Stories from the Sale: The Long Road to Book 1

If you've been in the Thoroughbred business more than a few minutes, you know the ride.

The highs can be awfully high, but they're hard to come by. The lows can be heart-wrenching, not to mention expensive. There's also plenty of industry noise that can get you down: the politics, the scandals, the conspiracies and the Jockey Club of it all.

As one friend who has spent his entire professional life in this business quipped over lunch the other day, all of us have a screw loose. Otherwise, we'd find something else to do.

Book 1 at Keeneland September generates its own predictable headlines. Record grosses. Seven-figure horses. Huge sire averages. The same deep roster of buyers showing up at the top of the sheet sale after sale.

Beyond those headlines are a lot of good horse people quietly grinding away. Breeders, owners and trainers who spend years making decisions, taking risks and doing everything in their power to produce a good outcome.

The frustrating part is how much remains outside anyone's control. A mare can lose a pregnancy. An otherwise impressive foal can arrive with a physical imperfection that crushes its commercial value. A promising horse can get hurt. A mating you believed in can produce something entirely different from what you envisioned.

You can make a lot of good decisions in this business and still wind up with a bad result. Which is part of what makes the good ones so satisfying.

Two Book 1 results this week were a good reminder of how much blood, sweat and tears can sit behind a few minutes in the sales ring.

Hip 206: A three-way shake for a $25,000 maiden

When the Keeneland media team caught up with Sam Wilensky after Hip 206 sold for $850,000, he looked like a guy still trying to process what had just happened.

"Eight-fifty is a number that's incredible and a bit life-changing, for sure."

The story started years earlier with Drop a Hint, the first horse Sam ever claimed.

The daughter of Into Mischief out of Allude was still a maiden when Wilensky put in the claim for $25,000. Three people wanted her that day. Sam won the shake.

She went on to make 20 starts over four seasons, win three races and earn $191,998. Drop a Hint finished third in the Sands Point [G2], placed in the Suwannee River and Miss Gracie, and eventually earned her own black type by winning the Minaret Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs at five.

There was a family story running alongside the racing story. Sam's father, Herman Wilensky, trained her. Herman had spent more than 20 years training in South Florida, although business had gotten lean enough for a period that he worked as a jockey agent.

Drop a Hint and stablemate My Destiny helped turn things around. Herman saddled both mares in the 2022 Minaret. My Destiny looked to have the race won in deep stretch before Drop a Hint came after her in the final yards and got up by a neck. Father and son finished one-two in a stakes race.

It was Drop a Hint's final start.

By then, the first horse Sam had ever claimed had taken him into graded company, made him a stakes-winning owner and, by his own telling, gotten him hooked on the game.

Four years later, her Cody's Wish colt entered the Book 1 ring as Hip 206 and brought $850,000.

The buyer was Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners in partnership with Bridlewood Farm and LaPenta, a serious racing group and a meaningful endorsement of the colt. Eclipse has operated at the top end of the game for years, and Bridlewood and the LaPenta name hardly need an introduction to this audience.

Sam had set the reserve somewhere well below the final number. He described watching the bidding keep moving at six-figure increments as "shocking and, honestly, a dream come true."

A story that started with winning a three-way shake on a $25,000 maiden had arrived in Book 1 with an $850,000 yearling.

Our racing read on Hip 206

We had completed a Thoroughbred Intelligence racing profile on Hip 206 as part of our pre-sale work.

Our read was a progressive dirt colt with a speed-to-middle-distance identity, moderate juvenile expectations and considerably more appeal as a developing three-year-old and older horse.

Cody's Wish supplies the dominant racing identity. His own career was built around development, progressing from an unraced juvenile into an 11-time winner, five-time Grade 1 winner and Horse of the Year. Drop a Hint adds a different signal: 20 starts over four seasons, stakes ability, Grade 2 form and a female family filled with horses that repeatedly made it to the races and stayed there.

We centered his mature profile around seven furlongs to 1 1/16 miles, with a mile especially attractive. Dirt gets the first opportunity. The pedigree supports a useful later juvenile campaign, while the stronger expectation begins at three with one-mile races and intermediate two-turn dirt races.

