All Equine All The Time

Candy Ride Tuesday marks the start of the second major 2-year-old sale of the year and with 521 2-year-olds slated to go through the ring at OBS's March Sale as of Sunday morning, buyers have a variety of horses to choose from. While buyers have long been doing their homework for this sale, they got their first glimpse of the potential the horses show on the track last week when the 2-year-olds put in their only public breeze before going through the ring at the breeze show.  With bullets of :9.3 for a furlong and :20.2 over a quarter mile, the 2-year-olds were motoring over the synthetic surface at OBS with 48 horses working under 10 seconds during the three-day preview last week. While buyers can always expect stallions like Tapit (Pulpit), Scat Daddy (Johannesburg), Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) and War Front (Danzig) to be popular, the breeze show highlighted a few others that may be worth a second look before they enter the ring over the next few days.  Here are eigh...

Tapit When Tapit retired in October of 2004, it’s doubtful his level of success was expected by anywhere but his connections’ wildest dreams.   A Grade 1 winning son of Pulpit (A.P. Indy), he was a $625,000 yearling with strong bloodlines standing at an introductory fee of $15,000.   However, even the bluest blooded horses in the stud book aren’t expected to become the sire that Tapit has become.   Tapit’s first foal crop hit the ground running in 2008, with his first champion, Stardom Bound, headlining that group.  Since then he has sired five other champions, including 2011 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Hansen and Distaff winner Untapable.  His first United States classic winner came in 2014 with Tonalist winning the Belmont Stakes, and the colt later went on to win two editions of the Jockey Club Gold Cup.  With 875 northern hemisphere foals of aged 3-years-old or older and 535 winners as of Jan. 1, Tapit has sired 43 graded stakes winn...

When one mentions that the racehorse industry has become commercialized, they only have to point to the yearling sales to prove their point.   This year’s first season sires are an example of that, with the racing industry getting to see a large sample of these new sires’ offspring a year before they make it to the track. Union Rags has 75 yearlings selling this summer Between the sales of the two major sales companies (Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton) summer yearling sales, many foals born to these new sires last year won’t race under their breeders’ names. Freshmen sires account for 990 yearlings selling this summer, with 45.3 percent of their foals born in 2013 going through the ring at Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland. On first glance, WinStar Farm’s Bodemeister, who had 135 foals born in 2014 looks to be the freshman stallion most visited by commercial breeders. Of those 135 born, 98 have either sold at a Fasig-Tipton yearling sale this summer or will sell at Keeneland S...