Echo Zulu Latest to Show Best of Bill Betz

Bill Betz won't forget the first day he worked on the farm he now calls home. Dr. McGee's son never even got out of his car, just told the college kid to start out front and work his way up.

“Back then they had those weed-eaters with a motor you strapped onto your back,” Betz recalls. “Weighed about 40lbs. So 7:00 a.m., I started weeding down the front of the farm. Get to 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 1:00 p.m., I don't see anybody. I'm thinking, 'Boy, people really work hard on a farm.' Finally, about quarter to six, no lunch or anything, I'm weeding round these trees up here, and Doc McGee comes in off his rounds. And he drives by, backs up, rolls down the window and says: 'Who are you?'”

Betz introduced himself to the Hagyard veterinarian. First day of his summer job, funding classes at the University of Kentucky: nutrition, farm management, that kind of thing. He'd arrived from Notre Dame with all his worldly possessions–a '64 Dodge and a dog–with a vague plan to transfer some Bluegrass know-how to the Quarter Horse game where he'd been learning the ropes.

At that moment Mrs. McGee appeared with a tray.

“Young man,” she said. “You look like you could use some iced tea.”

Many years later, they all met again on the top floor of the First Security building in downtown Lexington, to close on the sale of the farm. And Mrs. McGee reminded Betz of his response.

With a self-deprecating chuckle, he admits: “Apparently I said to her, 'Yes, I could. Because now I know how Jesus felt when he carried that cross up Golgotha.'”

When Mine That Bird crossed the line, the first person to call was Dr. McGee, saying how happy he was that the farm had raised a Kentucky Derby winner.

Mine That Bird famously brought only $9,500 as a yearling. Betz doesn't pretend he was any kind of standout, though he always believed in the genes: he'd bought the granddam because she managed second in the Canadian Oaks despite cracking a knee. “Something like Mine That Bird, though, that's just the icing on the cake,” Betz says. “That's just being in the game and giving yourself a chance to get lucky.”

Among countless other photos sharing the office walls, however, are a sale-topper and the half-brother to Roman Ruler and El Corredor who made $4.6 million at the 2006 Keeneland September Sale; and many besides, that did their job both in the ring and on the track. The latest is Echo Zulu (Gun Runner), herself a $300,000 yearling, who assisted her American Pharoah half-sister to $1.4 million last September at Keeneland, even though she had just won the first of the three Grade Is that secured her Eclipse Award.

These mementos of elite horses-remarkably copious, for a farm that has seldom grazed more than a couple of dozen mares–attest to the journey dividing that perspiring college kid from the reflective figure now lounging behind the desk. But perhaps it can better be charted by less familiar navigational points dotted about the room: native American totems, a scale model of a Great Lakes freighter, even the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius. Hardly standard issue, on horse farms. But never mind that Betz was a Philosophy and English major; here, simply put, is a man profoundly inquisitive about the world around him. And, really, that was also what drew him to horses.

“I think that's the number one thing you need in this business,” he says. “A natural curiosity. To be a careful observer. I think in some ways it's probably been an advantage, not to be second or third generation [in the industry]. Some of those people either don't have that curiosity to really see things and learn. Experience is a great teacher.”

Betz is instead indebted to his father for the template of a self-made man. Having started out as locomotive fireman, he had ended up president of the railroad–and his sons, in turn, were expected to learn about life by experiencing it. Hence the desk replica of the SS Kinsman Enterprise, where Betz had another of his summer jobs.

“She was built in 1927 and was sister ship to the Edmund Fitzgerald that they wrote the song about,” Betz says, referring to the loss of all hands in a Lake Superior storm in 1975. “Having this here reminds me of a different time in my life. We'd bring taconite pellets mined in Minnesota and Wisconsin down to the steel mills. Loading onto the dock, being the young kid, they'd swing you over in what they called the bosun's chair, with a big cable you had to run up and put on a cleat. And the taconite, of course it spills out and you're running over these marbles, with the boat coming in and the gap so wide.” He holds his hands apart. “These boats come in at 660 feet, into a real high dock. And there are no brakes on a boat! There weren't a lot of safety rules back then.”

It was a grounding that gives Betz a distaste for any sign of entitlement in young people today, and he's grateful that his father's “nepotism” was confined to putting his sons on a section gang, laying the track.

