by Sarah Mace
A pair of colts highlighted New York-bred sales at Wednesday’s second session of the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s spring sale of 2-year-olds in training, led by Hip 581 from the first crop of New York-based sire Here Comes Ben (McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds), who fetched $310,000. The Here Comes Ben colt and a colt by Scat Daddy who brought $300,000 were the fifth and sixth top lots of the day.
Bred by Patricia L. Moseley and foaled on March 23, 2013 at Cedar Ridge Farm in Pine Plains, the dark bay / brown Here Comes Ben colt was purchased Japanese buyer K. K. Eishindo, who campaigned A Shin Forward, the second highest all-time New York-bred earner ($3,421,360). The sale was an enormous pin-hooking coup for consignor Rick Lopez, who purchased Hip 581 privately as a weanling for a scant $3,000 at the second renewal of the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga fall mixed and horses of racing age sale in 2013.
The colt, who worked a co-fastest eighth in :10 flat in the under tack show last Wednesday, is the fourth foal out of Thundersnow, an unraced Kentucky-bred daughter of Storm Boot, who has produced one winner from two foals to start. Thundersnow’s second dam Santiago Suzie is a stakes winner and third dam Mocita Mia (CHI) is a Group 1 winner in Chile. Here Comes Ben, by Street Cry (IRE), who won the Grade 1 Forego Stakes at Saratoga and banked over $400,000, stands at the McMahons’ Saratoga farm for $7,500. According to The Jockey Club 47 live foals were reported from his first crop.
Slightly earlier in the second session Team D went to $300,000 to acquire Hip 536, a chestnut colt by Scat Daddy who breezed an eighth in :11 flat. Bred by Pat Pavlish and foaled on April 13, 2013 at Akindale Farm in Pawling, the colt was purchased previously by his OBS consigner Cary Frommer for $162,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton New York-bred preferred sale in Saratoga.
Frommer told the TDN, “Don’t think we weren’t worried when he worked in :11 flat. The key was he got going midway through the breeze and people could see that on the tape and then he just kept going. He galloped out as good as any horse at the sale that day and a lot of the other days, too. He had a beautiful video and he kept going and he wouldn’t have blown out a match when he was done. He just walked home flat footed, nice and not even breathing heavy.” [ThoroStride gallop out video]
Added Frommer, “When I saw him as a yearling, I just felt like he was the real deal. He just caught my imagination and I just loved him and I told the people that were with me as a group and they all agreed and they bought him.”
The colt’s dam Sunny, a winning daughter of Dixieland Band, is a half-sister to multiple stakes Winner Wake Up Kiss and two other stakes performers. Wake Up Kiss is dam of $3.4 million dollar New York-bred earner and Grade 1 winner in Japan A Shin Forward (see also above). Also appearing in female family are Grade 1-winning millionaires Dare and Go and Go Deputy, and sire Quiet American.
With the first half of the OBS spring sale in the books, 34 new York-breds have changed hands of 48 offered (including five private sales) for an average price of $69,721 and $50,000 median.
The second day of trading at OBS, which featured a record-setting $1.9 million Tapit filly, was robust overall. The cumulative average for the sale was $87,281, up 13.5% from $76,891 in 2013, and the median price was $50,000, up 11.1% from $45,000 last year.
The sale continues Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
Click here to view New York-bred auction hips.
