Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-year-olds in training sale

Second Time’s A Charm For De Meric Sales With $625,000 Tapit Filly At Record Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Sale

The Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream Selected 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale is one of the most unforgiving marketplaces on the North American auction calendar, offering windfalls for the flawless specimens in the catalog and relative crickets for the ones that leave even one box unchecked.

Fortunately, the auction's early placement on the calendar offers the horses that didn't jump through every single hoop a chance to regroup and find the right fit at the right price somewhere down the road.

The patience to wait for that second chance paid off for the de Meric Sales operation, which consigned the session-topper during Tuesday's closing session of the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale, a Tapit filly out of the Grade 1-winning Uncle Mo mare Gomo who brought $625,000 as Hip 492.

Tuesday's trip through the ring was the second during the current juvenile auction season for the Tapit filly. In March, she hammered for $475,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream sale after breezing an eighth in :10 2/5 seconds, and she was brought home as a buyback.

Tristan de Meric said the filly did a fair bit of growing in the two months since the Gulfstream sale, and she shipped north to Timonium, Md., a different horse.

“Physically, she put more weight on, even since the Miami sale, and she looked even better in company,” de Meric said. “I was really happy to see her develop physically as well as she did since the sale. She got better, bigger, stronger. She even grew an inch. She changed a lot since that sale, and the track here ended up suiting her.”

The filly shaved a fifth of a second off her time over the Maryland State Fairgrounds racing surface during last week's under tack show for the Midlantic sale, covering a furlong in :10 1/5 seconds – just a tick off the overall fastest time for the entire breeze show.

When the hammer fell on Tuesday, the ticket went to the back ring of the pavilion to trainer Mac Robertson, who signed it on behalf of Mike and Vicki McGowan's Xtreme Racing Stables.

“I thought she was the best filly in the sale,” Robertson said between placing bids for the horse immediately following the session-topper. “Mike and Vicki McGowan, are looking for really good fillies. I thought she had the best breeze, and being out of a Grade 1 horse, by a sire that everyone wants, it made sense to me. We went a little more than we wanted, but the sale is strong.”

Even if the filly never runs a step, her page stood out in the catalog as one with instant broodmare potential.

Bred in Florida by Bridlewood Farm, she is the second foal out of Gomo, an Uncle Mo mare who won the Grade 1 Alcibiades Stakes as a juvenile. The page also features several graded/group stakes-producing mares.

While the long-term residual value was appealing, Robertson was more concerned in the moment with taking things one step at a time, and that starts with the racetrack.

“They're looking to win good races,” he said. “If they buy good fillies like that, I think they'll have a good chance.”

The transaction was one of the highlights of what was a record-setting renewal of the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale, which set all-time high marks in gross, average, and median sale price.

Over the course of two sessions, a total of 357 horses changed hands for revenues of $33,692,000. The gross surpassed the previous record of $29,374,000 set in 2019.

The average sale price also reached a new high previously set in 2019, finishing on Tuesday at $94,375, after hitting $90,104 two years ago. The new record median of $50,000 bettered the previous mark of $45,000 set in 2015.

The buyback rate for the overall sale was 16 percent, and it was an even more impressive 13 percent during Tuesday's session.

Much like what de Meric said about the placement of Tuesday's session-topping filly, Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sales director Paget Bennett said the auction's spot on the later portion of the juvenile sale catalog has made it an increasingly popular target for quality horses, instead of a “last chance” stop at the end of the season.

“So much of it is the consignors just like the sale because of the extra time it gives a lot of these horses,” Bennett said. “A lot of the horses were May babies, so they don't want to push them early, because if they ding them early, they don't have anything, so when they buy horses, a lot of times, they target this sale.”

Even after an all-time edition of the sale, Bennett said she foresaw this week's results spurring on a further evolution of the Midlantic 2-year-old sale catalog, potentially attracting a new group of sellers who might have still held reservations about selling in the marketplace. However, she did not expect the catalog would expand any further than its current size.

“Six hundred (horses) is really what we can stable here, but we're seeing a lot of new consignors,” she said. “It's always nice for people to see other people be successful, and say 'Well, I wasn't sure about that sale earlier, but now I see the results, so perhaps it's something we need to put on our calendar for the future.' We've seen a lot of that, and I think we'll continue to see more.”

To view the auction's full results, click here.

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Whether In Kentucky Or Oklahoma, Winfrey Always At Wolf Creek Farm

Troy Winfrey of Wolf Creek Farm, and the horses he had on offer, took a somewhat unconventional road to the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale.