“We were knocking these spikes in with a sledgehammer, and the Mexican men would go all day and then build a fire and cook their tacos,” Betz recalls. “But after about five hits, my arms were rubber. And they'd come up, put their arms round me and say, 'That's okay, you go rest.' So when the Mexicans started embracing the horse business, I had nothing but respect for them. It does open your eyes: what the real world is like, and that if you want something you have to go out and earn it.”

A first exposure to horses came through upcountry Ohio weekends with his great uncle, who drove a school bus, but traded work horses on the side.

“He was quite a character,” Betz recalls. “He'd go in there and next thing you knew he'd be coming out with a different horse from the one he went in with. And he'd hook them up to a sleigh, and we'd go on trail rides, and he'd tell all these stories round the camp fire.”

Having learned to handle horses, Betz hooked up with another rare type to show Quarter Horses through his high school years.    “This trainer took me all over the country: Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Chicago,” he says. “He liked the drink, he liked the ladies, so he'd go out and party while I stayed behind to feed and groom and then bed down in the corner of the stall. Interesting experience, to say the least. But there I was, a 15-year-old kid, paid $25 for every horse I showed in the ring. I'd go into tack shops and buy myself fancy chaps, I was king of the walk.”

To persevere with horses, even so, struck his family as “a ridiculous thing to do” with law school beckoning. But it was a time of opportunity. People were starting to cross Quarter Horses with Thoroughbreds, and Betz figured that he should come to the Bluegrass and learn a few angles–only to become so absorbed by Thoroughbreds that he never went back.

Lee Eaton gave him a little office to comb through regional racecards, digging out the pedigrees of any fillies entered for a claim. He also had to index, longhand, the families of the many horses sold by Eaton's pioneering agency: toil that left him thoroughly versed in pedigrees. Betz then rounded out his education with the chance to manage Helmore Farm for Edgar Lucas in Maryland.

“They stood three stallions and bred a couple of hundred mares each year,” he recalls. “I didn't have much experience of handling stallions, and it was three old racetrackers and me. I can remember to this day the first mare I foaled on my own, I was so nervous. But you got a lot of stuff thrown at you, real quick, and you learned how to deal with it. After that baptism under fire, coupled what I'd learnt with Lee, I felt there wasn't anything I couldn't do in this business if I kept working hard.”

Betz befriended another outstanding horseman in David Hanley, nowadays at WinStar, but then managing a farm in Ireland before an impressive stint as a trainer. They'd begun a transatlantic pinhook partnership, along with Irish vet James Egan, at a time when the weanling market was little contested.

By now Betz was leasing a farm near Paris from his former boss Lucas, who kept his mares there as part of the package. But then he heard that the McGees were selling and Betz, initially with partners, became only the third proprietor of 300 lush acres previously maintained on a revolutionary war land grant by heirs of Patrick Henry. (“Give me liberty, or give me death!”)

“I knew I didn't want to work for anybody else,” Betz reflects. “I'm my own best critic. It's my life, not somebody else's, and you're not going to give that away. But I realized early on that there was no money in boarding horses, if you do it as you should without cutting corners. So if I was going to have a farm, I decided I'd want a piece of everything that's on it. That was the business model: populate the farm in partnerships, with people loyal to your program. And then upgrade as much as you can, whenever you have the capital.

“You have to be willing to take chances–I started out week to week, payroll to payroll–and you have to be objective. It's like running a sports franchise. These mares are draft choices: some work out, some don't. I want to strengthen their weaknesses without weakening their strengths, but to do that you have to see those strengths and weaknesses clearly. You can't be sentimental. And I think over the years, you develop intuition about it.”

To Betz, mating is all about match-making. “I don't think any stallion is too 'cheap' or too 'expensive',” he says. “All that matters is whether it's the right one for the mare. Can he enhance her? That's what you strive for. Breed the best to the best? Nice if you're Vanderbilt. But sometimes best to the best isn't the best. Yes, I have to be aware of the commercial side, because I sell yearlings for a living. I only race the odd filly. But within that context, within that group of successful stallions, there will always be matches that fit my mare.”

