Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Day 2 at the OBS Sale - Yes Its True!!!!
After a VERY long St. Pat's Day (late night flight, walking the barms all day, getting sun posoning, etc.) I was wiped out but felt the trip was already a success by getting that nice Macho Uno colt . All along, my goal was to get one, maybe two nice young horses on this trip and felt we accomplished that with the purchase of "Sir Handsome" (the name of the Macho Uno colt, I am not a total fan of the name and might look into changing it). Day two was at the OBS Sales center, which is more akin to the auction center I have seen at Keenland and Calder.
Anyway, this sale is very different from the Adena Springs sale the day before. First off, there are over 440 horses in this 2-day sale, rather than 130+ at the one-day Adena Springs sale. Secondly, these horses have all done timed workouts, mostly at 1/8 of a mile in order to impress the prospective buyers (which I don't really factor in - more on this later). Our process for this sale was similar to the day before, where we targeted animals from the catalog based on their pedigree (we tried to focus on horses that we felt would be in our price range - i.e. not going and looking at every A.P. Indy and Fusaichi Pegasus colt). We'd then look at the horses, with Bobby Dibona giving them a good inspection. Bobby would then call out his remarks to me ("his right foot gets out when he walks", "she's got an ankle", "his legs are clean", etc.) and I would record his comments in a notebook. There were 12 barns with several dozen consignors, so it was not as easy to get around and see the horses as it was at the Adena sale. We also were a bit rushed for time because we arrived at 10 and the actual auction started at 11. We had hip #4, a Put It Back colt, and #5, a Hennessy colt, as two of our targets so we wanted to be back for the start of the auction. We bid on both of these colts but they floated up out of our target price range (which we had set at $40-45K). We then went back out and looked at several other animals and we kind of liked Hip #54, a nice colt out of a young stallion named Action This Day. Bobby hadn't really heard of him but I liked this horse on the race track when he won the BC Juvenile back at Santa Anita a couple of years back. So, I wanted to see what his babies looked like. The colt was nice and Bobby was very impressed. With each horse of interest, we went into the film library and watched the horse breeze. We really didn't care about the time of the workout. (Who's to say that a horse that runs an 1/8 mile in 10 seconds flat as a 2 year old will ever be anything on the real racing curcuit?) However, we were looking for a good stride and a horse that moved fluidly. We were able to eliminate some horses this way. After getting outbid on the Action This Day colt (he went for $50K, which is not a bad price but beyond what we wanted to pay for an unproven sire), we went back out to the barns. This time, we targeted Nick De Meric's barn as I had read good things about his operation. On the way out, they were taking two of the horses to the walking ring. Hip #86 was a Lion Heart that Bobby wanted to see and #89 was a Yes Its True we both had on our lists. Bobby liked them both and said they were both excellent animals. He said he liked the Yes Its True better and I agreed. We then went and checked out 3 others in the DeMeric barn but none caught our eye too much. So, we went back in and waited to see what Hips 86 and 89 would go for. 86 went up over $40K pretty quickly and we waited. He finally went for $50K and we decided to pass, instead opting to try for the 89 Yes Its True. When Hip #89 came into the ring, he looked perfect. The bidding started pretty fast but slowed down in the 30s. We waited and waited and it got to $50K. We decided to jump in and Darren told the auction guy $51K". The guy said it took $2K increments, so our bid was 52. The other buyer bid 55 and it was back to us. They did the going once-going twice and Bobby and I agreed we should go the extra bit and bid 57. That was going to be the last bid for us and lo and behold, we got him.
He's a beautiful Dark Bay colt. (see pictures) We also got to speak to Nick DeMeric and his wife after the sale who gave us the inside scoop on the horse. He had been bought for $140K as a weanling and then didn't meet his reserve at the yearling sale. His owner (not Demeric) then hit some financial troubles and put him in this sale with no reserve. The De Merics thought they would get $150K for the colt, so we feel we got a great bargain at $57K. Time will tell on that one. In any case, it was exciting to go through the sale and come away with two very solid, sound animals. As Nick DeMeric said about the Yes Its True colt, "there's nothing but blue sky in front of you with that horse." Let's hope Nick's a good prognosticator.
Whew.... what a wild two days at the Adena Springs and OBS Sales in Ocala
I just got back late last night from two awesome, action-packed days in Ocala where we purchased two beautiful young colts (and Darren bought a $3500 Golden Missile filly that might be a nice horse).
Bobby D, Darren and I 
spent all day Monday at Adena Springs farm, Frank Stronach's breeding operation in Ocala. What a beautiful place. Besides the awesome horse pastures, barns, etc., there is a sprawling golf course in the front of the property. Incredible. Anyway, we arrived around 11 that morning and started looking at horses that we had targeted. Also, Mike Recio of Adena had put together a short list of horses to check out as he had spent all day Sunday looking at each and every horse in the sale - about 135 in all. After several trips to the barns and reviewing the medical records of each of the horses, we narrowed it down to about 10 HIPS that we would bid on. We had two horses rated as 4.5's (on a scale of 5), a Smart Strike colt and a Macho Uno colt. The Smart Strike had some medical issues though (a B- scope and a slight OCD base on his knee), so we decided to pass on him. That left us with one colt (Macho Uno colt, hip #13) rated at a 4.5 and several fillies in the 3.75 to 4.0 range. When the Macho Uno came into the ring, we waited to see what he would go for and made our first bid at $30K. It continued on for a bit and we ended up getting him at $47K. We were pretty happy to get our top-rated colt for a reasonable price.
spent all day Monday at Adena Springs farm, Frank Stronach's breeding operation in Ocala. What a beautiful place. Besides the awesome horse pastures, barns, etc., there is a sprawling golf course in the front of the property. Incredible. Anyway, we arrived around 11 that morning and started looking at horses that we had targeted. Also, Mike Recio of Adena had put together a short list of horses to check out as he had spent all day Sunday looking at each and every horse in the sale - about 135 in all. After several trips to the barns and reviewing the medical records of each of the horses, we narrowed it down to about 10 HIPS that we would bid on. We had two horses rated as 4.5's (on a scale of 5), a Smart Strike colt and a Macho Uno colt. The Smart Strike had some medical issues though (a B- scope and a slight OCD base on his knee), so we decided to pass on him. That left us with one colt (Macho Uno colt, hip #13) rated at a 4.5 and several fillies in the 3.75 to 4.0 range. When the Macho Uno came into the ring, we waited to see what he would go for and made our first bid at $30K. It continued on for a bit and we ended up getting him at $47K. We were pretty happy to get our top-rated colt for a reasonable price. Monday, March 10, 2008
Final Derby Futures Pool 2 odds
I didn't participate in either the Pool 1 or Pool 2 this year, but wanted to jump into this one because I thought there might be some value. I forgot to log on, so I will have to pass. Strange that Visionnaire is still a 19-1 longshot after his win in the Gotham against a quality field.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
New Atlantic City casino revenue sharing deal for NJ tracks
The state of NJ just finalized a 3 year deal that will funnel $90M from the Atlantic City casinos to the 3 NJ racetracks. This will be good for the Monmouth purses, which already were quite strong (average of $36K per race in 2007). The previous agreement had provided $86M over a four year period, so this is a nice addition to the purse monies available in New Jersey. Now, if Florida could ever do something about those anemic purses at Gulfstream....
