Clovis Crane | Horse Racing Free Tips

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – A day after watching the horses perform on the racetrack, buyers were out in full force at the sales barns Tuesday in preparation for the return of the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream Sale of Selected 2-Year-Olds in Training, which will be held in the track's paddock Wednesday. Under late-morning overcast skies and windy conditions, trainer Bob Baffert and bloodstock agent Donato Lanni were making the rounds at the sales barns, as were fellow Southern California conditioners Simon Callaghan and Paddy Gallagher. The local training bench was represented by Chad Brown, Graham Motion, Shug McGaughey and Todd Pletcher. Saudi businessman Amr Zedan, who will watch his Medina Spirit (Protonico) go postward in Saturday's GI Santa Anita Derby, hit the barns along with racing manager Gary Young, and Michael Tabor and the Coolmore team were among the throng of studious shoppers as well.

Consignors were kept busy showing the 136 horses expected to go through the ring Wednesday when bidding begins at 2 p.m.

“This is the first time I sat down since 8 a.m.,” Steve Venosa of SGV Thoroughbreds said shortly after noon Tuesday as his popular colt by Nyquist (hip 146) headed out for another showing. “That one horse there has probably been out all morning. They've all been out. It hasn't let up yet. Everybody is here.”

Fasig-Tipton was forced to cancel its 2020 renewal of the Gulfstream sale due to the pandemic and consignors and buyers both seemed pleased to be back in South Florida for the boutique auction.

“It is good to be back out here,” Venosa said. “Last year was an odd year for everyone. Just to get back here and see all of the activity, it's very refreshing. We are really looking forward to a good sale.”

A few consignments up the row, Dean de Renzo of Hartley/de Renzo Thoroughbreds was also taking advantage of a brief interlude between showings of the operation's popular Gun Runner colt (hip 181).

“We have one of the top horses in the sale, so they usually take a lot of time,” de Renzo said as the handsome chestnut once again headed out of the barn. “He's been out all day. But it feels good to be back here after missing last year.”

DeRenzo and partner Randy Hartley purchased hip 181 for $140,000 at last year's Fasig-Tipton October sale and he worked a furlong in :10 1/5 during Monday's under-tack preview.

“We bought that horse kind of just on a gut feeling in the back ring,” de Renzo recalled. “We loved him then and thought we had bought a really nice horse. And he's had a great year for us training and here, under pretty tough conditions, he just came through it all. We knew it coming in that he would, but after seeing that first part of the racetrack, we thought maybe this isn't the place we should be. I guess good horses can get through things.”

De Renzo said holding the under-tack show over Gulfstream's dirt track allowed buyers to separate the talent on display.

“We only have three, but they all performed well considering the conditions we had with the heat, deep racetrack and wind,” de Renzo said. “But that's what I do like about the dirt and breezing on the dirt, when they do get through it, people know that's the horse and then it turns out to be the right horse. We like that because if we have a horse that really performs well, but he's not the right horse, it looks bad on us. We're happy to be here.”

Of expectations heading into the sale, de Renzo said, “I think the sale is going to be strong. I think there are a lot of really nice horses here. After a year off, I think people have settled down a little more about the pandemic, there is more of a comfort zone. So I have good expectations that the sale is going to be what it was two years ago.”

Eddie Woods was the leading consignor at the juvenile sales season's first auction, the OBS March Sale, and the Irishman was seeing similar action at the Gulfstream barns.

“It's been very busy,” Woods said. “It's just backing off a little now. But we've seen everyone and they've been working hard. It just has a good feel to the whole thing, a bit like the March sale. Maybe not as many people as in the March sale, but there aren't as many horses to go around either.”

Woods continued, “The expectations are high here. Fasig has been very high on how the sale has been received by their customers and I'm sure with the credit applications. And we will see what happens.”

Tristan de Meric of de Meric Sales admitted he was one of many consignors who had been surprised by the strength of the market last month in Ocala. He said he hopes the momentum only builds from there.

“I was definitely pleasantly surprised by the market at OBS,” de Meric said. “We sold 26 out of 26 horses that we led to the ring. It was a great sale. I can't complain about that. And if the year can build off of that, like it has historically, hopefully we are in for a fun season. For the right ones anyway.”

After a year of uncertainties and frustrations, buyers are ready to move forward, observed Clovis Crane of Crane Thoroughbred Services.

“All of the buyers are here, so all of the stars are aligned for a huge sale,” Crane said. “If you have good horses, they are going to buy them, it's pretty apparent.”

