Fasig-Tipton October Sale | Horse Racing Free Tips

Looking for a Mayo Miracle

Joe Trawitzki is a trainer's dream.

As an owner, he takes the bad news with the good, he always puts the horse first and of course, he shows up at the barn with two dozen doughnuts in tow.

But while Joe is eagerly anticipating the debut of his 2-year-old filly this year, he's not sure if he will have the opportunity to see her reach the starting gate.

On May 21, 2020, the Wisconsin native went to the hospital for what he thought was a simple gallbladder surgery, but in the operating room, the doctors discovered that his liver was riddled with cancer.

“They weren't sure where the cancer came from, but they knew it was advanced and they knew it was stage four,” Joe explained. “This was during COVID, so I spent the night by myself in the hospital afterwards. The next morning we met with a local oncologist and she's a wonderful person, very up-front, and I asked her if she were me, what would she do. She said, 'I would take the next six months and prepare to die.'”

In Joe's mind, that wasn't a good option. He and his wife Alyssa were newlyweds and Joe wanted more time to be a husband, so he gave up his law practice and started chemotherapy.

“It was really weird because you think, 'What am I going to do with myself for the next couple months, years or whatever time I have left?' You've got to find something to focus on or else you just sit and look at the walls and drive yourself crazy.”

With no job to keep himself otherwise distracted, Joe turned to the sport he fell in love with as a child.

“My grandmother and aunt took me to Arlington when I was five,” he recalled. “They told me to pick out either a name or a number to bet, and at the end of the day they gave me two one-dollar bills. I thought I was rich. From there I was hooked.”

Since then, Joe has been checking off items on his horse racing bucket list. First he attended the Kentucky Derby, then he got himself a claimer and eventually he joined a few partnerships.

“One thing leads to another and the next thing you know, you have 10 horses at the track and it just kind of grows out of control,” he admitted with a laugh.

One of his favorite racing moments was when one of his syndicates had the opportunity to run at Royal Ascot.

“I had been dating Alyssa for about six months and I asked her if she would like to go to London. She was like, 'In a year?' And I said, 'No, in three weeks.' I hadn't even met her parents yet. So she thought I was crazy, but we got to Ascot and she loved it. We had the best weekend ever.”

Their filly, Thora Barber (GB) (Rip Van Winkle {Ire}), ran sixth in the 2016 Chesham S.

“We were the first race, so we were in the paddock as the Queen came by in her carriage,” Joe remembered. “This was Alyssa's first time at a track so I had to explain to her that not every time was going to be like this. When I went to place my bet, I forgot about the conversion from pounds to dollars and I had to run to the ATM. It was a mess, but it was a lot of fun.”

That event helped Alyssa fall in love with racing too, and the couple got married at Keeneland three years ago.

When Joe received the diagnosis last year, he was able to get into the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. There they discovered that Joe was living with pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

“You look at the stats of pancreatic cancer and it's not good,” Joe said. “But when we met with each of the doctors at the Mayo Clinic I would say, 'We're from Wisconsin and we're looking for a Mayo miracle. While meeting with the third or fourth doctor, we started talking about horses and I told him we were going to buy a horse and we were going to name it Mayo Miracle.”

He decided to venture from under the umbrella of racing partnerships to go out and find Mayo Miracle on his own. Remembering a TDN article on Cherie DeVaux, he reached out to the up-and-coming trainer.

Joe and Alyssa in the sales ring at Keeneland on their wedding day. “It's a very, very special place,” Joe said of the Lexington track. |photo courtesy Joe Trawitzki

“She had one quote I'll never forget, she said, 'I'll always be truthful with my owners,'” Joe said. “At that point, I'm trying to transition to where Alyssa can take over the racing if she wants to stay in it, so I wanted to hook her up with someone we could trust. I called Cherie and she told me that not all horses are racehorses, so she wasn't going to let me waste money to pay my bills if they couldn't run.”

So off they all went to the Keeneland September Sale. There Joe learned that DeVaux's husband was bloodstock agent David Ingordo. But even with Ingordo and DeVaux both scouring the sales grounds, they walked away empty-handed.