A case in point is Echo Zulu's dam Letgomyecho (Menifee), who had fallen beyond reach in the 2010 Keeneland November Sale, at $235,000, only to slip to $135,000 in the same ring a year later. Her first covers had been pricey, commensurate with her record as winner of her first three starts including the GII Forward Gal S. But maybe they weren't the right covers. Betz sent her to Mineshaft, and came up with graded stakes winner J Boys Echo; to Speightstown, for Grade I winner Echo Town; and then to Gun Runner for her champion. As Steve Asmussen said to him, after Letgomyecho's American Pharoah hit the home run last September: “'Well, I got mine. Now you got yours!'”

“I want to breed aptitude to aptitude,” Betz says, dismissing another lazy convention. “If your mare's fast, don't breed her to a stayer. Breed a stayer to a stayer and hope it's fast, or a sprinter to a sprinter and hope it can carry its speed. But those are just principles over-riding the program. It's like if you're a painter, and someone says why did you use that color? It all goes together at the end of the day, and you just hope that you got it right.”

That feels an instructive analogy, for there's a really creative sensibility at work here.

“I think I do have an artistic side,” Betz accepts. “I love music, I love art, and the way people can express themselves like that. To me, this is really my way to express myself. I'd love to be a musician, but I'm not, so this is kind of my extension.”

Like all artistry, all intuition, horsemanship is hard to articulate. As Betz says, if he can't always remedy a situation with a horse, he tries not to be confused by what's causing it.

“We like to give them human qualities, say they're courageous or whatever,” he muses. “And maybe there's a little bit of that: they can be competitive. But truth be told, the ones that excel, I think it's probably just easier for them. What did Vince Lombardi say? 'Fatigue makes cowards of us all.'

“I remember being sent down to Hialeah to look at this filly Jimmy Conway had, who used to train for Darby Dan. And I was asking him what he looked for, in terms of soundness and all that, and he said: 'Bill, if they can run, they're all unsound.' You train them hard; they run hard. So there's probably some truth to that, too.”

What does seem obvious is that Betz's empathy must reflect a hinterland so much wider than you tend to encounter in the obsessive, all-consuming world of Thoroughbreds. Asked about the Native American totems, for instance, Betz gives a shrug.    “They understood one very important premise, in my view,” he says. “People complain about the world. But if there's a God, maybe he didn't just make the world for us. That may be inconvenient for us, but maybe we're missing the point. We think we're the center of everything-and those native cultures understood that maybe they weren't.”

Not that he pretends the slightest immunity to the vexations of a horseman's life, whether in trivial daily frustrations or the disasters that can ruin a whole business cycle.

“It is a rollercoaster,” he says. “The emotional highs and lows can be pretty dramatic. That's not for everybody. I've had people over the years wanting to get into the business, but I'm pretty careful who I partner with-just because you know what's coming, and you need the mentality to accept those pitfalls. But I guess if you've got enough nerve to keep getting back on the rollercoaster, the thrills can be memorable.”

And surely the good days, all those photos on the wall, redress the disappointments?

“I think that's true in life,” Betz replies. “But I don't know that you do this for those kinds of things. You do it because this is what you do.”

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Siblings to New Juvenile GI Winners Highlight KEESEP

Three yearlings in the Keeneland September Sale catalogue received big updates over the weekend when their year-older siblings captured Grade Is at two of America's premiere race meets over the holiday weekend. GI Runhappy Del Mar Futurity S. winner Pinehurst's (Twirling Candy) yearling half-brother by Cairo Prince sold prior to the juvenile's breakout score, bringing $120,000 from pinhooker Randy Bradshaw at Fasig-Tipton's New York-Bred Yearling Sale in mid-August. However, the winners of the GI TVG Del Mar Debutante S., GI Spinaway S. and GI Hopeful S. will be represented by half or full siblings next week at Keeneland.

Pinehurst's stablemate Grace Adler (Curlin) threw her hat in the ring for top juvenile filly honors with an ultra-impressive score in the GI Del Mar Debutante Sunday (video). Campaigned by Michael Lund Petersen and Willow Grace Farm, the $700,000 FTKSEL buy won her debut for Bob Baffert at the seaside oval July 31. Given a 4-1 chance in the Debutante, the chestnut unleashed a powerful late rally, sling-shotting to the lead and storming clear for an 11 1/4-length score.

