All Equine All The Time

Curlin's Stellar Wind On Saturday the Road to the Breeders’ Cup gets interesting with the second of three big weekends full of prep races. Santa Anita, the host of this year’s Breeders’ Cup, has five graded stakes carded for Saturday while Belmont also has five graded stakes during its first of two “Super Saturdays.” With 82 horses entered as of Wednesday, it left more than enough chances for a variety of stallions to pick up some valuable stakes placings for their resumes heading into the final months before breeding season. In all, 65 stallions have horses running in the major graded stakes on Saturday with 14 sires represented by two or more horses. Interestingly, North America’s top two sires don’t have any entries in these races with both Tapit and Uncle Mo sitting this “Super Saturday” out (Uncle Mo does have an entry in the ungraded Unzip Me Stakes taking place as Santa Anita’s finale on Saturday.) However, the nation’s other top sires have a chance to make ...

Tapit controlled the Saratoga Selected Yearlings sale Though they attract different groups of buyers, Saratoga’s Selected Yearlings and New York-bred Preferred Yearlings sales had similarities besides just using the same sales grounds when they took place over the past week. Read on to see some interesting tidbits about both sales. Big money horses – While the numbers were slightly down at the Selected Yearlings sale, the sale didn’t see that big of a hit on horses who brought $500,000 or more with 23 selling in that price range vs. 24 in 2015. At the New York-bred Preferred sale, the sale topper was actually $100,000 more expensive this year and the same amount of horses (seven) sold for $250,000 or more as last year. Orb, standing at Claiborne, had a $450,000 yearling at the Select sale Kentucky Sires – Even though there were a variety of sires at both sales with sires from abroad represented in both sales (in some cases, moving out of the country after this crop was...

Donegal Moon The first yearling sale of the season is behind us with the Fasig-Tipton holding a two day sale on Monday and Tuesday that kicked off with a special evening session for a Horses of Racing Age sale with the yearling session the following day. After taking a day to dive into the sales results, here are a few observations from the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July Sale. Testing the waters with Donegal Moon – Every year a handful of stallion prospects who still have some racing left to do go through the ring. But not many go through the ring in July of their 3-year-old year off a victory that makes it look like they can make a lot of noise the second half of this year. It was unknown how a type like Donegal Moon would go over in the ring but he proved that there is money out there for types like him if owners want to take it. He drew a final bid of $1.6-million, which wasn’t enough to get him sold but does open doors for this sale in the future if they want to try and recru...