“The difficulty was that David's standards are so high and he usually is getting a bit higher clientele than us, but to his credit, he would not adjust his eye and he would not accept any faults,” Joe said. “He was looking for the perfect horse for us, but the problem was we couldn't afford the perfect horse. When we walked away from the sale, the look on David's face was so hurt. He was so ashamed and sorry he couldn't buy us a horse, but I told him it was part of the game, the prices were high and I had learned a lot.”

DeVaux and Ingordo put their heads together afterwards and then reached out to Joe to ask if he might be willing to form a 50-50 partnership with them.

“I was just in awe because we had just met, you know, and with where they're at in the industry, it was a real honor to partner with them,” Joe said.

So with an upgraded budget, DeVaux and Ingordo attended the Fasig-Tipton October Sale and landed on an Astern (Aus) yearling out of Short Squeeze (Lemon Drop Kid). The filly's dam was a half-sister to graded stakes winners Last Gunfighter (First Samurai) and Tiger Moth (Street Sense).

Joe at his first Keeneland September Sale. “I didn't know a lot, but I knew enough to be dangerous,” he said afterwards. | photo courtesy Joe Trawitzki

Their $65,000 purchase was sent to Mayberry Farm in Ocala for her early training and arrived at DeVaux's barn at Keeneland last month.

“She's been pretty straightforward,” DeVaux reported. “She's a cool, calm customer, she doesn't do anything wrong and she is learning her job as a racehorse pretty well. With all my 2-year-olds we give them as much time as they need, but hopefully by the middle to end of summer, she'll be getting to the races.”

When Joe explained his thoughts on a name for the filly, the idea resonated with DeVaux.

“When Joe first came to visit the filly, he was telling me how important it was for him to get his message out in naming this filly to pay respect to the Mayo Clinic and bring awareness to pancreatic cancer,” DeVaux said. “My older sister actually had pancreatic cancer 20 plus years ago and she survived, which is a very rare instance in this type of cancer.”

“Talking to Cherie, with the stories we share, it's like this horse is just meant to be the Mayo miracle,” Joe added. “When you think about it, we're looking for a Mayo miracle, we're looking for hope for me, but this horse is so much more. We hope she continues to grow, win some races, and that we have a lot of fun with her.”

As Joe nears the one-year mark since his diagnosis, as well as six months past the time frame doctors originally gave him to live, he is busy planning for Mayo Miracle's first start.

“One of our goals with Mayo Miracle is that we want her to be a party horse,” he said. “If we can get all my friends to the track to watch, maybe it brings in a few more fans to the industry. Who knows where it's going to go? Whatever this horse is for other people, that's wonderful. Hopefully she is successful. Worst- case scenario, we bought a horse and had some fun.”

Joe said that he and Alyssa are making plans to design Mayo Miracle's silks to display a purple cancer ribbon. A significant amount of her earnings will go towards both research at Mayo Clinic, as well as the Hope Fund at Mayo Clinic, a fund set aside for those who cannot afford travel costs and medical fees associated with treatment at the medical center.

Joe also credits his home hospital in Green Bay for what they've done for him, joking that his next horse will be raced in their honor and named 'Ain't Dead Yet.'

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Joe is also an avid Green Bay Packers fan. | photo courtesy Joe Trawitzki

“I guess the things you learn suffering with pancreatic cancer is that everyone is different, don't pay attention to the odds and you have to win the day,” he said. “Whatever today brings, you have to do something positive, whether that means just getting to the kitchen to eat dinner or getting to the track to watch your horse, you have to win that day.

He continued, “For the people in the support system of someone with cancer, the thing you want them to know is that if you're there in the beginning, stay with me until the end. People say, 'I've got your back' or, 'You're going to fight this,' and yeah, we're going to do it, but we need to do it together.”

Under DeVaux's watchful eye, Mayo Miracle is now starting to put in her first breezes at Keeneland.

“I really want this filly to be something special for Joe and Alyssa,” DeVaux said. “It's too early right now to tell her level of ability. This filly has a purpose as a racehorse, but she also has a purpose for spreading a message and a story. If somebody is following this and it helps them in some way, maybe they're going through the same thing Joe is going through, they can have a connection with something other than an illness.”

In a text Joe sent to DeVaux on his way home from visiting Mayo Miracle last month at Keeneland, he reflected on what the journey with this filly has meant to him already.