The 2-year-old consignment sector of the industry is typically rooted in central Florida and South Carolina, with a smattering of local pinhookers around any given regional sale. Winfrey is based in Cynthiana, Ky. The Bluegrass State is known for a lot of things in the Thoroughbred industry, especially on the auction front, but the commercial juvenile market is near the bottom of that list.

Fortunately, Winfrey isn't afraid to travel. His roots are in Texas, where he got his start as a trainer of Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses in the 1990s. He found his specialty on the Quarter Horse side of the aisle, and he achieved a high point in 1994 when Do Ya Disco won the Grade 3 Trinity Meadows Futurity.

When Fasig-Tipton started conducting auctions at Lone Star Park in 1997, Winfrey entered the commercial arena, pinhooking weanlings to yearlings, and yearlings to 2-year-olds. Within a couple years, Winfrey realized if he was going to make a go of being a commercial horseman, he'd have to move to Kentucky.

“We decided we wanted to do more yearlings, weanlings-to-yearlings,” he said. “We were selling horses in Lexington every year anyway, so it was just easier to be centrally located. It's easier to do business there.”

Winfrey bought a farm in Shelbyville, Ky., a small town just east of Louisville, with property on Wolf Creek, giving the farm its name. When he moved back to Chickasha, Okla., in the mid-2000s, he was a long way from Wolf Creek, but he brought the name with him, anyway. Then, when he returned to Kentucky, this time in Cynthiana, northeast of Lexington, the Wolf Creek name stuck again.

The surroundings changed, but Winfrey said the training philosophies never did. Fortunately, his client base didn't change, either.

“It's mainly my own personal horses, and I've had four or five clients that have been partners with me for 20 years,” he said. “They keep me pretty full and pretty busy. They've been with me from the beginning.

“They're older guys, and as long as you keep them in the loop, they're happy,” he continued. “With the new age, everyone is texting, and FaceTiming, and videos, so I see them as much now as I ever did.”

Winfrey said he sells eight to 10 juveniles per year, usually going between the Texas Thoroughbred Association 2-year-olds in training sale and the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale, with potential commercial home runs reserved for the OBS March sale.

Because his clients are based in the Southwest, their horses are occasionally products of their region's breeding program.

Winfrey acknowledged that can make marketing some horses a challenge when offering them in a different regional market like the East Coast, but the timing of the auction calendar and his own sale schedule will sometimes leave no other option.

He ran into that issue at the Midlantic sale, where he offered, Hip 330, a Louisiana-bred El Deal filly. Fortunately, he was able to find a buyer from the Southwest in Terry Gabriel of Pelican State Thoroughbreds, who signed the ticket on the filly for $17,000.

“This filly came to us late,” Winfrey said. “She probably should have gone to Texas, but we missed that one, so she had to come here.”

The Cynthiana farm is reserved for Wolf Creek's yearling contingent, then he leases stalls at a training center in Kentucky to prepare his 2-year-olds. The six horses from the Wolf Creek consignment cataloged in the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic catalog were prepped at the Silver Springs Farm training center in Lexington, Ky.

Through the early hours of the Midlantic sale's second session, Wolf Creek's leader was Hip 146, a Bernardini colt who sold to bloodstock agent Bo Bromagen for $200,000 during Monday's opening day of trade.

The colt breezed an eighth of a mile in :10 1/5 seconds, just a fifth off the fastest overall time of the sale's under-tack show. It was a successful pinhook, after the colt was purchased for $50,000 at last year's Keeneland September Yearling Sale.

After three decades on the move, Winfrey is getting settled in at the Cynthiana incarnation of Wolf Creek Farm. The property is being built up to better grow yearlings for auctions, recently installing a covered six-horse walker, among other capital improvements.

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After Weathering An Early Storm, Kintz Makes Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Debut

Scott Kintz rolled out the debut consignment from his Six K's Training and Sales at just about the worst possible time.

After nearly three decades in the Thoroughbred industry, he hung his own shingle for the first time at the 2020 Ocala Breeders' Sales Co. March 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale – the one that took place while the world started shutting down around it in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a time when there were plenty of questions and very few answers, averages sunk and buyback rates skyrocketed at the March sale. Things didn't get much easier for the rest of the 2-year-old season as schedules shifted, sales were canceled, and several end-users circled their financial wagons as we all tried to figure out how long this thing was going to stick around.