“It was amazing,” said Adam Corndorf, President and General Manager of Blue Heaven Farm, breeder of Grace Adler. “When she started breezing several months ago, we started dreaming about what could be. Looking at the schedule for Del Mar, we thought how amazing it would be if she could run in that race and hit the board. You think about how many 2-year-olds there are every year and how many win that race and the odds are astronomical. It was incredible and a dream come true for us.”

Blue Heaven Farm consigns an Into Mischief half-brother to Grace Adler as Hip 99 in Book 1 of KEESEP. He RNA'd for $350,000 as a weanling at last year's Keeneland November Sale. Bonnie Baskin's operation went to $600,000 to acquire their dam, GSW Our Khrysty (Newfoundland), a half-sister too GISW Bullsbay (Tiznow), in foal to Tiznow at the 2011 FTKNOV sale. Her GSP daughter Virginia Key (Distorted Humor) remains in their care.

“He has a different body type [than his sister],” Corndorf said. “He is a little bigger, a little leggier, but similar in terms of his competitive spirit. The thing that is most impressive to us is that you just can't get to the bottom of him. As we have been prepping him for the sale, he has shown limitless energy. He can go all day long and never loses focus. He likes the work and is a pleasure to be around. Even when we walk the yearlings together, he wants to be out in front. Everything is a race to him.”

Meanwhile, across the country, it was the Gun Runner show at Saratoga over Labor Day weekend with members of his first crop taking both of the venue's banner juvenile events. First up was Echo Zulu, who was a decisive winner of the GI Spinaway S. Sunday at the Spa (video). The $300,000 KEESEP buy is trained by her sire's conditioner Steve Asmussen and co-owned by one of his owners Winchell Thoroughbreds in partnership with L and N Racing LLC.

Echo Zulu was tabbed a 'TDN Rising Star' after graduating by 5 1/2 lengths in her career bow on opening day of the Saratoga meet July 15. Heavily favored to repeat in the Spinaway, the bay was pressed through quick early fractions and drew away in the lane for a good-looking score.

Bill Betz, who was part of the group who bred Echo Zulu, offers her American Pharoah half-sister as Hip 43 in his Betz Thoroughbreds consignment. Their Grade II-winning dam Letgomyecho (Menifee) also produced L and N Racing's Asmussen-trained GI Runhappy Allen Jerkens S. winner Echo Town (Speightstown); GSW J Boys Echo (Mineshaft); GSP Unbridled Outlaw (Unbridled's Song); and MSP Dragic (Broken Vow).

“She is a lovely filly,” Betz said. “She has strength, balance, good movement and temperament. She also has pedigree. Obviously the mother was a graded stakes winner and produced graded stakes horses, including Echo Town, who won the Jerkens last year at Saratoga. So, now with Echo Zulu, it's a pretty nice package.”

The horseman continued, “Anytime you get something current happening in the pedigree it is a pretty big plus. In her case, it is icing on the cake because you already had all that to begin with. To have a half-sister as exciting as Echo Zulu just solidifies her place as an elite filly.”

Betz's KEESEP consignment got another big update at Saratoga the week prior when Yaupon (Uncle Mo) fended off an aggressive attack from Firenze Fire (Friesan Fire) to win the GI Forego S. Aug. 28 (video). Betz–who bred Yaupon in another partnership– offers a Good Magic half-brother to that future Spendthrift stallion as Hip 73. Out of GISP Modification (Vindication), the dark bay colt is also a half-brother to MGSP Sawyer's Hill (Spring At Last).

“Good timing is everything,” Betz said. “In Yaupon's case, it was his first Grade I win. He was an established sprinter in the past, but the fact he has progressed from three to four and beat five Grade I winners in the Forego is a great accomplishment for him. Hopefully it will propel him right into the Breeders' Cup. You can never really plan on something like that happening, but when it does, you just enjoy it.”

As for how the Good Magic colt compares to Yaupon, Betz said, “They are the same color, have the same balance and great movement. He is very correct with an excellent scope and X-rays. He is a May foal, but you'd never know it looking at him. He has grown up well and has good muscle. He is a very nice individual, so we have our fingers crossed there as well.”

