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Niall Brennan Stables Keeping the Stars Coming

Niall Brennan is riding high heading into this week's Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream Sale as this year, a pair of his program's graduates have developed into two of the hottest colts in training early on in the season.

Just last weekend, Godolphin's 'TDN Rising Star' Mystic Guide (Ghostzapper) was much the best in the G1 Dubai World Cup and trainer Mike Stidham said after the race that the 4-year-old colt is just going to get better.

Meanwhile, another Godolphin homebred in Eclipse Champion Essential Quality (Tapit) looks to maintain his undefeated career in this weekend's GII Toyota Blue Grass S. at Keeneland in his final prep looking towards the first Saturday in May.

“I'm very humbled and blessed to have some of the Godolphin horses every year,” Brennan said. “They're very well raised and obviously all have wonderful pedigrees. It's great working with [Godolphin USA President] Jimmy Bell and [COO] Dan Pride. They give you a lot of leeway in developing these young horses. There's no pressure to move them along in the program. Anything that needs time, we just back right off.”

A regally bred 'TDN Rising Star', Essential Quality thrived on the patience given him at Brennan's training center in Ocala.

“Essential Quality just kept getting better and better,” Brennan recalled. “The more we did with him, the stronger he got. The more he liked it, the more competitive he got. The good horses do that. I know when Brad Cox got Essential Quality and he put in his first works at Keeneland, he did everything right and it turned out that he just kept getting better and better and thankfully, he has stayed healthy. That's part of the key when you've got these really good ones, you just pray they stay healthy.”

After securing his Eclipse title last year with a win in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile and then taking the GIII Southwest S. in his sophomore debut, the gray colt heads into his final prep sitting at or near the top of most every Derby poll.

“He was an exciting colt, but we treat them all the same here,” Brennan said. “We don't ever think, 'well this one is going to win the Derby.' I mean, you can't get like that. You just take it day to day and watch for the ones that continue to improve and do very well.”

At Wednesday's Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream Sale, Brennan has one filly in his consignment that he believes has done just that.

Hip 126, a Curlin filly bred by Mike Ryan and the late Gerry Dilger, was given all the time she needed to reach her best before going through the sales ring.

“I think she was a little bit immature as a yearling and [Ryan and Dilger] felt like a little more time would only be beneficial,” Brennan noted. “They always loved her.”

The February-foaled chestnut is a daughter of GSW and GISP Above Perfection (In Excess {Ire}), the dam of 2017 GI Kentucky Derby winner and WinStar sire Always Dreaming (Bodemeister), 2009 GI Spinaway S. winner Hot Dixie Chick (Dixie Union) and GIISW Positive Spirit (Pioneerof the Nile). Hot Dixie Chick has since produced the stakes-winning 'TDN Rising Star' and Sequel New York stallion Union Jackson (Curlin), as well as a recent addition to the TDN Oaks Top 10 list in GIII Honeybee S. runner-up Pauline's Pearl (Tapit), who is entered for Saturday's GIII Fantasy S.

“It's a collector's pedigree,” Brennan said. “It's without question, the best pedigree in the book. At the 2-year-old sales, you rarely find a filly with her pedigree, so I would seriously think people would be lined up to get at this filly. She's a lovely physical and a real Curlin. She's got a tremendous way of going on the racetrack with a great presence, great mind and great demeanor. She's the whole package. You don't find many like this, truthfully.”

At Monday's under tack show, the filly breezed in :10 1/5.

“When you see her on the track, she just gives you goose pimples,” Brennan said. “But to see her walk home after she breezes, she's like an older horse. I've been lucky to be around a lot of really good horses as 2-year-olds and there's only a few in every crop that have a chance to be very special, and she's certainly one of them.”

Brennan's three-horse consignment at Gulfstream also includes Hip 134, a Flatter filly out of the stakes-placed mare Ire (Political Force) that breezed in :10 2/5, as well as Hip 137, a full-brother to 2016 GI Spinaway S. winner Sweet Loretta (Tapit).

“This horse has grown a lot and he's a good size. He's a stretchy colt with a lot of scope to him,” Brennan said, referring to hip 137. “There's a lot of potential here. It's a very good pedigree and he's a horse that will only improve, no question. He has the ability and the athleticism to be here at this stage, but in his mind, he's going to continue to get better and better as he learns what this whole game is about.”

