NEWS: SALES

Agave Kiss brings $1.5 million at F-T November, Hessonite commands $750,000

Tuesday, November 5th, 2013
FT Nov 13 logoby Sarah Mace

A pair of champions led the New York-bred broodmare contingent at Fasig-Tipton’s November sale on Monday, as Flying Zee Racing Stables’ multiple stakes-winning sprinter Agave Kiss lit up the board when purchased by Kiki and Louise Courtelis’ Town and Country Farms in foal to Tapit for $1,500,000 and Dattt Stables went to $750,000 to buy Hessonite.

Selling from the Gainesway consignment, last year’s Champion New York-Bred Female Sprinter Agave Kiss (Hip 193) retired in March of 2013 with a record of 6-1-1 from 10 starts and $339,400 in earnings. Never headed in her first six career starts, the Rudy Rodriguez-trainee won her first two races at two by a combined 16 3/4 lengths, and began her sophomore career by winning four straight from January through May: the Ruthless Stakes, Grade 3 Cicada, Trevose Stakes at Parx and Miss Preakness Stakes. Later in the year, Agave Kiss secured a placing in the Grade 1 Prioress at Saratoga and finished second, beaten only a neck, in the Valor Lady at Belmont.

Bred by Nustar Breeding LLC, a partnership headed by the late Carl Lizza, and foaled at Highcliff Farm in Delanson (now Highcliff Stallions), Agave Kiss is out of Salty Romance, a Kentucky-bred daughter of Salt Lake purchased by Lizza for $320,000 in the open portion of the 2003 OBS two-year-olds in training sale. A half-sister to another stakes producer, Salty Romance won the Delta Princess S. at two and ran second in the Grade 3 Santa Ysabel S. at three ($229,200). Agave Kiss’ third dam is a multiple stakes winner and stakes producer. Agave Kiss was one of 24 horses to bring seven figures on Monday and ended up as the sale’s twelfth top-selling broodmare.

William J. Punk, Jr. and Philip DiLeo’s graded winner Hessonite (Hip 64), who sold on Monday evening from the consignment of Lantern Hill Farm, LLC (agent), was Champion New York-Bred Turf Female of 2011 and Champion Older New York-bred Female in 2012.

Retired from racing this past September at age five, the blaze-faced chestnut daughter of Freud (Sequel Stallions) had won nine stakes and placed in four more for trainer David Donk, compiling an overall career record of 11-3-1 from 22 starts with $879,644 in earnings. Topping her stakes victories, all of which came at Belmont Park and Saratoga, was the Grade 3 Beaugay in her 2013 seasonal debut. Winner of the Ticonderoga twice, and of two divisions of the New York Stallion Stakes series, Hessonite also posted victories in Irish Linnet, Yaddo, John Hettinger and, in her final career start, won the On the Bus Stakes, the first stakes race of the 2013 Saratoga race meet.

Hessonite was bred by Berkshire Stud (where she was foaled) and John Meriwether’s Waterville Lake Stables Limited, LLC, and purchased by William Punk, Jr. as a 2009 Keeneland September yearling for $27,000. Hessonite’s dam Lakab is a winning daughter of Manila with three siblings who won at the Grade/Group 2 and 3 levels. Lakab has produced eight winners, including stakes winners Roanoke (Aus), by Danehill ($106,274) and European Rose, by Nureyev ($67,860). Two of her daughters are stakes producers.

 

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