Stellar Wind a F-T Saratoga Success Story

For John Stuart, Stellar Wind epitomizes how the super-selectivity of yearling sales buyers can end up costing them the opportunity to purchase a future champion.

The Curlin  —Evening Star (by Malibu Moon  ) filly was purchased by Vernan Lee Stables for $40,000 from the 2013 consignment of Stuart’s Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services at the 2013 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga preferred yearling sale, the lowest price among the 108 horses sold that year. Pinhooked into that year’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic September sale by Marshall Silverman, the filly was bought by Barbara Houck for $86,000.

Not only did Stuart have the distinction of selling the lowest–priced yearling at Fasig-Tipton’s Saratoga sale in 2013, but Bluegrass Thoroughbreds also had the $1,225,000 sale topper when Lady Zuzu, a daughter of Dynaformer, was bought by Three Chimneys for Borges Torrealba.

While Lady Zuzu has performed admirably, placing in four stakes, including two graded events, her accomplishments tail those of Stellar Wind, the champion 3-year-old filly of 2015 who recently upset Beholder in the Clement L. HIrsch Stakes (gr. I).

“The year we topped the sale we also had the embarrassment of selling the lowest-priced horse in the sale,” Stuart said Aug. 7. “It tells you a lot. A lot of these people say she didn’t vet for them. She wasn’t vetted that much. They just missed her.

“Sometimes they are good horses but not necessarily fashionable. I have always done pretty well with bread-and-butter horses. But people want the War Front  s and Tapit  s and I can understand that.”

Fortunately for Stuart, his consignment this year includes the only War Front colt on offer, Hip 28, produced from the grade III-winning Giant's Causeway   mare First Passage and from the family of grade I winner Harmony Lodge.

The consignor said the colt has all the traits one would want in a racing prospect.

“He looks like a War Front and is out of a mare who could run," Stuart said. "He is by a young, proven stallion, is out of a nice race mare, and is one of the first foals out of the mare. That is going to give you better odds than anything else. You can vet them and do all your research, but those three factors are the (key) factors for a future racehorse.

“I have the only War Front colt here, which is why this horse is here. He’s a little early and he would have been a better horse in a month. If you want a War Front colt, you have to come to my consignment.”