The son of the stakes-placed mare Ithinkisawapudycat (Bluegrass Cat) breezed in :10 3/5 on Monday.

Brennan said he is optimistic going into this week's juvenile auction following a successful OBS March Sale earlier this month.

“We were very happy with the OBS sale,” Brennan noted. ” The one thing that was the common denominator, the one opinion that all the buyers looking around had said, was that there were a lot of nice horses. Accordingly, I think the results showed that, because it was very strong, it was very fair at the top end but there was a good depth to the market with a lot of people trying to buy horses. It wasn't just that they landed on a few, so I think the market spread out really well.”

He continued, “It bodes very well for the sales coming up that many people are excited about having racehorses. Obviously people were locked down all last year with COVID and couldn't operate as normal. I think some people are more anxious now to get out and get back to living their lives. They want something for this summer and fall and then hopefully into next year as Derby dreaming has started already.”

Last year, 2016 GI Kentucky Derby winner and Darley stallion Nyquist, a graduate of Brennan's program, led his freshman class of sires with GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies champion Vequist and another Grade I-winning juvenile in Gretzky the Great.

The son of Uncle Mo was a successful $230,000 yearling turned $400,000 pinhook at this sale for Brennan and his partners in 2015.

“As I'm reflecting back, I'm just very humbled to have been around so many good horses over the years,” Brennan said. “With Nyquist, he was a pinhook for Mike Ryan, myself and our partnership, so that's even more gratifying because you're involved the whole way. We loved him all along and the fact that he went on to be what he became wasn't a surprise to us. Obviously he's gotten off to a great start at stud. They're very consistent and they're very like him.”

Eight second-crop sons and daughters of Nyquist are set to go through the sales ring this week at Gulfstream. Hip 28, the first foal out of the Smart Strike mare Spinning Wheel, led Monday's under-tack show after firing a bullet :9 4/5 work.

One freshman sire that Brennan has high hopes for this year is yet another graduate of his program in 2017 Horse of the Year Gun Runner. The young sire led his class last year by average yearling sales price.

“He was immature as a 2-year-old, but he was still very athletic,” Brennan recalled. “He had tremendous athletic ability and the will to do it. He was the whole package, he just wasn't filled out into that package yet.”

While it wasn't until the end of Gun Runner's sophomore campaign that he scored his first of six Grade I victories, Brennan said that of the Gun Runner progeny he has seen, they seem to be developing much earlier than their sire.

“I've been impressed with them so far,” he said. “Like him, they love to train and they've got the right attitude. I'd say the only difference I've seen is that they are more mature in their bodies at this stage. They've all got more substance and more strength than their daddy. It bodes well for him because he got better and better as he got older. I think that's what the Gun Runners will do. They can have speed, but I do think they'll stretch out without any problem.”

Five sons and daughters of the Three Chimneys sire are slated to go through the ring at Gulfstream including Hip 100, a half-brother to GISW Finley'sluckycharm (Twirling Candy).

“Good horses excite you, no question,” Brennan said. “It's fun every spring to look at the new crops from freshman sires and see if some of them have that same consistency. Obviously, they have to get lucky and get to good homes to get a chance, but there are several exciting young sires again this year.”

The Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream Sale begins this Wednesday at 2 p.m. Tune in to watch live at https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/live/.

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The California Series: John Shirreffs, Part Two

Great expectations don't necessarily begin with lofty intent.

Most new licensees start out hungry for that one lionheart of any stripe to announce their arrival. Those trainers who are routinely sent the big weekend warriors learn to acquire a more refined palate, to remodulate their ambitions accordingly.

But scant few are fortunate enough to have harnessed the sort of thunderbolt that doesn't just electrify a trainer's career but leaves a patch of scorched earth for posterity. And really, how many ever expect to?

In part one, we deconstructed some of the scaffolding of the Shirreffs training philosophy-today, we take a peek beneath these outer-workings.

And where better to start than with a horse who, for three years between November of 2007 and October of 2010, danced her way to a 19-race win-streak that encompassed 14 Grade Is before signing off with a narrow defeat in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs, the collective groan to which still resonates today.

“She was difficult,” said John Shirreffs of Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}), as though narrating her movie trailer. “She was very difficult.”