The day after Echo Zulu gave her leading freshman sire his first Grade I winner, her barnmate Gunite (Gun Runner) became his second with an 11-1 upset in Saratoga's GI Hopeful S. on closing day of the meet (video). Bred by Winchell Thoroughbreds, the dark bay earned his diploma at third asking at Churchill Downs June 26 and was second to 'TDN Rising Star' High Oak (Gormley) next out in the GII Saratoga Special S. Aug. 14. Battling for the lead early in the Hopeful, Gunite shook free of his foes in the lane and rolled clear for a dominant score over 3-5 favorite Wit (Practical Joke).

“That's just the way we planned it,” David Fiske, longtime Winchell advisor, quipped. “It's just dumb luck, but we will take it! Echo Zulu was a purchase and Gunite was a homebred. It was just a big weekend over all.”

Winchell offers a full-sister to Gunite as Hip 539 in the Gainesway consignment. The dark bay is out of fellow Winchell homebred stakes winner Simple Surprise (Cowboy Cal), who in turn is a daughter of SW & GSP Simplify (Pulpit).

“He was always pretty and she has always been pretty,” Fiske said. “They kind of look like their mother to some extent. She is also a dark bay. That's not a bad thing because she is a pretty attractive mare.”

Fiske added, “I think if anyone has a Gun Runner in the sale they are in pretty good shape.”

The Keeneland September Sale kicks off Monday, Sept. 13.

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Book Three Concludes at Keeneland

LEXINGTON, KY – The Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale’s two-session Book 3 section concluded with another day of steady trade Friday in Lexington. Bill Betz made the day’s highest bid, going to $270,000 late in the day to acquire the racing/ broodmare prospect Divine Queen (Divine Park) from the Trackside Farm consignment. The mare was one of four to bring $200,000 or more during the session. While only 292 of the 401 catalogued head went through the ring Friday, 235 sold for a buy-back rate of just 19.52%.

Through the two Book 3 sessions, Keeneland sold 462 head for $26,185,000. The average was $56,677–down just slightly from last year’s figure of $57,032–and the median of $42,000 dipped 6.7% from $45,000 a year ago. Fifteen horses sold for $200,000 or more during Book 3.

During last year’s Book 3 section, 499 head sold for $28,459,200. The book’s top price was $325,000 and there were nine offerings who sold for $200,000 or more.

“It was a lot better than I anticipated,” Summerfield’s Francis Vanlangendonck said of the November market. “For the babies, it’s been really, really good. The weanlings sold much better today than earlier in the week. Yesterday we averaged about 80 showings per weanling for horses we were selling today. The buyers were pretty aggressive. It seems like for these lower-valued weanlings there is a world of people wanting to buy. With people worried about what the markets were going to be like, there were a lot of scratches. Those well-conformed weanlings that vetted good sold really well. Even some that had issues are starting to sell. I looked at the outs, so by the time we got to the sales ring, I knew where we were. I knew there would be a market, but thought it would be a little timid… when the supply started lowering, I felt we might do OK. Even with the mares I thought they did well. We sold every horse we put through the ring. We had gotten beaten up pretty good in September and October and we were having to sell to make sure we had money for stud fees and to keep going.”

Reiley McDonald of Eaton Sales said there was still demand for the right type of mares and weanlings.

“The mares that are legitimate, there are buyers here for them and Book 3 has still been good,” McDonald said. “There are horses that just have holes in them, they are a little old or the foals don’t vet right, there is no market for those. The weanling buyers are not putting up with any veterinary flaws. That always happens in a tight market. If you jump through the hoops–you’re a nice physical and you’re clean–then you will get as much here as you will for a yearling. There is money out there and people get hungry. Everybody gets shuffled back by the earlier higher-priced horses and get hungry in Books 3 and 4 because the pinhookers make their living reselling the foals.”

The Keeneland November sale continues through Wednesday with sessions beginning daily at 10 a.m.

Divine Score for Bradley

Bill Betz struck late to secure Divine Queen (Divine Park) (hip 1764) for a session-topping $270,000 Friday at Keeneland, signing for the mare in the name of Avout Bloodstock. Tom Evans’s Trackside Farm consigned the 5-year-old racing or broodmare prospect on behalf of co-owner/breeder and trainer Buff Bradley.