“It's crazy because the idea behind Mayo Miracle was just a saying to the doctors that turned into the thought of getting a party horse that friends could enjoy and it could become something to keep me positive, distract from the negative and provide hope that this cancer is survivable so I can watch this horse and buy others. I really am not sure what this horse will mean to others or how she will perform on the track, but I hope it will be fun and that I am here to see it.”

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Lively Trade at Day 3 of October Sale

LEXINGTON, KY – During a session punctuated by several break-out horses and spirited trade seemingly throughout the market, the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October Yearlings Sale produced strong results Wednesday. Bloodstock agent Donato Lanni, bidding on behalf of Karl and Cathi Glassman, made the auction’s highest bid so far, going to $600,000 to acquire a colt by Uncle Mo from the Lane’s End consignment.

“The smart men and women who were out there looking at horses said today was a really, really strong group of horses, particularly the top end and that was accurate,” said Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning. “It’s always fun to sell some expensive, top-quality horses, and we were fortunate enough to have several in our catalogue today.”

During Wednesday’s session, 237 yearlings grossed $9,062,300 for an average of $38,238 and a median of $17,000.

Through three sessions of the four-day auction, 726 horses sold for $25,452,800. The cumulative average of $35,059 dipped 5.9% from last year’s figure and the median of $15,000 is up 15.4%. The buy-back rate stands at 22.2%. It was 26.2% at this point a year ago.

“Overall, trade continued to be good at pretty much all levels,” Browning said. “The RNA rate was down this year compared to last year, the median was up. As we came into this sale, my fear was that the bottom end of the market might be decimated–particularly with some travel restrictions in place for a lot of our friends from South America and we have virtually no Canadian participation at the sale because of the travel restrictions–but it’s held up. Nobody wants to talk about the lower end of the market, but it’s held up really well.”

Browning continued, “Clearly we sold two horses for over $500,000 so far and there is plenty of money here for a nice horse. It is continuing the trends of 2020. It’s not irrational, there is no craziness happening, but it’s a fairly consistent marketplace. And most importantly, a reasonable marketplace does exist for the men and women selling horses.”

Reiley McDonald of Eaton Sales was satisfied with the commerce conducted this week at Newtown Paddocks.

“I think the market has been very good for clean, above average horses,” McDonald said. “There are a lot of horses in the sale and the lower end horses have suffered quite a bit, but at the end of the day, that’s the nature of the horse business. I think the October sale has proven itself over the last five years to be as solid an option as there is in the country.”

The October sale’s final session begins Thursday at 10 a.m.

Uncle Mo Colt for Glassmans

Bloodstock agent Donato Lanni, shopping on behalf of Karl and Cathi Glassman for the first time at the October sale, went to a sale-topping $600,000 to acquire a colt by Uncle Mo (hip 1131) from the Lane’s End consignment Wednesday at Fasig-Tipton. The yearling, bred by Kinsman Farm, was bought back at $325,000 at the Keeneland September sale. He is out of A. P. Dream (A.P. Indy) and is a half to multiple group placed Wind Fire (Distorted Humor). Out of multiple Grade I winner Dream Supreme (Seeking the Gold), the mare is a full-sister to Grade I winner Majestic Warrior.

“He’s an Uncle Mo with a good pedigree,” Lanni said of the youngster. “He’s a nice horse and he had all the criteria Mr. Glassman wanted. He was locked in and they really wanted the horse. We’re just happy to get him.”

Karl Glassman is chairman of the board of the Missouri-based manufacturing company Leggett & Platt, Inc. He and his wife campaigned stakes winner April Gaze (High Cotton), as well as stakes-placed current 2-year-old Restofthestory (Jess’s Dream) with trainer Eddie Plesa.

The Glassmans also purchased a filly by Distorted Humor (hip 124) for $140,000 during Monday’s first session of the October sale.

More Mischief for Spendthrift

Wayne Hughes’s Spendthrift Farm got into action to secure a colt by its star stallion Into Mischief (hip 1147) for $475,000 late in Wednesday’s third session of the October sale.

“He was certainly a nice colt and we’re happy to have him,” said Spendthrift manager Ned Toffey. “He does look a lot like Into Mischief. He stands over a lot of ground and he’s marked similarly. He’s a nice colt.”

Of the yearling’s final price, Toffey said, “It’s Into Mischief, nothing surprises me. He just continues to amaze us year after year. We thought we’d have to pay something for him. That was probably somewhere beyond where we thought we’d need to be, but if he can run it will look cheap.”

