Blue Chip Prospects at F-T Santa Anita

[Wandering Eyes]

Blue Chip Thoroughbreds will offer 12 horses at next week’s inaugural Fasig-Tipton Santa Anita 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale–an impressive accomplishment for an operation less than a year old and whose very existence was almost accidental. The Hemet-based operation is a partnership between California owner Tom Mansor and Steve McPherson.

“It was kind of a weird experience,” Mansor admitted of Blue Chip’s origins. “I was in the hospital. I had just had heart surgery. A friend of mine called and said, ‘We are having an auction. Are you still in the Thoroughbred business?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Why?’ and she said, ‘We have about 150 horses and nobody’s been out to see them. You really should look, you might be able to get them reasonably.'”

Mansor called McPherson and asked him to go out to the farm in Hemet and check out the available horses.

“Mr. Mansor called me in October and asked me to go look at these horses,” McPherson said. “I went out to the farm and it was a mess. But they had a bunch of really nice yearlings out there.”

McPherson originally purchased 17 horses on behalf of Mansor at the auction, but that proved to be just the beginning of their involvement with the farm, which had been leased by a dissolving partnership.

“Over the course of the next month or two, we bought another 20 or so from him,” Mansor said. “Mr. [Paul] Brazeau reached out to us, he owned the farm and he was leasing it to the other gentlemen, and he thanked us for coming in and rescuing the horses. He invited us out to lunch and we met him and his lovely wife. Unfortunately Paul passed away about two weeks ago, but what a great man. After a couple of lunches and BS’ing about the business, he made us an offer we couldn’t refuse on the ranch.”

The three men agreed on a deal for a three-year lease with the option to buy the 88-acre farm.

“Within 30 days I went from owning a couple of claiming horses to half-owning with Steve 60 horses and a lease-option on 88 acres of horse ranch in Hemet,” the 78-year-old Mansor said with a laugh. “I love this game. I grew up in it. It’s late in life to be taking this on and everybody thinks I’m crazy, but it’s fun.”

Mansor is no stranger to racing.

“My dad was a jockey and I grew up on the racetrack,” he said. “Three of my uncles were trainers. I’ve just been on the track my whole life. I had to take some time out to raise some kids and earn a living, but I retired about 10 years ago and got back into the game with some claimers.”

In one of his most successful claims, Mansor and trainer Richard Baltas haltered a 3-year-old by Beau Genius for $20,000 out of his debut at Del Mar in 2013. The bay was Big Macher, who would go on to win the 2014 GI Bing Crosby S.

“He took me around the world,” Mansor said of Big Macher. “And then my good buddy Gary Sherlock bought me a nice horse in Kentucky from the first crop of Uncle Mo, and I named him Uncle Lino after my uncle and he took me to the [2016 GI] Preakness. So I’ve been lucky.”

While Mansor’s experience is squarely in the racing side of the industry, once he and McPherson became partners, pinhooking became part of the plan.

“I never got involved in pinhooking before,” Mansor said. “But Steve is a master at that. I went to a couple of sales with him and we bought a few more horses.”

McPherson explained, “Tom races. I don’t have anything to do with racing. I’m a pinhooker and so I handle the sale horses and picking out the horses and all of the farm management. I’m in charge of the pinhooking and the farm–I handle all of that. I don’t handle anything relating to racing.”

Blue Chip’s dozen 2-year-olds selling at Fasig-Tipton are divided between Adrian Gonzalez’s Checkmate Thoroughbreds and Jenn and Quincy Adams’s Q Bar J Thoroughbreds consignments.

“I think they are an outstanding group,” McPherson said of Blue Chip’s Fasig-Tipton contingent. “We have a couple of extraordinary horses that we bought off Q Bar J. They worked with us and they bought those horses back and we were able to purchase those horses from them. They are really outstanding horses.”

The dozen include a colt American Pharoah (hip 88) who was purchased by Q Bar J for $120,000 at last year’s Keeneland September Yearling sale and RNA’d for that same price after working a furlong in :10 flat at this year’s OBS March sale.

“We think the world of the American Pharoah colt,” McPherson said of the juvenile who is part of the Checkmate Thoroughbreds consignment. “His development has been amazing.”

On behalf of Blue Chip, Q Bar J will sell a colt by Liam’s Map (hip 76). Out of Indian Snow (A.P. Indy), the gray is a half-brother to multiple graded stakes winner Morning Line (Tiznow).

“We are excited about what he could do at the sale,” McPherson said of the colt, who was purchased by Q Bar J Thoroughbreds for $160,000 at last year’s Keeneland September sale. “It looks like he is a real athlete and a real runner.”

McPherson is also excited about a colt from the first crop of GI Travers S. dead-heat winner Golden Ticket (Speightstown) (hip 140).

“I think the most interesting horse we have in the sale is the Golden Ticket colt,” McPherson said. “I’ll be surprised if there is a horse that is faster than him in the sale. He is a freak. And he is a New York-bred by a first-crop sire. There is a lot to like about him, but this horse is exceptionally fast. So we’ll see what happens.”

McPherson said the key to success for the new California sale going forward will be the participation of Florida consignors.

“We felt that we really needed to do all that we could, with the climate in California racing, with all that has been going on, to support this sale,” McPherson said. “So we went out of our way to do what we could to bring really top-quality horses. And as part of that, we felt that it was important that some of the Florida consignors come out. So when we were buying horses, we talked to a couple of them and asked if they would be interested in coming out and handling the pinhooks for us. And [Q Bar J Thoroughbreds] said they would. So that’s how we ended up with that deal. I think it’s just a critical time for what is going on in California.”

Half of Blue Chip’s Santa Anita offerings have already gone through a sales ring this year. Starting with a filly by Creative Cause (hip 143) who sold for $18,000 at the CTBA’s January sale, and including a Hard Spun filly (hip 7) who RNA’d at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky February sale.

A colt by Flatter (hip 37) sold for $175,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream sale in March and an English Channel colt (hip 52) RNA’d for $40,000 at that same auction. Most recently, a filly by Palace (hip 110) sold for $50,000 at the OBS April sale.

“We tried it as a business model,” McPherson said of purchasing juveniles at earlier sales to sell at Santa Anita. “We took the approach that we would beat the bushes, not just buy anything, trying to find something that was behind or buy from places that we knew weren’t too hard on babies. And we’ve had good luck with that so far–at least we think we’ve had good luck. We will see.

He continued, “I think it’s an interesting model in this day and age where everybody buys yearlings and gets them ready and then sells them. With the Santa Anita sale being so late and being the only 2-year-old sale in California, it does give us that opportunity to go to OBS and go to Miami and try to find stuff that we think will work here.”

Fasig-Tipton’s first Santa Anita sale comes at an uncertain time for California racing, but McPherson is optimistic the auction will be a success.

“I think the timing of the sale, with all that is going on, kind of couldn’t be better,” McPherson said. “Because these babies are out working every day on the track and they are holding up and they are doing well.”

McPherson also had plenty of praise for the sales company.

“You have to have so much respect for the way Fasig-Tipton does business, because they are just amazing,” he said. “For them to take over and promote the thing the way they’ve promoted it and to do it the way they’ve done it is so impressive. You’ve got to have the utmost enthusiasm and respect for the way Fasig-Tipton has handled themselves. I think they are doing a heck of a job.”

The under-tack preview of the Fasig-Tipton Santa Anita sale will be held Monday beginning at 10 a.m. The sale will be held Wednesday, with bidding scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.

 

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