{"id":5610,"date":"2010-09-20T14:12:37","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T19:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=5610"},"modified":"2010-09-21T10:32:59","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T15:32:59","slug":"keeneland-yearling-sale-concludes-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=5610","title":{"rendered":"Keeneland Yearling Sale concludes this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Distorted Humor colt, second-highest seller at $2.05 million<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Keeneland sale officials were encouraged by strong average prices and volume of completed sales at the conclusion of the first week of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. The sale continues through Sunday, September 26.
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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The clearance rate so far is 70 percent, which is very good,” said Geoffrey Russell, Keeneland’s director of sales. “Another goal was to bring in a wide mix of buyers, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve succeeding in doing that, too.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0
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At end of “day seven” of the 14-day auction, 1,225 horses had been sold for $158,624,000, with an average of $129,489 and a median of $80,000.<\/p>\n

The first day of the sale, Sunday, September 12, saw an A.P. Indy colt<\/a>, from the family of champion Zenyatta, bring $4.2 million. The next day, a colt by Distorted Humor sold for $2.05 million.<\/p>\n

The market for heavy black type remained strong during Tuesday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s session, where George Bolton paid $1 million for a Smart Strike colt. Bolton, a San Francisco-based businessman who previously owned an interest in two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, also sired by Smart Strike, flew to Lexington to purchase the colt in person on the advice of bloodstock agent John Moynihan.<\/p>\n

“This is a beautifully bred horse,” said Bolton.\u00e2\u20ac\u0153These things are always a long road when you buy a yearling, but he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nice; he obviously looks like he can go far; and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had a lot of luck with the sire.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
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Bolton added that the $1 million ticket was his most expensive Thoroughbred auction purchase. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is the way it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been here,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The buyers are here and they want the best horses. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not easy to get the good ones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
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The colt was consigned by Greenfield Farm; Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert was the under-bidder.
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On Wednesday, fillies commanded half of the top 10 prices, led by a daughter of Malibu Moon who sold for $700,000, and on Thursday, a Smart Strike filly and colt each brought the top price of $550,000.\u00c2\u00a0 Zayat Stables purchased the colt and George Bolton bought the filly.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She was John\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (Moynihan) favorite filly in the sale, so he wanted me to stretch a little bit and get this one,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bolton said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are a lot of good things happening in horse racing right now, so we could stretch with a little more confidence versus this time last year.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Silverton Hill Farm paid the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s top price of $560,000 for a colt sired by Unbridled\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Song, and Bob Baffert signed the ticket for the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second, third and fourth highest priced yearlings – a Ghostzapper colt for $500,000; a Malibu Moon colt for $470,000; and a Lemon Drop Kid colt for $420,000.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keeneland sale officials were encouraged by strong average prices and volume of completed sales at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5610"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5631,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5610\/revisions\/5631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}