Crane continued, “I think there is still a lot of uncertainty, but I think there is also optimism. I think the election being over and the uncertainty of that and COVID–I hate to say under control– but there is light at the end of the tunnel, so I think that's a positive. And I think there is optimism. People want to move forward. People don't want to be held back and they are sick of the media telling them the sky is going to fall. We are going to move forward and people are excited to move forward. Racehorses are something to go do and have fun with. It's exciting, the racehorse business. That's what people need right now. They need something exciting and positive.”

When it was last held in 2019, 59 horses sold for $29,115,000 at the Gulfstream sale. The average was $493,475 and the median was $375,000. A colt by Curlin brought the auction's top price, selling for $3.65 million and that youngster was one of six to sell for seven figures at the sale.

The post Fasig-Tipton Gets Back to Business at Gulfstream appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

TIMONIUM, MD – The three-day under-tack preview ahead of next week’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale concluded Friday under glorious blue skies and temperatures in rising steadily into the 80s through seven sets of workers.

“It was a terrific under-tack show. All of the credit goes to [Maryland State Fairgrounds maintenance director Don] Chief Denmeyer,” said Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning, Jr. “We had challenging weather at the beginning of the week and this racetrack was as good, from beginning to end, as any under-tack show we’ve ever conducted. The first horse worked very, very well on Wednesday and the last horse worked very, very well on Friday. The consignors brought quality horses to the grounds and we are very pleased with what we saw on the racetrack.”

A colt by Wicked Strong (hip 512) turned in the fastest quarter-mile work Friday when covering the distance in :21 1/5. The juvenile, purchased for $9,000 at Keeneland last September, sold for $20,000 to D and B Racing following a furlong work in :10 2/5 at this year’s OBS March sale.

“He was bought in March by a group from California who bought him to pinhook back here,” explained Ciaran Dunne, whose Wavertree Stables consigns the chestnut colt. “They were buying horses that they thought the sale had come maybe too early for or they didn’t fit, but had shown them something on the racetrack. They took him back to California and he was a horse they were very high on all of the time they had him out there.”

Dunne continued, “The plan was originally to sell him out there [at Fasig-Tipton Santa Anita Sale], but obviously that sale didn’t happen, so they rerouted to here. This is not the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time they brought a horse here.”

The colt worked four times in May and June at San Luis Rey Training Center, most recently going three furlongs in :37.20 June 12. He worked two furlongs June 2 in :21.60.

“He is a big, two-turn looking horse,” Dunne said. “He doesn’t look like he’d be that fast.”

The colt is out of E Classic (E Dubai) and is a half-brother to stakes placed E Rated (Special Rate).

Also from the Wavertree consignment, hip 443, a colt by Candy Ride (Arg) out of Causara (Giant’s Causeway) worked a furlong in :10 1/5 Friday. Purchased by Ron Fein’s Superfine Farms for $175,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton October Sale, the bay colt had originally been targeted at the OBS March sale.

“He had a little setback through the winter,” Dunne said. “He was originally targeted for OBS March and we could have carried on, but we thought he was such a nice horse that we waited and gave him the time. He’s a great big, two-turn type of horse and maybe wasn’t suited to this track, but I think at the end of the day, he’s got a lot of quality and will be a really good horse down the road.”

Numbers were down at the recent OBS Spring Sale and Dunne said that, while the top of the market remained strong in Ocala, the absence of the usually prolific Korean buyers contributed to much of the declines at the auction which had set records for average and gross the last three years.

“We had a very good sale at OBS,” Dunne said. “The market was down, but a large degree of that was the Koreans. They buy a lot of horses–they will buy 100 2-year-olds a year in that $30,000-$50,000 range, which makes all of the $20,000 horses bring $30,000 to $40,000. And then it makes all of the $50,000 horses bring $60,000-$70,000. It just creates a little bit of demand in that sector that we’re always the weakest in. So they are very important for us in the clearance rate and to give the guys in the lower-to-middle level a bit of a push. When you take them out of there, I think that was probably the biggest factor in OBS’s numbers being off. I think, from our perspective, the top end was as strong this year as it was last year.”

Consignor Clovis Crane, who sent out a daughter of Fed Biz (hip 505) to share the under-tack show’s bullet time of :10 flat Friday, agreed the absence of Korean buyers due to the ongoing pandemic would likely have an impact on his bottom line.

