High-Profile Owners Team Up to Buy Expensive Colt
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Photo: Joe DiOrio
Hip 584, a colt by Medaglia d'Oro, is the current sale topper at $850,000
A group of four high-profile owners banded together April 26 to purchase a well-bred son of Medaglia d'Oro for $850,000 to become the new sale-topper at the Ocala Breeders' Sales spring 2-year-olds in training sale.
Consigned by agent Paul Sharp as Hip 584, the bay April 11, 2015, foal will be campaigned by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Twin Creeks Racing, Bridlewood Farm, and Robert LaPenta. The colt worked an eighth-mile in :10 1/5 during the pre-sale under tack show.
Three of the partners—Bridlewood, Eclipse, and LaPenta—have previously partnered up to purchase high-priced horses, including Tapwrit, a contender for the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) they bought for $1.2 million as a Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling. Twin Creeks and Eclipse partnered on Destin, a grade 2 winner who finished sixth in last year's Derby and went on to finish second in the Belmont Stakes presented by NYRA Bets (G1).
The partners said joining forces made sense for a well-bred, expensive colt with classic potential.
"There is a lot of synergy amongst the group," said Eclipse's Aaron Wellman. "We envision this horse to hopefully develop into a classic-type individual, and the way this market is right now, you see all the big-time players having to team up in order to get horses bought and to try to share in some of the risk."
"We've got good partnerships," said Twin Creeks' Randy Gullatt. "We're very familiar with each other and it's working."
Gullatt labeled the colt "much a Derby-type horse" in his action.
The colt bred in Kentucky by Mandy Pope's Whisper Hill Farm is out of the A.P. Indy mare Indian Vale, a winner in seven of 14 starts, including the Falls City and Fleur de Lis handicaps, both grade 2, and two grade 3 stakes. The colt's second dam is the grade 1-winning Forty Niner mare Marley Vale.
Consigned by Timber Town to last year's Keeneland September yearling sale, the colt was purchased for $300,000 by Meg Levy's Bluewater Sales.
Sharp said he and the colt's owners "had high hopes, and at the end of the day he did well for us and we're happy. We try to (stay) grounded and it worked."