Dan Hall | Horse Racing Free Tips

Haughty Could Provide Big Update for Hidden Brook Consignment

A year ago, the Hidden Brook team was shopping for breeder John Gardiner when it acquired the then-16-year-old mare Soaring Emotions (Kingmambo), in foal to Hard Spun, for $57,000 at last year's Keeneland November sale. The mare's Hard Spun weanling (hip 251) will go through the ring during the second session of this year's Keeneland November sale next Thursday and between now and then the foal's 2-year-old half-sister Haughty (Empire Maker) could provide the colt with a timely update. The filly goes postward in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Del Mar Friday.

“We've bought mares like that for him. Mares that have a little bit of age on them that are stakes producers,” Hidden Brook's Dan Hall said of the purchase. “That's kind of what he likes to do.”

Soaring Emotion was already the dam of multiple stakes winner and multiple graded stakes placed Souper Colossal (War Front) when she went through the November ring in 2020.

“Obviously, we didn't know she would be in the Breeders' Cup–I wish we were that smart,” Hall said with a laugh when asked if Haughty was at all on the team's radar last November. “We saw her at the 2-year-old sale [where she sold for $310,000 to Bradley Thoroughbreds at OBS April]. I'd been communicating with Pete Bradley about the filly and they had been high on her all along.”

Haughty appeared to graduate on debut at Belmont Park in September, but was disqualified for interference and placed third. After failing to draw into the field for the GII JPMorgan Chase Jessamine S., she graduated by an emphatic four lengths at Keeneland Oct. 17 and was promptly tabbed a 'TDN Rising Star.' She is 10-1 on the morning-line for the Juvenile Fillies Turf.

“The mare is already a proven graded stakes producer, but honestly having a current Breeders' Cup 2-year-old filly would be a huge boost,” Hall said. “He is a nice foal and we figured we were going to do well with that, but then the filly came along as well.”

Of Haughty's half-brother, Hall said, “He is very nice. Not to knock Hard Spun, but he's prettier than most Hard Spuns. He's a well-balanced colt with good size and a good walk to him. He should sell well.”

The November breeding stock sales come on the heels of an ultra-competitive yearling sales season.

Asked if he expected that type of market to continue for bloodstock, Hall said, “Especially for weanlings, it will still be a strong market. I think the better mares will continue to sell well. The breeding side of it, we will see, I wouldn't necessarily be feeling that it's definitely going to be the same as the yearling market. People seem to be more interested in racing and pinhooking than actually being breeders right now. But that should cycle back, I hope.”

The Keeneland November sale opens with a single-session Book 1 section next Wednesday with bidding beginning at 1 p.m. The auction continues through Nov. 19 with sessions beginning daily at 10 a.m.

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Bloodlines: Halladay Clears The Path For Tapit’s High-End Broodmare Sire Career

A front-running victory in the Grade 1 Fourstardave Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 22 made Halladay the 51st group or graded stakes winner for his sire War Front (by Danzig), as well as the sire's 22nd Grade 1 winner; Halladay also became the first North American Grade 1 winner for broodmare sire Tapit, who has been the leading general sire in North America three times.

Tapit mares have already produced Group 1 winners in Japan and Australia. In June of 2020, Gran Alegria won the G1 Yasuda Kinen at Tokyo to pair with her victory last year in the G1 Oka Sho (Japan 1,000 Guineas). Overall, the bay daughter of the great sire Deep Impact has won five of eight starts and $4.1 million. Gran Alegria's dam, Tapitsfly, also won a pair of Group 1 races, the First Lady at Keeneland and the Just a Game Stakes at Belmont, as well as the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Filly Turf when it was instituted as a listed race (now G1). At the 2012 Fasig-Tipton November sale, Tapitsfly sold as a broodmare prospect for $1.85 million to Katsumi Yoshida.

Tapitsfly came from Tapit's second crop of foals, and Hightap, the dam of Halladay, came from the gray sire's first crop. Now they lead the stallion's producers of quality.

Bred in Kentucky by Gainesway Thoroughbreds Ltd. and Winchell Thoroughbreds LLC, Halladay went to the 2017 Keeneland September sale, was led out of the ring unsold at $225,000, changed hands privately thereafter through Steve Young, agent, and races for Harrell Ventures LLC.

Hightap's first four foals had brought about $1 million for the breeders, and Halladay was the broodmare's fifth foal. The handsome gray did not show his stakes quality immediately, not getting his first black type until a third-place finish in the English Channel Stakes at Belmont on Oct. 26 last year.

Just a few days later, his dam, Grade 3 winner Hightap, went through the ring at the 2019 Keeneland November sale in foal to Union Rags (Dixie Union) and sold for $85,000 to Hidden Brook, agent. The mare produced a chestnut filly on Feb. 11 for owners John Gardner and Frank McEntee. Hightap was initially bred back to the Danzig stallion Hard Spun but would not get in foal and was sent to champion Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) shortly before that champion's unexpected death, and she is in foal on a May 11 cover.