“We bred her, foaled her, raised her and raced her and we just sold her,” said Bradley. “Pretty much like we did [two-time sprint champion] Groupie Doll. We were very excited to race this filly and then sell her as a mare and know she was going to go somewhere good.”

Racing for Bradley and co-breeder Carl Hurst, Divine Queen won the 2019 Open Mind S. and 2018 Dogwood S. She won six of 23 starts for earnings of $339,344.

“She had a lot of class,” Bradley said. “She showed it in the ring, walking up here, she’s just all class. And a very sound race mare. Never once did she have a problem. I think we are very proud of that. We bred a nice, sound racehorse.”

From the same family, Bradley and Hurst bred stakes winner and graded placed Queen’s Award (Medaglia d’Oro), a half-sister to Divine Queen, and also bred and campaigned multiple graded winner The Player (Street Hero), who is out of a half-sister to both mares.

“We have a lot of the family and we have to keep the cash flow going and get ready for the young ones coming along,” Bradley said of the decision to sell the mare.

Of the mare’s session-topping final price, Bradley said, “It was a bit more than what we were thinking, but we’re very happy with it.”

Gottahaveaholiday to Coteau Grove

Bloodstock agent Andrew Cary remained busy buying mares for the account of Keith and Ginger Myers’s Coteau Grove Friday at Keeneland, going to $240,000 to acquire the broodmare prospect Gottahaveaholiday (Harlan’s Holiday). The 6-year-old got a big update when her juvenile half-sister Dayoutoftheoffice (Into Mischief) won the GI Frizette S. and finished second in the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies last week.

“The update is just huge,” Cary said after signing the ticket on the mare, who was consigned by Taylor Made Sales Agency. “That filly ran such an amazing race in the Breeders’ Cup and winning the Frizette. It gives us a nice filly to root for next year.”

Gottahaveaholiday was purchased by Samantha Siegel’s Jay Em Ess Stable for $230,000 at the 2015 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. She finished second six times in 10 starts.

“The mare was gorgeous,” Cary continued. “She was an expensive yearling herself. We will breed her to a really nice stallion and have options moving forward.”

As the November sale continued through Book 3, Cary said there was still plenty of competition.

“There are still a lot of top agents and buyers here,” he said. “It’s been that way throughout the sale. You just have to follow them up and some you get and some you don’t. You just hope you land on the right number on some of them. We got outbid on probably 10 horses yesterday. It’s very competitive for these kind of long-term mares. There is a lot of competition for those and it bodes well for the bloodstock industry down the road.”

Cary has signed for 11 mares on behalf of the Lousiana-based Coteau Grove Farms for a total of $3,195,000. His purchases are led by a pair of $500,000 acquisitions: Miss Hot Legs (Verrazano) (hip 66) and Contributing (hip 958).

Nyquist Colt Joins Pinhooking Partnership

Headley Bell purchased a colt by Nyquist for $225,000 and the weanling (hip 1586) is part of a pinhooking partnership he has been busy buying for at the Keeneland November sale.

“I liked that he was an athlete and I liked the family,” Bell said. “And obviously we like Nyquist. It’s hard to ignore the start he has made. We put together a partnership and we are just trying to put some athletes in the bucket and see if we can get lucky.”

The chestnut is out of the unraced Senorita Corredora (El Corredor)–a $150,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase in 2010–and he is a half-brother to multiple stakes-placed Holiday’s Angel (Harlan’s Holiday). Bred by Gary and Anne Smith’s Elm Racing and Mulholland Springs, the weanling was consigned by Mulholland Springs.

“The sire is obviously doing well with the Breeders’ Cup winner [Vequist],” said John Mulholland. “It all fell into place. The colt vetted well and presented himself well, and we had all the right buyers on him. We bred him in partnership with some clients of ours, Gary and Ann Smith of Elm Racing. I actually bought the mare for the Smiths as a yearling and she got a tendon injury and never made it to the races. She was a breeze or two away from running. They have raced all the foals and want to do more racing, perhaps claim some horses or buy some 2-year-olds, and that is why we went ahead and sold the mare and the foal. Happily, I found another client to buy the mare and keep her on the farm, which makes me happy.”