For one, the shell was ill-designed for the engine, with back-end problems and creaky joints a source of constant headaches. “We had to be really careful with her,” Shirreffs continued. “I don't know how she did it. She overcame so much.”

Nor did it help that she was wired with an electric current, evident from the moment she pranced off the horsebox and into the Shirreffs barn at Hollywood Park that looked out onto the old training track.

“She was very highly strung and very nervous on the track. At the start, I don't know how many times I saw her drop the rider and come running back to the barn,” he said. “So yeah, she was difficult.”

By the time the 2008 GI Vanity H. at Hollywood Park rolled around, personality quirk was devolving into vice–she washed out in the preliminaries, all jittery nerves and sweat, before dispensing with her rivals in unusually grueling fashion.

“Almost cost us the race,” admitted Shirreffs, about her pre-race antics. “That's when we realized we needed to do something on the racetrack to conserve her energies.”

Shirreffs pressed reset, stood her by the quarter pole every day. Why there? “From the quarter pole, it was only an eighth of a mile walk to the gate,” he said. Stretched and supple from her parade-ring yoga, Zenyatta needed no warm-up.

“And while all the other horses were warming up, we'd stand her just to conserve her energy.”

Her next race–the GII Clement L. Hirsch H. at Del Mar–was won in customarily graceful fashion, setting a Polytrack record in the process.

“I'll have to go back to the basics.”

Superstition runs like the Nile Delta through any backstretch, with good fortune sought from many an idol, false or not-voodoo amulets nailed to the wall, lucky socks, the empty stall nearest the office reserved for the trainer's next oracle.

Shirreffs, however, appears less than dogmatic about one of the staple deities of the track-old father time, whose avatar is the trusty stopwatch. “I don't even clock my horses any more,” he said.

“What makes everybody excited? Speed. You're watching your horse work and, 'wow, we went in :23. My goodness, he's going that fast.' But the stopwatch is like a treat, right? It can give you a lot of satisfaction-but that's all it is, a treat. I think that will never change.”

Nor is he beholden to the rigid sanctity of the morning set-list. Just take Life is Sweet (Storm Cat), the 2009 GI Breeders' Cup Ladies Classic winner, a veritable sleeping beauty who Shirreffs sent out for morning exercise only when she deemed the hour ripe to rise, yawn and stretch.

And once again, patience is the key virtue when it comes to returning sheen to tarnished reputation. Or as Shirreffs puts it: “Is that not the joy of training, having fun with different personalities, doing something that'll help them bridge that gap?”

No finer example of that can be found than in Morning Line (Tiznow), a Grade I winner on the East Coast whose career had jack-knifed. Two starts after claiming pole position the GI Carter H. at Aqueduct, he brought up the rear in the GI Whitney H. at Saratoga. Jim Stark in need of a cause.

Indeed, when Morning Line arrived in California, “He would just go to the outside fence and he wouldn't move,” Shirreffs explained, about the son of Tiznow's black mood of a morning. “I didn't know what to do. So, I thought to myself, 'well, I guess I'll have to go back to the basics.'”

Back to basics isn't a euphemism for a few weeks of jogging or tack-walking around the shedrow. No, this was the equivalent of sending Einstein back to grade school.

“We would put the driving reins on him and drive him around the racetrack,” said Shirreffs, of the foundation stone of the rebel's rehabilitation.

When Morning Line became accustomed to the driving reins, then a rider was put on. When he acclimatized to both driver and rider, they increased the pace–a performance that necessitated a relay race, where the more athletic members of the Shirreffs Olympic team would be situated around the track, ready to be handed the driving reins from their rubber-legged counterparts.

“Pretty soon, it got to the point where we just started him with the driving reins, and then the rider would let go of them and carry on like usual,” said Shirreffs.

On his first start post Betty Ford, Morning Line won the GII Mervyn LeRoy H. at Hollywood Park, and two starts later, finished third in the GI Triple Bend H.

A more timely war of perseverance concerned the recently-retired Hard Not to Love (Hard Spun).

A one-eyed bag of nerves. “She obviously needed to see what was going on, so when she got nervous and upset, she just she'd have to spin around and spin around.” Shirreffs experimented with a mirror in her stall, an optical illusion for the optically challenged. “It made all the world of difference.”