On pedigree, we placed him in the graded-stakes projection category. The main variable is transmission. Cody's Wish is a first-crop sire, and Drop a Hint is still early in her producing career. The class, toughness and dirt orientation around the colt give him a strong foundation while those questions begin to answer themselves on the racetrack.

Read our full lot memo on Hip 206, published in full, exactly as a client receives it.

Hip 374: The mare that started it all

Hip 374 took a very different road to the same pavilion.

The story begins with Laffina.

BlackRidge Stables was still relatively new to breeding when the Arch mare went through Keeneland November in 2016 and failed to meet her reserve at $290,000. BlackRidge bought her privately afterward, making Laffina the first broodmare they ever purchased.

She was carrying her first foal at the time.

That foal was Bast.

BlackRidge sold Bast for $200,000 as a Keeneland November weanling. She later brought $500,000 as a Saratoga yearling and developed into one of the best juvenile fillies of her crop, winning the Del Mar Debutante [G1], Chandelier [G1] and Starlet [G1] at two before returning at three to win the Santa Ynez [G2].

She became BlackRidge's first Grade 1 winner as breeder.

By the fall of 2019, Laffina's value had changed considerably. BlackRidge sent her through Fasig-Tipton November in foal to Ghostzapper, where Eaton Bloodstock bought her for $1.5 million.

Immediately before Laffina entered the ring, her Pioneerof the Nile weanling filly sold for $430,000 to Giant Elf Bloodstock.

That filly became Lafertiti.

A year later, Lafertiti went through Keeneland September, where BlackRidge bought her for $425,000. The daughter of the mare that started the operation had come home.

Lafertiti never raced. She went into the broodmare band, and her first foal was a colt from the final crop of Uncle Mo.

That colt became Hip 374.

Keeneland supplemented him into Book 1. Taylor Made brought him through the ring, and Spendthrift Farm bought him for $1.05 million.

Spendthrift hardly needs an introduction here either. A seven-figure purchase by one of the most consequential breeding and racing operations in the business says plenty about how the colt was received.

BlackRidge summed up the moment afterward:

"Our first mare. Our first G1 winner as breeder. Our first $1M mare through the ring. And now, two generations later, our first $1M yearling."

All of it traces back to Laffina.

That's a hell of a mare.

Our racing read on Hip 374

We also profiled Hip 374 before the sale, and the racing case looks quite different from Hip 206.

We see him as a high-class dirt prospect with genuine juvenile ability, real two-turn potential and an attractive developmental path from two into three.

Lafertiti creates the obvious uncertainty. She was unraced, and Hip 374 is her first foal. One generation behind her, though, sits an unusually relevant piece of evidence: Laffina produced Bast by Uncle Mo.

Hip 374 is also by Uncle Mo.

Bast gives us a three-time Grade 1-winning juvenile by the same sire from this immediate female family. For an unraced young mare without a produce record, that is highly relevant observed evidence.

Pioneerof the Nile sits immediately under Lafertiti and contributes another strong dirt-route influence. The broader family adds Fault, Mananan McLir, South Bend and a long list of horses that combined class with productive racing careers.

We projected his mature center at one mile to 1 1/8 miles, with meaningful juvenile racing well within the expected range. Seven furlongs to a mile makes sense at two, with the pedigree giving him every chance to carry that ability around two turns as he develops.

On pedigree, we placed him in the graded-stakes projection category with a legitimate Grade 1 ceiling on bloodlines. Lafertiti still has plenty to prove as a producer, but the family around her has already demonstrated that Uncle Mo can work here at the highest level.

Read our full lot memo on Hip 374, published in full, exactly as a client receives it.

The part the board leaves out

Sam Wilensky got to this point through racing. He claimed a maiden, watched her develop into a stakes winner and Grade 2-placed mare, sent her to the breeding shed and eventually watched her Book 1 yearling sell to one of the strongest racing partnerships in the business for $850,000.

BlackRidge came at it through breeding. They bought their first mare privately after an RNA, bred their first Grade 1 winner from her, sold the mare for $1.5 million, brought one of her daughters back into the program and eventually sold that daughter's first foal to Spendthrift for $1.05 million.

Both stories took years. Both required money, patience, judgment, good decisions and a fair amount of luck. And both had plenty of opportunities to go sideways along the way, because that's horses.