“I always think that this sale has the truest middle market of any sale that there is,” Crane said of the Midlantic auction. “I really don’t have upper-end horses. I buy in the lower end, so this sale suits me the best. I hope that, as normal, the Penn [National], the Parx, the Charles Town, the Delaware Park and the Marylands–all of those trainers show up. And they will because it’s home for them. There are five or six tracks within two or three hours, so all of those guys are there. So to me it makes this the truest middle market that there is.

He continued, “But we are going to sorely miss the Korean buyers. I have reached out to them and said, ‘If you need any help, I am here to help.’ I do think that those folks have some lookers around, so hopefully they can get into the action. I saw that they bought a few horses at OBS, so I am hoping that they found somebody to help them out here. And if they haven’t, I’m applying for the job.”

Working in Friday’s fourth set, hip 505 was the last of five on the day–and 12th overall at the show–to turn in the :10 flat bullet. Bred by Blackstone Farm, the filly RNA’d for $47,000 at last year’s Keeneland September sale and is being sold by Crane in partnership with her breeder.

“We knew she was going to go fast and she showed up today,” Crane said of the chestnut out of the unraced Dream Realized (Awesome Again).

Crane compared the bullet breezer to her look-alike paddock-mate, a daughter of Palace (hip 170) who worked in :10 1/5 Wednesday.

“They are almost identical. The Palace filly has a little white spot on her butt and [hip 505] has a little white on her right hind leg. That’s the only way you can tell them apart,” he said.

Crane said the extra time between sales caused by the reshuffled schedule had helped his horses this spring.

“The extra time gave us plenty of time to get everything exactly right and have everything lined up and the horses all showed up,” Crane said. “And they are coming back good. It gave us a little extra time where we got a few breezes into them, we gave them a little break and then we got a few more breezes in. And our shins are solid and overall, it’s been good for us. And I think the horses have shown it, they have breezed so well and come back well.”

Crane had nothing but praise for the track condition at the Maryland State Fairgrounds this week.

“The track has a little more clay in it than it normally does,” he said. “Which is helpful, it has a little more bounce to it and it feels really nice. And it’s been really consistent. Obviously, my Palace worked in :10 1/5 on the first day, the very last set. And this filly was in the fourth set [Friday] and she worked in :10 flat. Normally, you see the really fast ones early in the day, but it’s been really consistent. I didn’t put my horses in any order, I just threw them in in hip number order and when they went, they went. That’s how we did it. All of my horses were going to show up and do what they were going to do whether they worked in the morning or the afternoon.”

Susan Montanye’s SBM Training and Sales had two bullet furlong workers Friday. During the first set, the operation sent out a daughter of Frosted (hip 518) to work in :10 flat. Out of multiple stakes placed Enchante (Bluegrass Cat), the dark bay filly was purchased privately by Bill and Corrine Heiligbrodt after RNA’ing for $185,000 at the Fasig-Tipton July Sale last summer.

“She was slated to go to the Gulfstream sale and unfortunately that was cancelled,” Montanye said. “She has always been a super nice filly, always fast, always says yes. I brought her up here because I knew she loved the dirt.”

In Friday’s second set, SBM sent out a filly by Dialed In (hip 552) to work in :10 flat. Out of Fall Fantasy (Menifee), the filly was supplemented to the Midlantic auction after scratching from the OBS Spring sale.

“The Dialed In is a ship-in for me that belongs to Kevin McKathan,” Montanye said. “The filly was in the OBS sale and had a good work down there, but they opted to bring her up here and put her in the supplement. They said she was a better dirt filly than she was on the Poly and she obviously proved that today.”

A filly by Maclean’s Music (hip 400), consigned by Scanlon Training and Sales, also turned in a furlong work in :10 flat Friday. Out of Ava G (Afternoon Deelites), the dark bay filly is a half-sister to stakes winner Miss My Rose (Magician {Ire}).

“We’ve liked her all year and we’ve just been giving her time to develop,” said Dave Scanlon. “We had her sister before, Miss My Rose and we really liked her. So we pursued this filly with the breeder, Alex Venneri, and we are partners on her here.”

Rounding out Friday’s :10 flat bullet furlong workers was hip 389, a daughter of Twirling Candy. The dark bay was consigned by David McKathan and Jody Mihalic’s Grassroots Training and Sales which purchased her for $30,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic October sale. She is out of Apple Cider (More Than Ready), a daughter of multiple graded stakes winner Who Did It and Run (Polish Numbers).

The Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale will be held next Monday and Tuesday with bidding beginning each day at 11 a.m.

The post Wicked Strong Colt Swiftest at Midlantic Under-Tack Finale appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post