Value can be found at every level of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale, and in the “Treasure Hunting” series, we'll be examining successful graduates of the bellwether auction who sold below the median price of their particular session.
We'll start at Book 1 and go all the way to Book 6, talking to buyers who found horses that slipped under the commercial radar in their given segment of the marketplace.
For a moment after the fall of the hammer, Ciaran Dunne thought he'd bought the wrong horse.
It was Book 2 of the 2018 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, and Dunne had just signed the ticket on Hip 1272, a Liam's Map colt, for $50,000 under his Waves Bloodstock banner. Before the horse went through the ring, he'd valued him at several times more than that.
For the 2018 September sale's fifth session – the first day of trade for Book 2 for that year's renewal – the median sale price was $135,000. The colt that would become multiple Grade 1 winner Colonel Liam wasn't the least expensive horse of the day, but he was certainly closer to the bottom of the list than the top.
“Liam's Map had been selling really well, and obviously, when you get that deep in the sale, it's kind of a pull the trigger or go home situation,” Dunne said.
Dunne had the horse, but he also had plenty of questions about that horse, and whether his own eye had somehow failed him.
“When the hammer dropped, my first instinct was that I bought the wrong horse, and somehow or other I'd messed up and gone on ahead and bid on the wrong one,” he said. “Then, my second thought was maybe I read the vet report wrong. We were just shocked we got him for what we got him for. We had appraised him for something around $150,000 to $200,000.
“Very rarely when I buy one at Keeneland September do I go back to the barn and see them afterwards,” he continued. “Usually, you just don't have time. There's so much going on, and you're kind of just moving on. I actually made the trip down to the barn to try and see how I'd screwed up, and what we missed. I honestly thought that we'd really stepped in it.
Dunne ventured down to the Darby Dan Sales consignment in Barn 10 on the Keeneland property to look at his new colt and figure out why the expectation and the hammer price were so far out of sync.
“I went back down to the Darby Dan barn and pulled him out, and Renee [Logan, Darby Dan's sales director] was there, and when I got there, she goes, 'I'm glad you came. I just wanted to tell you…' and I'm thinking, 'Oh, here it comes.'” Dunne said. “He had some little skin infection in his mane, and that's what she wanted to tell me about, and I was standing there going, 'Is that it?'”
Dunne looked the leggy colt over, and watched him walk back and forth trying to find any glaring flaws he surely must have missed to get the colt at that price. He didn't find any.
Whatever caused the entire buying bench to sleep on Colonel Liam as a yearling fell to the wayside when Dunne offered him for sale the following year at the 2019 Ocala Breeders' Sales Co. Spring 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale. After the colt breezed a quarter-mile in :20 4/5 seconds for Dunne's Wavertree Stables consignment, he sold to Robert and Lawana Low for $1.2 million; the second-highest price of that year's auction.
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.“It was one of those that we all talk about that just slips through the cracks,” Dunne said. “He was a beautiful 2-year-old. It wasn't that we raised him up and turned him into a beautiful horse. He was a beautiful horse when we bought him.”
Colonel Liam lived up to the seven-figure price on the racetrack, winning seven of 12 starts and earning $1,812,565.
Trained by Todd Pletcher, Colonel Liam is a two-time winner of the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Turf, to go along with victories in the G1 Turf Classic Stakes and G2 Muniz Memorial Classic Stakes.
Colonel Liam retired to Ocala Stud in Florida for the 2023 breeding season, where he stood his debut season for an advertised fee of $6,500.
Bred in Kentucky by Phillips Racing Partnership, Colonel Liam is out of the unraced Bernardini mare Amazement. His second dam is the multiple Grade 1 winner Wonder Again.
Colonel Liam_Sep 18_Hip 1272 from Lauren Warren on Vimeo.
The post Treasure Hunting Presented By Keeneland: Colonel Liam Seemed Too Good To Be True For Dunne appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