The Florida-bred yearling is out of Ashlee’s Lady (Gilded Time) and is a half-brother to graded winner Yara (Put It Back). Ashlee’s Lady is a half to Grade I winner Healthy Addiction (Boston Harbor). He was consigned by Paramount Sales and was co-bred by Paramount’s Gabriel Duignan and Jean White’s Bulldog Racing.

“It was a foal share with Jean White,” Duignan said. “She had the mare, she did all the work and she needs all the credit. She did a great job with the horse. She brought him to me at the sale and I did the easy part. He’s a lovely and I’m very happy with that result.”

Ashlee’s Lady has a weanling filly by Violence bred by White in partnership with Steven Marshall’s Black Rock Thoroughbreds, which campaigned that stallion.

Mohaymen Colt Draws a Crowd

Tom D’Ambra’s Trade Winds Farm added a son of Mohaymen to its roster Wednesday at Fasig-Tipton when bloodstock agent Frank Smith made a final bid of $315,000 to secure a first-crop yearling of the graded stakes winner (hip 844) from the Hunter Valley Farm consignment.

“His pedigree,” Smith, owner of Elloree Training Center in South Carolina, said when asked what had attracted him to the yearling. “The Tapits look like they want to run no matter who they are. The mare has had a Grade I horse, so she’s proven herself, too. That’s about as good as you’ll find in today’s sale.”

The gray colt is out of Super Phoebe (Malabar Gold), the dam of multiple Grade I winner Got Stormy (Get Stormy).

Also this week at Fasig-Tipton, D’Ambra’s upstate New York-based Trade Winds Farm purchased a colt by Quality Road (hip 539) for $100,000, a colt by Frosted (hip 470) for $75,000 and a colt by Tonalist (hip 673) for $20,000.

The yearlings will be trained by Dale Romans.

D’Ambra, who is co-founder of Albany Medical Research, Inc., has campaigned stakes winners Bounding Charm (Boundary) and Clifton Park (Allen’s Prospect).

Hip 844 was a pinhooking score for the partnership of Ted Campion, Gabriel Duignan, Adrian Regan and Pat Costello, which purchased the gray colt for $145,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton November sale.

“He was just a beautiful mover,” Campion said of his impressions of the colt as a weanling. “He had all the pieces in the right places. Spider [Duignan], Adrian, myself and Pat buy 10 or 12 horses a year and we just all landed on him last year and we all loved him. He just got stronger and in the last month he’s done really, really well.”

Of his placement in the October sale, Campion added, “He’s a May 10 foal and he really thrived in the last month. Just physically, he needed that extra month. He was nice in September, but he has grown in the last month.”

The yearling’s final price exceeded expectations.

“We put a hefty reserve on him–he cost a lot of money, he cost $145,000 as a foal,” Campion said. “So we put $174,000 on him and we had plenty of live people after that. It was great to see. We were delighted with that.”

The colt is Mohaymen’s highest-priced yearling to date.

“I actually was underbidder on two of them last year,” Campion said of the Shadwell stallion. “They looked very precocious. I know this guy is a late foal, but I bet he’ll be a nice 2-year-old–maybe he won’t be April early, but middle of the summer, I bet he’ll be very good. I thought they were very athletic and he was a good racehorse. And for a son of Tapit, they’ve got great minds.”

Maclean’s Music Filly Rewards McDonald

Reiley McDonald included a small group of homebred fillies among his Eaton Sales consignment at the October sale and the well-received group was highlighted by a daughter of Maclean’s Music (hip 1040) who sold to Richard Rigney on a phone bid of $280,000 Wednesday in Lexington.

“She was always a very nice filly,” McDonald said. “As a weanling, we knew she was something special, but she’s done nothing but get better the entire time.”

The chestnut filly is out of multiple stakes-placed Wind Caper (Touch Gold) and is a half-sister to stakes-placed Travelling Midas (Quality Road). McDonald’s Athens Woods purchased the mare for $37,000 at the 2016 Keeneland November sale.

Of the yearling’s final price, McDonald said, “It would have shocked me to death when I brought her in here, but she was so pretty and she showed herself so well, that I thought she could bring $200,000 to $300,000 by the time we got here today. I had 47 vet hits on her. We had to cut her scopes off. She was just a solid, clean filly.”