It's been a long 14 months since that initial sale, but Kintz enters another first for his consignment in an entirely different marketplace.

The 2-year-old market is largely back to the record-setting pace it was cruising at in 2019, the COVID-19 vaccine is widely available in the U.S., and Six K's appears in the catalog for the first time at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale.

For Kintz, surviving to the point where he can blaze new trails with his consignment was a victory in and of itself. Even if the start of it came in the midst of historically significant times, he wouldn't take it back.

“I couldn't have been happier,” Kintz said about his first year with Six K's. “I'm so glad I did it. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I finally just decided to do it. Yes, it was a terrible time, but I figured if I live through it, I'll just be better for it when it's all said and done, and that's how it's been. I've been very blessed to have clients that have stuck with us and gave us another shot, and we've kind of paid them back by doing better this year. I think we're turning out horses that are happy, sound, and ready to go.”

The Six K's operation may still be in its relative infancy, but Kintz's experience in the industry runs deep.

The Reddick, Fla., resident is a third-generation horseman who worked as a public trainer in Florida and the Midwest for five years, with his biggest success being the Ohio-bred stakes winner Ambridge Augie. He then rooted himself in Kentucky to join the Taylor Made Farm operation, where he spent over a decade as farm manager.

After his time with Taylor Made, he spent five years as the general manager of Woodford Thoroughbreds' Florida wing, then he spent two years as farm manager for Mandy Pope's Whisper Hill Farm.

Kintz formally announced the formation of Six K's Training and Sales in the summer of 2019, starting with the other parts of his business – breaking, layups, rehab, and bloodstock consultancy among them – before he debuted the consignment in the spring of 2020.

More than anything, Kintz said the decision to leave the security of working for someone else and fly his own banner came down to family, on several different levels.

“It was just time,” he said. “My kids were grown and gone, and it was just simpler, and it's an easier time to do it. I've only got one son at home now, and the rest of the kids are on their own and doing their thing.

“My son Nick, who is my assistant, worked for me at Woodford (as yearling manager), and he'd gone and done a couple other things,” Kintz continued. “He was actually at Double Diamond at the time (working as assistant broodmare manager) I'd made the decision. I could tell that was going to be his career, in the horse business, so it just seemed like the right time to go try it. We've been surviving, and that's all you can do.”

Kintz was one-for-one during Monday's opening session of the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale, selling Hip 123, a New York-bred Tiznow filly out of the Forestry mare Queen Amira, to Myracehorse.com for $120,000.

His consignment is small this year. He's got one more selling during Tuesday's session, a first-crop Gormley colt, but Kintz said he didn't plan on his first trip to the Midlantic sale under his own shingle to be his last.

“Next year, I hope to bring more,” he said. “I entered more than I brought. They just didn't quite get here. Next year, the plan is to bring more up here. I think it's been a really good experience. They get plenty of people out here, and Fasig is always a great company to sell with.”

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‘Proper’ Quality Road Colt Brings $1.5 Million To Lead First Session Of Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Sale

Terry Finley of West Point Thoroughbreds knew he needed to pay attention to Hip 211 of the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale when consignor Eddie Woods described the Quality Road colt as a “proper horse.”

It might not sound like an open-throated endorsement of an animal, but in the shorthand of his relationship with Woods, it said everything he needed to know.

“Those Irish guys, when they throw that term out, that's a good indication,” Finley said. “They'll say 'He's a nice horse,' but when they push it to the next level and talk about this being a 'proper horse…' The fact that he did it so well, and he's a big, strong horse that worked :10 flat. You take a look at him, and he's not supposed to work that fast.”

So, what constitutes a “proper horse” to Eddie Woods?

“A proper horse is a horse that has all the attributes of being a very good horse mentally, physically, the way they move, the way they handle themselves,” he said. “You see him up in the back ring, and he'd walk beside you without a shank on. He's been like that since he came to us. I wish they were all like that.”

Two words – and a horse that lived up to them – led Finley to outlast Amr Zedan in a prolonged bidding staredown that ended with the West Point president and CEO signing the ticket for $1.5 million, making the colt the most expensive offering of Monday's opening session of the Midlantic sale.

It also tied for the most money spent for a colt in the history of the Midlantic sale, joining eventual Grade 2-placed stakes winner Curlin's Honor, who sold to Breeze Easy and John Oxley in 2017. The overall record belongs to champion filly Gamine, who brought $1.8 million in 2019.