Still, Hard Not to Love had a greater phobia to overcome if she were ever to make her mark. “She was terrified of the gates. Absolutely terrified,” he said.

In a nod to Hansel and Gretel, Shirreffs built a starting gate from straw. “But she'd just run through it, and then she wouldn't want to go back.” Then came an eureka moment–the same straw replica of the starting gate, but positioned around the entrance to her stall.

“So, when she went through it, tried to run, she could only go to the back wall-it made all the difference.” Indeed, the daughter of Hard Spun ended up winning the GI La Brea S. at Santa Anita, cementing herself a star of the West Coast distaff division.

“Let them drink as much as they want the first time”

Not all idiosyncrasies are created equal, however, and as anyone who sweats the details can attest, even a small realignment of the daily routine can suddenly unlock the vault. But in Express Train (Union Rags), Shirreffs is rewarded the long game.

Indeed, the improving son of Union Rags recently ran a career high when finishing second in the GI Santa Anita H., a race that once was a high-tide mark on the calendar, but in its sublimation by other dueling interests has become a barometer to the shifting fashions of the West.

It's instructive to hear Shirreffs's commentary of these changing fads, some of it dusted with nostalgia, like a hankering for the journey-man days of the old California circuit. Or a time when the backstretch community dispensed horse-sense like penny toffies.

“I was new to the track, and one day I remember Don Porter, a great trainer up North, he saw me walking into the receiving barn to give a horse a drink.

“He said, 'John, just remember the first drink a horse takes will be its biggest drink in there. So, let them drink as much as they want the first time, because otherwise they're not going to rehydrate themselves well enough.' I mean, back then people helped each other.”

Has that changed?

“I don't see a lot of that going on now,” Shirreffs replied.

Some have a historical bent, observations that betray hokey bygone truths–like the way he and others once used arsenic to stimulate the appetite and on bandages to cool the legs. “I used to use a lot of lead to help cool the legs, as well.”

Some of it reflects shifting industry winds. “I think the jockeys are fitter now than they were before. As soon as the gate opens, it's like, 'go, go, go,' right? There's more pressure on jockeys to perform all the time and in every race.”

Fitter jockey, tougher race. “Back when I started, people didn't expect the horse to win first time out-they expected the horse to have a couple of races and eventually race himself into shape. The demands on the horse are, I think, a lot higher now than they were, so we've had to adjust.”

Telling are those trainers he holds in high regard. “I think Neil Drysdale's a really good trainer,” said Shirreffs. “I think he's one of those people that understands horses and doesn't overtrain, tries to get along with them. The trouble is, he's English!

“I think Bobby Frankel was another great trainer. His approach, I thought, was always interesting. Another one who wouldn't over face them.”

Is there a connecting thread between these names? “All these trainers, I think, they just love their horses.”

If there's another, then surely it pertains to the little things. Which brings us full circle to Giacamo (Holy Bull), the horse that gave the Shirreffs name its international flavor.

The day before the 2005 GI Kentucky Derby was a lazy and warm spring Kentucky morning. Shirreffs was in the paddock schooling his great white hope, Giacomo, when the son of Holy Bull twisted off a shoe.

“We had to get him back to the barn to get re-shod, but Giacomo had very shallow feet–he really didn't have strong feet–and as you know at Churchill Downs, it's very gravely.”

Shirreffs dispatched the exercise rider to the barn, who returned with a bandage that they used to swaddle the foot, carefully led him back to the barn. The next day, Giacomo won the Derby at 50-1.

It can be all too easy to dismiss anecdotes like this as insignificant–just one of a million incidental decisions made along the winner's path. “Just doing those little things, you know, they don't seem like they're really important,” admitted Shirreffs.

But we need look no further than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle–he of Sherlock Holmes fame, with the microscope eye-for redress: It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

“I mean,” Shirreffs added, in explanation, “were it not for what we did, he probably wouldn't have won the Derby, right?”

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Week in Review: Off-Lasix 3YOs Have Now Won 25% of This Year’s Derby Preps

Besides solidifying his status as a top-tier Triple Crown threat, Saturday's win by Known Agenda (Curlin) in the GI Curlin Florida Derby bolstered the overall case that the phase-out of Lasix in this year's series of GI Kentucky Derby preps seems to be having no adverse effect on performance.

