SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Three years ago, two horses broke through the $2 million threshold at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale. One was a Gun Runner colt who topped the elite auction at $2.3 million and went on to become champion Sierra Leone. The other was a colt out of the mare America, who sold for $2 million and became known as multiple graded stakes winner First Captain.
There was certainly anticipation as those bloodlines joined forces, with a Gun Runner colt out of America stepping into the ring Monday at the Saratoga sale. But could anyone have expected him to sell for $2.7 million, topping a flurry of seven-figure offerings during the opening session of this boutique sale?
“Oh God, you can never expect that,” Lynn Hancock, vice president of her family’s Stone Farm, said after Ron Winchell signed the ticket on the consignment’s offering. “That was really amazing.”
With that colt leading nine seven-figure offerings, the 104th edition of the Saratoga selected sale kicked off in solid fashion. Fasig-Tipton reported 77 yearlings sold during the first of these two sessions at its Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion for gross receipts of $39,975,000. In last year’s opening session, 77 yearlings sold for gross receipts of $38,910,000. Both figures count only horses sold through the ring, not yet factoring in any private transactions that may occur on the sale grounds.
Monday’s average price was $519,156, ticking up 3 percent from $505,325 in the 2024 opener. The median was even at $400,000.
The buyback rate for the session was a very good 13 percent, compared to 17 percent in the corresponding session last year.
The 2024 edition of the sale set a high bar for this year to clear, with record figures for gross, average, and median, and its lowest buyback rate since 2015.
“Competitive bidding from literally start to finish – the last horse in the ring tonight was a seven-figure horse,” Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning Jr. noted. “The most encouraging statistic, to me, is that at an uber-select sale, the buyback rate was less than 15 percent tonight – and I promise you that some of these horses will get sold [privately] tomorrow. It’s a tribute to our selection team that did a great job of selecting the horses that were going to be marketable. It’s a tribute to our consignors and the owners of these horses who entrust us with some of their very best yearlings year in and year out, and it’s a tribute to the buyers who consistently support this sale.”
The session topper went to connections familiar with his family, as Winchell Thoroughbreds, which co-campaigned Gun Runner with Three Chimneys Farm, purchased the colt. The 2017 Horse of the Year, Gun Runner has swiftly jumped from a record-setting freshman sire phenom to a perennial top-three national sire.
“He’s a replica of Gun Runner,” Winchell said after signing the ticket. Standing alongside Winchell was trainer Steve Asmussen, who also conditioned Gun Runner.
America, by A.P. Indy, won the Grade 3 Turnback the Alarm at Aqueduct and also was Grade 1-placed. As a broodmare, she is the dam of two winners from four starters, led by First Captain, a son of Curlin who won the Grade 3 Pimlico Special and Grade 3 Dwyer and also was Grade 1-placed. Commercially, four of her yearlings offered at public auction have sold for seven figures, with this colt now atop the group.
Stone Farm boards America and raised this colt, an April foal, for breeder Bobby Flay, who also bred and raced the mare.
“He’s just been super straightforward at the farm since the day he was born,” Hancock said. “He's got a huge walk on him. He’s obviously so well-bred, and that mare is just really a gift. . . . We’re fortunate to bring a colt like him up here and get a result like that. [America] just gets an athletic-looking yearling. The foals are all athletic, and they just carry that through. This colt came up here and just never stopped showing himself.”
America is a half-sister to the dam of Grade 1 winner Paris Lights, and this is a deep family of outstanding broodmares, tracing directly to Kentucky Oaks winner and multiple stakes producer Blush With Pride, a daughter of Broodmare of the Year Best In Show. Blush With Pride’s daughter Better Than Honour produced a pair of Belmont Stakes winners to also earn Broodmare of the Year honors.
Fetching the second-highest price of the evening was a colt by young classic sire Good Magic, purchased for $1.6 million by Legion Bloodstock, as agent for Hoolie Racing. The colt, consigned by Warrendale Sales, as agent, is from the immediate family of Canadian champion and millionaire Are You Kidding Me.
Two other yearlings went for $1.4 million each. A colt by Triple Crown winner Justify went to Qatar Racing; the colt is a half-brother to Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner Caravel and stakes winner Witty. Later in the evening, a Not This Time half-brother to Grade 1 winner Union Strike and Grade 2 winner Handsome Mike matched the price to Kjell Andersen.
Rounding out the evening’s seven-figure lots were a $1.3 million Curlin filly to Windancer Farm; a $1.1 million filly from the first crop of unbeaten Horse of the Year Flightline, purchased by West Point Thoroughbreds; a $1 million Constitution colt to Pedro Lanz, as agent for KAS Stables; a $1 million Constitution colt to Mike Repole, making the stallion as the only sire with two on the leaderboard on the night; and a $1 million colt from the penultimate crop of Uncle Mo, purchased by Coolmore and White Birch Farm.
The second and final session of the Saratoga select sale begins at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
“We’re delighted with the first session and very optimistic, obviously, heading into the second session,” Browning said. “We’re not gonna make any great proclamations, because you know me – it’s halftime. But the energy in this pavilion, the energy outside, literally the energy since Friday [when horses began showing] has been palpable.”
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