Off two strong years at the yearling sales, buyers have to stretch on the most appealing weanlings during the early going at the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale.
Such was the case for Randy Hartley with AAA Thoroughbreds that went to $510,000 to acquire a colt (Hip 559) by Uncle Mo , which was the second-highest-priced weanling sold during Day 2 of the nine-day sale.
“To buy the good babies now, you have to step up and pay. You used to be able to get the best ones for $250,000-$300,000 but it is like everything else—$100 is the new $20,” said Hartley, noting he has nearly 30 orders to fill and had nine purchased late into Thursday afternoon.
“It’s hard because I’ve got to stretch a little bit in order to get the orders filled. When the yearling market is as good as it was this past season, then people want to keep the babies, so there are fewer of those coming here,” he said. “Then everyone is picking up on the same ones.”
Randy Hartley at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale
Hartley said he was more than happy to stretch on the Uncle Mo colt.
“We are super big Uncle Mo fans, and he wasn’t too big and heavy. Sometimes people worry about them getting too big and being too hard on themselves,” he said. “He was more light-made, and he had the pedigree, out of a Curlin mare, and the family is what we were shooting for.”
Celebrity chef and owner/breeder Bobby Flay bred the Uncle Mo colt in Kentucky out of the Curlin daughter American Caviar. The mare is out of the grade 1-placed, grade 3 winner America (A.P. Indy), making her a full sister to grade 1-placed, multiple grade 1 winner First Captain .
“He was a really nice colt,” said Lynn Hancock with Stone Farm, which consigned and raised the colt. “We’re finding that if you bring a nice one up here, especially one of these babies by a good stallion like Uncle Mo, and the first foal out of a really deep and active family, we’re excited about that.”
AAA Thoroughbred bought three other weanlings on Day 2. They include:
- Hip 551, a $450,000 Yaupon colt out of the Bernardini mare Zetta Z consigned by Vinery Sales. The colt is out of the family of grade 1 winner and multiple graded stakes producer Unbridled Elaine.
- Hip 398, a $285,000 colt by Speightstown out of the War Front winner Peaceful Feeling consigned by Vinery, and
- Hip 544, a $210,000 filly by Munnings out of the grade 3-placed Declaration of War winner With Dignity consigned by Bluewater Sales. With Dignity is half sister to grade 1-placed, grade 3 winners McCraken and Four Graces .
AAA Thoroughbreds is a weanling-to-yearling pinhook venture owned by Hartley and his longtime pinhooking partner Dean DeRenzo. They use AAA Thoroughbreds as a way to separate this pinhooking venture from their yearling-to-juvenile pinhooking business, Hartley/DeRenzo Thoroughbreds.
“We like to keep things a little separate. We’ve had AAA in the past because we were buying babies for $50,000 and trying to sell them for $100,000. We would be selling to a lot of our peers and when they see we own it, even though it might be one of our best babies, then in the back of their minds they think we are culling horses, so we started buying under this name,” said Hartley.
AAA Thoroughbreds is named after DeRenzo’s three granddaughters whose names all begin with A.
“Then (the venture) was just lucky for us, so we’ve kept using it. At this level, though, I don’t think people care who bought it, whether it is us or Peter O’Callaghan. Still, this is only weanling-to-yearling pinhooks. We really try to sell everything because we don’t want people to think we are keeping the better stuff. We had a couple this year we had to keep because they didn’t get big enough and now we’ll have to show people they can run.”