Through 20 races in North America since Jan. 1 that have awarded Derby qualifying points, horses giving up Lasix after receiving it in their prior start have won five of those races. Seven others have finished second, an impressive strike rate that equates to off-Lasix horses running first or second in 60% of those 20 stakes.

The sample–admittedly small, but growing–is comprised of 52 total starters. The winners were Known Agenda in the Florida Derby, Helium (Ironicus) in the GII Tampa Bay Derby, Candy Man Rocket (Candy Ride {Arg}) in the GIII Sam F. Davis S., Hush of a Storm (Creative Cause) in the John Battaglia Memorial S., and Capo Kane (Street Sense) in the Jerome S.

It should also be noted with an asterisk that Concert Tour (Street Sense) won the GII San Vicente S. coming off Lasix, but that key Santa Anita prep race does not award Derby qualifying points.

This year will mark the first season in which all three Triple Crown races will be conducted Lasix-free, and the majority of prep stakes for the Derby did not permit Lasix. (In the qualifying races that did permit Lasix, like the Springboard Mile S. back in December, horses could not earn points for their placings if they ran on the drug.)

Known Agenda began his career Lasix-free as a 2-year-old in New York, and he beat highly rated Greatest Honour (Tapit) back in November without the use of any race-day anti-bleeding medication. But his form slipped after that–he ran third, beaten nine lengths, in the GII Remsen S., then was the beaten favorite when fifth in the Davis S. at Tampa.

For a Feb. 26 allowance confidence-builder at Gulfstream, trainer Todd Pletcher added both blinkers and Lasix (which is permitted in non-stakes races for 3-year-olds in Florida). Known Agenda attacked with metronomic precision, then poured it on in deep stretch to win by 11 commanding lengths. The drop in class, the addition of blinkers, and the use of Lasix for the first time all likely contributed to a vastly improved performance. But it was impossible to tease out which of those factors had the most impact.

Conventional handicapping wisdom shaped by decades of Lasix usage in North American racing suggested that coming off of Lasix while stepping up to Grade I company after an allowance win by double-digit lengths the first time on that drug might not be an advantageous angle.

But as we are now seeing, convention might as well get tossed out the window, because these off-Lasix horses as an aggregate don't seem to be suffering marked declines in performance.

Known Agenda improved to a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 94, a leap of 12 points. Four of the other off-Lasix sophomore stakes winners mentioned above also improved their Beyers when foregoing Lasix: Hush of a Storm (+12), Capo Kane (+10), Helium (+9) and Concert Tour (+6). The only off-Lasix winner to decline in terms of Beyers was Candy Man Rocket (-2).

In the interest of fairness, four other Florida Derby starters on Saturday came off Lasix after using it last time out. They ran second, fifth, sixth and ninth. So yes, for some of those horses the negative performance implications of not racing on Lasix might have been more pronounced.

Prior to the entire field not racing on Lasix on Saturday, you have to go all the way back to 2012 to find the last time a Florida Derby entrant didn't race on Lasix (Reveron, beaten just a length at 31-1 odds). Before that only one other horse in the 21st Century ran Lasix-free in the Florida Derby (an off-the-board long shot in 2001).

And we'll wrap up this discussion with a little quiz: Prior to Known Agenda, can you name the last horse to cross the Florida Derby finish wire first while running Lasix-free?

The answer is Lil's Lad in the 1998 edition. He was the only horse in that year's Florida Derby not racing on Lasix, but he got disqualified from the victory for causing interference.

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Bradshaw Hoping for Another Big Gulfstream Sale

Two years ago, consignor Randy Bradshaw came into the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream Sale with a colt by Blame the barn had nicknamed the beast. The juvenile turned in a :10 flat furlong breeze during the sale's under-tack show and justified his consignor's faith in him when selling for $700,000 to bloodstock agent Kerri Radcliffe. Named Nadal, the colt went on to win three graded races topped by the 2020 GI Arkansas Derby. After a year's absence due to the pandemic, bidding returns to Gulfstream Park this week and Bradshaw's eight-horse 2021 consignment comes neatly packaged inside a catalogue with Nadal's picture front and center on the cover.