Bell has purchased six weanlings at the Keeneland November sale for the partnership under the name Sycamore. In addition to hip 1586, he purchased a filly by Constitution (hip 1688) for $140,000; a filly by Distorted Humor (hip 1663) for $105,000; a filly by Mendelssohn (hip 1545) for $100,000; a colt by Malibu Moon (hip 408) for $90,000; and a filly by First Samurai (hip 1511) for $70,000.

“We feel like there is potential opportunity,” he said. “We’ll see. Coming into the sale, we thought it might be somewhat depressed, but I don’t feel that it is at all, to be honest with you.”

Weanling-to-yearling pinhookers have come up against plenty of competition from end-users at this week’s Keeneland November sale, particularly from Larry Best’s OXO Equine, which has purchased eight foals.

“For Larry Best to come into the weanling market as strong as he is, he is obviously very competitive and makes it tough,” Bell said. “But listen, we are all trying to do the same thing.”

Practical Joke Weanlings Prove Popular

A pair of weanlings by young Coolmore sire Practical Joke set the pace for foal prices early in Friday’s session of the Keeneland November sale. Brian Graves of Gainesway went to $185,000 to acquire a colt by the Grade I winner (hip 1512) from the Eaton Sales consignment. Bred by Forging Oaks, the pinhooking prospect is a half-brother to multiple graded winner Secret Gypsy (Sea of Secrets).

“I bought Practical Joke as a yearling, so if anybody was going to be inspired to stretch for them a little bit, it’s me,” Graves said. “They’ve all been well-balanced, good movers and athletic. You’ve got to believe in Into Mischief and Practical Joke has a good chance. Hopefully, he will come out with some early runners and we’ll be in good shape.”

Graves purchased Practical Joke for $135,000 at the 2015 Keeneland January sale and resold him for $240,000 at that year’s Keeneland September sale. The stallion, whose first foals are yearlings, won the GI Champagne S., GI H. Allen Jerkens S. and GI Hopeful S.

“I was happy with the price,” Eaton Sales’ Reiley McDonald said of the transaction. “He is a really nice physical horse and those can go for anything above what you’re expecting when they are that good. His sire has been doing well, with one a couple hips before him that also sold well. He was the best horse we had physically.”

Just a few hips before Graves made his purchase, Larry Best’s OXO Equine went to $150,000 to acquire a filly by Practical Joke (hip 1510) from the Brookdale Sales consignment. The chestnut filly is out of the unraced Miss Prytania (Eskendereya), a half-sister to graded winners Medal Count (Dynaformer) and Garden District (Dixie Union). She was bred by J.R. Ward Stables.

Graves agreed the weanling market has been very competitive this week in Lexington.

“I am not shocked,” he said of the strong weanling market. “Everybody saw there were fewer on offer and maybe the nice ones that have come through have been fewer and farther between. The laws of supply and demand take over.”

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Well-Related ‘Pharoah’ Filly Keeps Ball Rolling at Keeneland

   Longtime owner/breeder Mike Rutherford of Lexington’s Manchester Farm fended off several stiff challenges to ultimately land an American Pharaoh half-sister to unbeaten GII Amsterdam S. romper Yaupon (Uncle Mo) for $1.2 million.

   The chestnut (hip 291) was consigned to the sale by Bill Betz’s Betz Thoroughbreds and bred by Betz, J. Betz, CoCo Equine, former Chicago newscaster Ron Magers and Burns.

   “She is beautiful, gorgeous,” said Rutherford while rushing out of the sales pavilion. “Best filly I have seen. Let’s hope she can run.”

   Rutherford said he currently has six other sons and daughters of American Pharaoh in training. He said he hadn’t yet decided on a trainer for hip 291, but he has employed Yaupon’s trainer Steve Asmussen in the past.

   Betz paid $195,000 for mare Modification (Vindication) at the 2010 Keeneland November sale. She was carrying her first foal by Spring At Last that day, and that $100,000 KEESEP yearling eventually because MGSP Sawyer’s Hill. Other sales out of Modification include a $475,000 Candy Ride (Arg) filly, also trained by Asmussen to a couple wins. Yaupon was a $350,000 KEESEP grad, $485,000 Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream RNA and $255,000 OBS June purchase by Bill and Corinne Heiligbrodt.

   Rutherford was congratulated after the sale by Heiligbrodt representative Susan Montanye, and Rutherford said that Heiligbrodt was one of the underbidders on the filly.

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