Sergio de Sousa, managing partner at Hidden Brook, said that Hightap is a “really good-looking mare, and she produced a pretty foal. Both the mare and foal have been entered in the Keeneland November sale” later this fall, but whether they go to the sale or not may depend on other factors, such as the status of sales during the pandemic and the economics of the September yearling market.

Hightap's new owners take an active interest in selecting mares for their breeding program, and Hidden Brook partner Dan Hall said, “The current owners went through the November catalog and picked out the ones that interested them. They like mares with a little age that look like they would be discounted in the marketplace, then we look at the physicals for them. This was a nice mare in foal on an early cover to a top sire, and there looked like a lot of upside. John is involved in our racing partnerships, but they seem to be a little more interested in the breeding side of the game.”

For the breeders of Halladay, Hightap has a gray yearling filly by Horse of the Year Gun Runner (Candy Ride) who is entered in the 2020 Keeneland September sale as Hip 1396, which is in Book 3 of the lengthy auction. Depending on the filly's looks, vet report, and what Halladay accomplishes between now and then, the Gun Runner filly has the potential to be one of the breakout lots of the day.

So there's a silver lining for all those associated with Hightap because, as Dan Hall noted about buying the dam of a newly minted Grade 1 winner, “You'd like to say you're smart, but in this game, you have to be lucky.”

And surely the luckiest participant in the Hightap saga is Jay Goodwin, who bought the Empire Maker half-sister to Halladay for himself and partner Cloyce Clark for $5,500 at the 2019 Keeneland January sale.

Goodwin said, “She'd just turned two, didn't have the greatest x-rays, and the mare hadn't produced any black type at that point. But I love Empire Maker; I love Tapit. With that pedigree, I knew I couldn't go wrong, and I knew if any of the other runners got black type in that family, it would go hot.

“From the first, my intention was to go on with her a broodmare, not try her as a racehorse,” Goodwin said. “So, I turned her out and never brought her up, except to trim her feet, and put her under lights at the end of 2019.”

Named Highschool, the gray is in foal to Mitole (Eskendereya), the 2019 Eclipse Award winner as champion sprinter whose successes included the Metropolitan Handicap and Breeders' Cup Sprint, on a March 15 cover and is entered in the November sale at Keeneland.

Goodwin said, “It's better to be lucky than good.”

The post Bloodlines: Halladay Clears The Path For Tapit’s High-End Broodmare Sire Career appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Keeneland Online Auction Tuesday

Keeneland will host its first-ever online auction when its digital sales ring opens for bidding at 9 a.m. Tuesday. The initial June Select Horses of Racing Age Sale features an offering of 31 horses and, while bidding begins on all lots at 9 a.m., closing on each lot is staggered. Bidding on Juddmonte Farms’ Breithorn (Into Mischief) (hip 1) will close at approximately 2 p.m. and bidding on Summer Love (Summer Front) (hip 37), a recent maiden winner and half to stakes winner Mihos (Cairo Prince) consigned by Niall Brennan, will close at approximately 3 p.m.

Hidden Brook will consign eight horses of racing age to the online auction on behalf of D J Stable and partners.

“Horses in training or of racing age is the first step in trying this out as people don’t actually see the horses,” said Hidden Brook’s Dan Hall. “This is the first level of it and we are going to give it a try and see how it goes.”

Each catalogue page includes a location where the horse can be inspected. The Hidden Brook offerings have been available for inspection at Hidden Brook’s Florida farm for the last 10 days.

“There hasn’t been a lot of action that way,” Hall said of inspections. “But with racehorses, people are primarily shopping based on the PPs and they can see what the purchase price was as yearlings and as 2-year-olds and in the vetting. Bidding online is just an advanced level of claiming, so to speak, because you have the vetting in front of you as well.”

With the many disruptions to the sales season brought on this year by the coronavirus pandemic, Keeneland moved up the launch of its online auction platform to accommodate people impacted by travel restrictions. The new format provides another outlet for sellers in uncertain times, according to Hall.

“I would still prefer seeing them on the sales grounds,” Hall said. “It is the best possible way to sell a horse, but given what we’ve been dealt this year, this is another avenue to try and see how successful we can be at it.”

Among horses up for sale Tuesday is Tempers Rising (Bayern) (hip 25), runner-up in the Mar. 21 GII TwinSpires.com Fair Grounds Oaks. Also in the catalogue is Juddmonte homebred 3-year-old Juror (Tapit) (hip 8), runner-up in his June 1 debut at Tampa Bay Downs; 2-year-old filly Queen Arella (Speightster) (hip 17), a first-out winner at Gulfstream Park May 29; and Wondrwherecraigis (Munnings) (hip 30), a two-for-two sophomore gelding.

Buyers have two options for bidding Tuesday, either direct bidding manually throughout the sale or by establishing a maximum bid with the software automatically bidding on the buyer’s behalf up to the top price.

Visit keenelanddigital.com for more information.

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