“We always enjoy going down there,” Bradshaw said of the Gulfstream sale. “There are a lot of expectations because we try to pick some of our better horses to go down there. This year's group is probably as strong a group as I've taken down there, so we are pretty excited at this point. They all prepped well down there. They just have to do it Monday and I'd be surprised if they didn't show up.”

Bradshaw's Gulfstream contingent includes a pair of fillies by Triple Crown hero American Pharoah. Hip 97, a $150,000 purchase at last year's Fasig-Tipton Selected Yearling Showcase, is out of Crying Shame (Street Cry {Ire}), a daughter of multiple Grade I winner Tout Charmant (Slewvescent). Hip 150, who RNA'd for $70,000 at the showcase, is out of Let Joy Reign (Awesome Again) and is a half-sister to multiple stakes winner Celtic Chaos (Dublin).

“A lot of international buyers–especially the Japanese–have really taken a liking to American Pharoahs,” Bradshaw said.

While he didn't have a consignment at the OBS March sale, Bradshaw agreed he was heartened by the activity of Japanese buyers at the first 2-year-old sale of the season. The top two offerings at OBS were both purchased by Japanese interests, including a filly by American Pharoah purchased by Eugenio Colombo on behalf of Shadai's Teruya Yoshida for $600,000.

“The Japanese buyers showed up here at the OBS sale, and from what I've heard from several people who buy for them and work with them, they never got half their money spent,” Bradshaw said. “So we are looking forward to hopefully selling them a couple.”

Bradshaw's Gulfstream contingent also includes a trio of juveniles by freshman sires.

“We have a Classic Empire who has a great pedigree,” Bradshaw said of hip 177. “And he's a really, really nice colt and he might fit a lot of American buyers here that like the look of a dirt horse.”

The first-crop son of juvenile champioin Classic Empire is out of Mriya (Elusive Quality) and RNA'd for $345,000 at the showcase last fall.

Bradshaw continued, “And we have a nice Lord Nelson filly (hip 40). That sire has been highly received so far. They haven't run yet, but going into the sales last year, everybody liked the Lord Nelsons.”

Out of Sweetness 'n Light (Distorted Humor), hip 40 is a half-sister to graded placed Stormy Sky (Sky Mesa) and was a $60,000 Fasig showcase yearling.

The freshman sire contingent is completed by hip 80, a daughter by the late Arrogate out of multiple graded stakes winner Bsharpsonata (Pulpit).

“The Arrogate filly is almost 17 hands tall, but she is a fast for a big girl,” Bradshaw said. “It's surprising. She is big and she's quick and a really beautiful filly.”

Rounding out his consignment, Bradshaw said, “I have a Union Rags colt (hip 167) that I absolutely love. He's a grand-looking horse who has worked really well. Then I have an Into Mischief colt (hip 61) who worked lights out down there and he's a big strong, good-looking horse. And I have an Uncaptured filly (hip 23), same thing, she worked lights out down there. We paid a lot of money for her, but she acts like she could be any kind. It's a really nice family, the mare has produced graded stakes horses. She definitely has the license because she looks the part, she's a big, beautiful filly.”

Purchased for $140,000 at last year's OBS October Yearling Sale, hip 23 is a half-sister to graded stakes winner Elusive Lady (Van Nistelrooy).

After a 2020 juvenile sales season of fits and starts, buyers seemed anxious to jump back into the fray at OBS and Bradshaw hopes that trend continues in South Florida this week.

“There was a lot of excitement and a lot of people at OBS,” Bradshaw said. “I didn't have anything down there, but from everything that I heard, every consignor seemed like they were just slammed. That's a good thing. Horses sold well. We had a lot of middle market horses who sold well, which is a good sign. So I have a lot of expectations that this is going to be a really good sale.”

Reflecting on how he felt heading into the Gulfstream under-tack show with Nadal two years ago, Bradshaw said, “I knew we had a good one. His nickname around the barn was the beast. And that's what he was. He was a big, strong, powerful horse. I have a couple that might be that good in this group. Hopefully, they will show up like he did. Because he was one of those horses that, every time you pulled the trigger, he was right there.”

The under-tack show for the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream gets underway Monday at 9 a.m. The sale will be held Wednesday in the track's paddock with bidding beginning at 2 p.m.

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