Finley stood at the back of the Timonium, Md., pavilion as the dark bay or brown colt was led into the ring, while Zedan, two days removed from Medina Spirit's third-place effort in the Preakness Stakes, sat in the front row. Somewhere out there, an online bidder with deep pockets was also watching the proceedings with interest.

The auctioneer, looking to cut through the pleasantries, tried to open the bidding at $1 million on the colt, who breezed an eighth of a mile in :10 seconds flat to tie for the fastest effort at the distance in the under-tack show. The first raised hand ultimately came in the mid-six figures, but it didn't take long for the bidding to float back up to the seven-figure mark.

A three-way battle between Finley, Zedan, and the online bidder carried into the seven-figure stratosphere, but it narrowed down to the two parties in the pavilion once the bidding approached $1.4 million. Zedan raised the bid to $1.45 million, and the board soon flashed $1.5 million in response. When $1.55 million was asked from the stand, Zedan waved off the bidspotter, and after one more round of asking, the hammer fell to the back of the pavilion.

After the ticket came his way, Finley joked that the battle was longer than he wanted. However, the retired Army captain is battled-tested.

“This is our 30^th year, and you can't be intimidated when you walk onto the sales grounds,” he said. “If you do, you're going to be intimidated very quickly, because there's a lot of money in the world. That's the power of the partnership. I'm able to make some calls and tell people, 'Look, I've got a very good prospect. I think he could be a special horse, and I'd love for you to take a part of him.' I think this is one of those horses.”

Finley signed the ticket on behalf of West Point, but he noted a 50-percent partner whose name he declined to reveal. However, he did provide a few hints.

“He's a West Pointer, he's a little bit older than I am, and he hasn't had a whole lot of success in the business,” Finley said. “He called me a couple days after the Kentucky Derby and said, 'I want to compete in the big races.' I said, 'I can give you my best effort,' and that's what we did.

“The last week has obviously been turbulent, but up until then, I think people are looking at the Horse Racing Integrity Act as something that'll help our business,” he continued. “I think it's really going to attract people and investors, and it's going to present us with a level playing field.”

After the session, Finley confirmed that Dallas Stewart would train the new seven-figure purchase.

The session-topper was bred in Kentucky by Jon Clay's Alpha Delta Stables, and Woods consigned him for the breeder as agent.

The colt is out of the unraced Storm Cat mare Stormy Welcome, whose runners of note include stakes-placed Welcoming. His third dam is Broodmare of the Year Weekend Surprise, putting him in the family of Hall of Famer A.P. Indy, Preakness Stakes winner Summer Squall, and Grade 1 winners Happy Saver and Court Vision.

Though the final price and a stallion's pedigree might suggest the colt was born for a moment like this, Woods said that was not always the case.

“[Clay] usually sells as yearlings,” he said. “This horse was very backward as a yearling, and they weren't happy with the way he was coming into the sale, so they scratched him. They said, 'Give him a lot of time,' and we discussed it, and we said 'We'll go to Timonium, then.' He was always pointed for Timonium, and it was a great plan because it came together.”

It took longer than the connections might have expected, but Woods knew what he had by the time the Midlantic sale was approaching. It can be exciting to have a potential showstopper heading into a sale, but it also brings with it a crushing set of expectations.

The pressure went down immensely, though, after his under-tack performance last Wednesday.

“I was nervous before the breeze show, because I expected him to work really, really good; like, a top work, and it doesn't always happen,” Woods said. “But, he did and he nailed it, and he galloped out fantastic. When I came back and watched the video, about a half-hour later, I couldn't believe it. He's the best video of a horse I've had in five, six years. I couldn't stop watching it. He just nailed it, and that's why he brought what he brought.”

The Quality Road colt highlighted an especially strong opening session of the Midlantic sale, where 170 horses sold for revenues of $15,826,500.

Monday's average sale price closed at $93,097, the median was $45,000, and the buyback rate closed at an impressive 19 percent.

“The activity in the barn areas over the weekend was very strong,” said Paget Bennett, Fasig-Tipton's Midlantic sales director. “All the people you'd want to see at a 2-year-old sale were here. You just hope that everything lines up, and this morning, people just kept coming and coming. The pavilion was full of folks, and the [Maryland State Fairgrounds racetrack] infield was full of cars.

“Everybody was just remarking like, 'Have you ever seen this many people here?'” she continued. “We were thrilled, and luckily, the consignors were here with top horses, and people recognized that and battled for them.”

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