F-T Pinhooks Topped by Graydar Colts

If weanling price is an indication of how a particular horse sells as a yearling the following year, two offspring of first-crop sire Graydar   should be in demand at the July 12 Fasig-Tipton selected yearling sale in Lexington.

The stallion who stands at Taylor Made Stallions near Nicholasville, Ky., for a $15,000 fee was represented by the two highest-priced weanling purchases of 2015 that are among those cataloged for the sale.

Topping the list is a gray son of Graydar bought by Mike McMahon and Jamie Hill for $185,000 from the Scott Mallory consignment to last year’s Keeneland November sale.

Two years ago, the partners scored a major pinhook home run when a Cowboy Cal   colt they bought as a weanling sold for a sale-topping $550,000 at the same sale. That colt, named Cowboy's Hero, was bought ny Northwest Farm from the consignment of Hidden Brook, agent for the partners who had purchased the colt as a weanling for $145,000 from the Eaton Sales consignment to Keeneland’s 2013 November breeding stock sale.

The Graydar colt, consigned as Hip 235 by Hidden Brook, is out of the unraced Ghostzapper   mare Heavenly Ghost, a half sister to three stakes winners, including grade III winners Dilemma and Heavenly Ransom. Amy Bayle, Lori Allen, and Catherine Jennings bred the colt in Kentucky. Bayle purchased Heavenly Ghost, while carrying the Gradyar colt, for $37,000 from the Lane’s End consignment to the 2015 Keeneland January sale.

Graydar was one of the hottest first-crop sires of weanlings sold at auction last year with 16 sold for an average of $93,813 from a 2016 fee of $15,000. A son of Unbridled's Song, Graydar also stood for $15,000 when the current yearling crop was conceived in 2014.

McMahon said he and his partner have no trepidation about going to the first yearling sale of the year with such an expensive pinhook prospect from a first-crop sire.

“He’s a really, really nice colt,” McMahon said. “A number of people who have come by the farm to see our yearlings have commented he is the best of his sire’s first crop they have seen. And that’s what we thought last November.”

Cataloged for the F-T sale are 58 yearlings purchased as weanlings. As a group, they were bought for an aggregate $2,572,500, an average price of $44,353, and a median price of $33,500. There are also 22 horses cataloged in the sale that were sold earlier this year as yearlings, averaging $27,227, with a median of $25,000.

Hip 160, also a son of Graydar, is the second-highest weanling purchase cataloged at Fasig-Tipton, as a $110,000 purchase by Springdell Farm from Taylor Made Sales Agency's consignment at Keeneland's November auction. Produced from the stakes-winning Johannesburg mare Burg Berg, the colt was bred in Kentucky by Twin Creeks Racing, which also raced Graydar. Taylor Made Sales again consigns the colt to the sale.

Among yearlings in the sale that were bought earlier this year, top price of $80,000 was paid by Crupi’s New Castle for an Into Mischief   filly consigned to F-T as Hip 81 by Gainesway. A half sister to grade II-placed The Pharaoh, the Florida-bred filly had been acquired by Crupi from the Bobby Jones Equine offerings at this year’s Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s winter mixed sale.

The F-T sale yearling sale begins at 10 am. And will be preceded by the July 11 horses of racing age sale.