$460,000 Pioneerof the Nile Colt Rewards Partners

When J.R. and Katie Boyd were shopping for pinhook prospects at last year's Keeneland September Yearling Sale, they landed on a Pioneerof the Nile  colt at the Denali Stud consignment being sold without reserve.

"The horse, he was very immature, a little pot-bellied," said Boyd, who operates Brick City Thoroughbreds with his wife. "We watched him all day hoping we could get him. We thought we were going to have to pay $75,000 for him."

Before he went into the sale ring, the colt caught the eye of the Boyds' friends Stuart and Meg Turlington, with whom they own horses in partnership, and a representative of Global Thoroughbreds, and they all said they would like to share in the ownership.

At the fall of the hammer, the colt was bought for $15,000.

"We said, 'Well, we don't need anyone!'" Boyd said in reference to the price. "But I kept them in. We partner on a lot of horses."

During the April 26 final session of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Spring Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training, the partners were well rewarded when the colt consigned by Brick City as Hip 919 was purchased by Team Casse, agent, for $460,000.

"He's blossomed into a big colt, one of the prettiest horses on the grounds," Boyd said. "He turned out really pretty, with a big, long, sexy walk on him."

Bred in Kentucky by the Virginia H. Tarra Trust and Pioneerof the Nile Syndicate, the colt is out of the multiple stakes-winning Giant's Causeway mare Apple Martini, a daughter of grade 3 winner Crafty Oak and a full sister to multiple grade 1 winner Giant Oak and stakes winner Oak Brook.

During the April 21 under tack show, the colt breezed a quarter-mile in :21 3/5.

"The horse galloped out very well; a very athletic horse," said agent Justin Casse, adding the colt will be trained by his brother Mark but declining to identify the buyer.

Of the bargain price at which the colt was bought as a yearling, Casse noted, "He was a shrewd buy by the vendor. I looked back on my notes on him as a yearling, and I had decent notes. That made me feel a bit more comfortable that I had some positive notes on him considering how cheap he was as a yearling.

"He's improved," Casse said. "There was one conformational default that I thought he had slightly as a yearling. That was unnoticeable now. But on my notes on him as a yearling, I had him as a very athletic horse with a good neck and shoulder. He had that back at the (OBS) barn, and there were some similarities to Classic Empire  (champion 2-year-old trained by Mark Casse) in the way that he looked. He had more of a refined look to him. We're getting out here to the last days and we're running out of good colts, but we had him highly rated, so he was by no means an afterthought."