RNAed (for $145,000 and $520,000, respectively), one was all he needed to take over the leader board. Buyers weren’t willing to go over $1-million for any horse until the colt out of a half-sister to Hard Spun (Danzig) walked into the ring and hammered $1.8-million to Woodford Racing, Lane’s End and Robert LaPenta, $800,000 more than the three second most expensive horses. He was a $1.2-million RNA last year as a yearling so even though it may have seemed a little crazy to let go of that money then, his owners obviously knew they had something special on their hands. It’s good to be ...

One of the bittersweet moments of the 2015 Keeneland September sale will be when Hip 3100 exits the ring. The colt consigned by Glennwood Farm and out of Stunning Image (IRE) is the final yearling to sell at Keeneland by Harlan's Holiday, who died in November of 2013. Overall, 73 Harlan's Holiday yearlings are scheduled to go through the ring (after outs) over the next few weeks with 24 of those in Book 1 (Sept. 14-17). They will join 417 other yearlings by the sire who have entered the ring at a September sale since 2006, with that group including U.S. champion Shanghai Bobby, Canadian champion Conquest Harlanate and  Grade 2 winner Intense Holiday among others. Shanghai Bobby in 2015 This year at Keeneland, Harlan's Holiday will again be represented by a good group of yearlings. Multiple yearlings offered are out of stakes winning dams with others being full sibling to the aforementioned Intense Holiday (Hip 340) and Grade 3 winner Poker Player (Hip 1044) in additi...