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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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When Swiss Skydiver won the Grade 3 Fantasy Stakes earlier this year, Elliott Walden of breeder WinStar Farm sent out a tweet noting that the filly had lucencies in her condyles as a yearling that put a defined ceiling on her commercial value when she was sold as a yearling.

That story was all too familiar in the history of the Select Sales consignment, which famously sold a long list of high-level runners that started with minor dings on their vet reports during the company's operation from 2009 to 2020.

After Swiss Skydiver jumped into the deep end to test colts in the G2 Blue Grass Stakes, and nearly pulled it off with a gritty second to Art Collector, former Select Sales partner Carrie Brogden said it was just another example of physical presence and patience winning out.

“When we originally looked at our group, when WinStar decides which horses we're going to get the chance to sell, she was originally slated for our [Fasig-Tipton] July consignment,” Brogden said. “The first time I saw her, she was this big-bodied, strong filly, and that's when David [Hanley, WinStar general manager] said, 'We're actually not putting her in your July consignment. We're gonna have to push her back to September because of the x-rays.”

The first-crop Daredevil filly's trouble passing the vet took her from a sale for early-bloomers to Book 4 of the 2018 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, where she was offered as Hip 2997.

Swiss Skydiver drew the attention of trainer Kenny McPeek, who has staked much of his career on finding diamonds in the rough at auction by knowing what items on a vet report can be forgiven and outgrown.

“Kenny is one of the best of the best in my opinion for knowing what things he can deal with x-ray wise, and what he can't,” Brogden said. “I think that's why he gets so many bargains, because he has a very good hold – much more so than most of the trainers that I deal with – on what works and what doesn't work.

“Anytime you have stuff written on the stifles or knees, you have a lot of people who don't have a lot of experience with that,” she continued. “If people see stuff in the stifles or knees, they always get scared. When [Swiss Skydiver] was in the back ring, she stuck out as a physical filly, but even if she had 15 repository checks, it's not like a lot of them would be passing her.”

McPeek landed the winning bid on the filly for $35,000, and she'd go on to run for owner Peter Callahan.

The price obviously seems like a bargain now for a multiple Grade 2 winner and earner of $677,980, much less one that can hang with her male counterparts. The filly's transaction was just above the session's median sale price of $32,000, but both sides of the exchange knew the trainer likely got a deal.

Education efforts are starting to sink in that a clean yearling vet report isn't the only path to finding a successful runner at auction. The stories of horses that became champions with dings on their reports has become too long to deny, and Brogden adamantly drove that point home when it comes to assessing the next class of hopefuls.

“If a horse goes from a clean-vetting horse to a 'non-vetter,' the discount for risk, if they're still a great physical, is built into the price,” she said. “The discount to cover that risk is built-in, so instead of paying $100,000 for a yearling and having the same training bills, the discount's there.

“If you only want Ferraris, those are going to be different buyers. But, if you have people that are willing to buy a Ferrari with maybe a dent in the bumper at a 70 percent discount, it drives the same,” Brogden continued. “It's what we see all the time.”

McPeek said Swiss Skydiver is likely to target the Kentucky Oaks despite her solid showing against the boys, but the Kentucky Derby qualifying points she earned for her Blue Grass effort has put Select Sales in fourth place on the Derby Consignor Standings list.

Joining Swiss Skydiver among Select's graduates with Derby points are Belmont Stakes runner-up Dr Post (second choice on the morning line in Saturday's G1 Haskell), multiple Grade 1-placed Gouverneur Morris, and Remington Springboard Mile Stakes winner Shoplifted.

Success of that caliber is something to be celebrated, but it won't serve to build the consignment's reputation. The partners of Select Sales announced in February that the consignment would be disbanded, ending an 11-year run that saw the operation handle the likes of champion Tepin, Pegasus World Cup winner Mucho Gusto, and Grade/Group 1 winners Dream Tree, Mind Your Biscuits, Gift Box, Promises Fulfilled, and Twilight Eclipse.

Brogden will remain in the consignment arena at the upcoming yearling sales, selling under the Machmer Hall Sales banner. She'll be joined by fellow Select partners Amy Bunt and Tom and Michelle Mullikin. Among Select's other partners, Andrew Cary founded Cary Bloodstock to serve clients as an agent and advisor, while Jay Goodwin joined Eaton Sales as an account manager.

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