Fasig-Tipton November Sale Sunday

[Wandering Eyes]

LEXINGTON, KY – The Fasig-Tipton November Sale, punctuated by a glittering array of graded stakes winners and graded stakes producers, will be held Sunday at Newtown Paddocks in Lexington with bidding slated to begin at 3 p.m.

“We are very, very happy with the catalogue that we’ve put together,” said Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning, Jr. “It’s as deep a catalogue, in terms of quality, that I can ever remember. It’s a really good collection of horses.”

The breeding stock season opens on the heels of a bevy of record-setting yearling sales and continued strong demand at the top of the market.

“You’ve got to be optimistic and encouraged by the strength of the yearling market, particularly at the upper levels,” Browning said. “Fortunately for us, that’s what our November sale is. It’s an upper-market sale.”

The one-session auction will begin with an offering of 116 weanlings.

“We’ve got the best group of weanlings we’ve ever had,” Browning said. “The numbers are up in the weanlings a little bit and the quality is up and the sire power and pedigrees are up.”

Last year’s catalogue opened with 81 weanlings and featured a pair of $1-million foals from the first crop of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Seven weanlings by the Coolmore stallion will be on offer Sunday afternoon.

First-crop sires represented by weanlings in this year’s catalogue include a pair of GI Kentucky Derby winners in California Chrome and Nyquist, as well as GI Preakness S. winner Exaggerator. Other sires with first weanlings are: Air Force Blue, Brody’s Cause, Cinco Charlie, Frosted, Hit It a Bomb, Mshawish, Runhappy, Speightster, Tourist and Upstart.

The auction features mares in foal with the first crop of champions Arrogate and Gun Runner, as well as Grade I winners Cupid and Mastery.

“The collection of in-foal mares is really good in terms of proven producers,” Browning said. “I think we have a better combination, a better mix, than we’ve had in a long time, in terms of proven producers in foal to top horses, top fillies and mares coming off the racetrack and also young mares in foal carrying their first, second or third foals. And then, with the weanlings, we have the full menu of the real quality offerings that people are hopefully desirous of.”

A total of 19 offerings brought seven figures at last year’s November sale, with Mandy Pope’s Whisper Hill Farm paying top price of $9.5 million to acquire champion Songbird (Medaglia d’Oro). In all, 115 head sold for $74,200,000 and an average of $645,217.

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