McDonald, who maintains a broodmare band of some 20 head, also sold a homebred daughter of Lookin at Lucky (hip 229) for $150,000 during Monday’s first session of the auction.

“I held some of my lesser bred homebreds that I really liked for this sale,” McDonald said. “It’s turned out to be a very good sale for clean, nice horses, so I’m glad I did it.”

Indian Creek Yearlings in Demand

Shack Parish’s Indian Creek consignment had a pair of standout results back-to-back Wednesday at Fasig-Tipton, with Vinnie Viola’s St Elias Stables securing a colt by Distorted Humor (hip 1067) with a $270,000 internet bid and just a few hips later What Time Is It Racing paying that same amount for a daughter of More Than Ready (hip 1079).

“Both of these horses were May foals, so we just wanted to give them as much time as possible,” explained Indian Creek’s Sarah Sutherland. “That’s why they came here.”

Of the results, Sutherland added, “We knew they had been well received, but you never know where they will land. So we try to place them and reserve them where we can people involved to bid. They are here to sell.”

Hip 1067 is a son of stakes winner and multiple graded placed You Bought Her (Graeme Hall). The yearling was bred by Meg Dumaine, who purchased the mare for $250,000 at the 2017 Keeneland November sale.

Hip 1079 is a daughter of Zondaq (Bernardini), a half-sister to graded winners Discreet Dancer (Discreet Cat) and Travelin Man (Trippi). The mare’s half-sister Sweet N Discreet (Discreet Cat) is the dam of multiple graded stakes winner Sweet Melania (American Pharoah), who was third in last year’s GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf.

“We had hoped she would be in this range, but she definitely exceeded our expectations a bit,” Sutherland said. “It’s a beautiful pedigree that suits end users well and it’s an active family as well with Sweet Melania.”

Trainer Dan Blacker and bloodstock agent Conor Foley did their bidding upstairs for the filly, purchasing her on behalf of a fledgling owner who races as What Time Is It Racing.

“He has six or seven now,” Blacker said, while declining to name the client. “We have a mixture of yearlings, 2-year-olds and older horses. He’s just really passionate about the Thoroughbred business and he’s really excited to get involved in all aspects. I am really thrilled to get this filly.”

Asked what type of horses they were seeking for the operation, Foley said, “I think just the best athlete possible. And sometimes for a nice pedigree you have to pay a little more.”

It was the second time this fall Blacker had purchased a filly from an Indian Creek consignment for What Time Is It Racing. He went to $1.1 million to acquire a filly by Medaglia d’Oro (hip 443) at the Keeneland September sale.

What Time Is It Racing has one starter to date, Johan Zoffani (Ire) (Zoffany {Ire}), a 3-year-old European import who was fifth in his stateside debut at Del Mar in August. The gelding is expected to go postward again this Sunday in a maiden race at the oceanside oval.

Gun Runner Colt to Rivelli

Larry Rivelli has been active at Fasig-Tipton this week purchasing yearlings on behalf of Vince Foglia’s Patricia’s Hope and the trainer made his highest bid of the auction when going to $235,000 to secure a colt from the first crop of champion Gun Runner.

“I think it’s slim picking at this sale and you are digging through a lot of horses, but this was a beautiful horse,” Rivelli said after signing the ticket on hip 813. “Except for being gray, he looks a lot like Gun Runner.”

The yearling, bred by Nancy Shuford, is out of stakes-placed Stayclassysandiego (Rockport Harbor) and is a half-brother to multiple graded stakes winner Pretty N Cool (Scat Daddy).

Florida-based Beryl “Sonny” Stokes purchased the colt for $170,000 at last year’s Keeneland November sale. The yearling was consigned Wednesday by Eaton Sales.

“We have had a little bit of luck with Rockport Harbor as a broodmare sire,” Rivelli said. “So we were taking a shot. I was prepared to pay in between $150,000 and $250,000. The horse vetted clean and that’s 75% of it. I’m pretty particular on scoping. The throat has to be perfect because if there is a little bit of this or that, it’s only going to get worse, in my eyes.”

On behalf of Foglia, Rivelli also purchased a filly by Nyquist (hip 626) for $170,000, a colt by First Samurai (hip 550) for $62,000, and a colt by Trappe Shot (hip 782) for $21,000.

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