TIMONIUM, MD – The junior sales season takes another stop this year with the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Inaugural Training Sale for 2-Years in June being held this afternoon. Wednesday at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. Bidding is scheduled to start at 3 p.m
With a svelte catalog of 99 heads, the auction goes on Tuesday morning. After a night of heavy rain and thunderstorms, the first of five innings started at 8 a.m. in a light drizzle, but the skies were clear throughout the show, ending in sunny and muggy conditions just before noon.
Clovis Crane, who will consign 16 horses for a one-session auction, got off to a quick start when the first horse crossed the track, a dirty stallion. blur (hip 79), worked for her for a long time :10 flat.
The Crane Thoroughbred Service ended up sending three out of five:10 flat-bullet workers for the day, with one filthy by Social Integration (hip 69, videotapes) works in the first series and a dirty movie by Flatter (hip 86, videotapes) worked on the third episode of the day.
Crane also sent out workers to run the fastest quarter-mile of the day. Kantharos (hip 47) who covered the distance in :20 4/5.
“I’ve told a lot of people I have an unbelievable team and obviously, today, with the way they went, it showed,” Crane said. “We already have 21 graded pile horses from our farm and I doubt having a pair in this group will add to that number.”
When asked to pick some highlights from his day, Crane said, “I put Social Inclusion [out of Royal Aspen {Congrats}] in the first episode because I thought she was going to be a star and she showed up today. Small Flatters [out of stakes-winner Valued Strike {Smart Strike}] is crazy fast. And I have a malice palace kid [hip 73, :10 1/5] who seems to me like she can actually run.
bullet worker by Kantharosis one of seven young adults who commute to work Tuesday’s quarter-mile in Timonium, having come out of La Titina (Distorted Humor), daughter of multiple I Ask the Moon (Malibu Moon) winner.
Buying Keeneland for $125,000 in September, she’s making her second ride through the sale this spring after RNA’ing for $110,000 after one :10 1/5 work at OBS’s April sale. In addition to her work at OBS, this chubby girl has a number of publications at Penn National, most recently four times on: 47.20 (January 21) June 9.
“I told everyone how amazing I am Kantharos It was filthy,” Crane said. “She won: 47/5 in hand at the racetrack on June 9. And then she overcame it nicely. We’ve been training her gently for the past two weeks and then we’ve prepared her for ease here. We prepped her with ease and she went in: 21 4/5 and: 35 1/5, so we knew she was going to go on.”
Of the little girl’s trip south to Ocala, Crane said, “She didn’t like that track. I galloped everything on my own for the first few days when we went anywhere, and I could feel it on the first day. I said, ‘Oh, boy, she doesn’t like this.’ She still won :10 1/5 and :21 1/5 and she played well, but didn’t make anyone’s shortlist. I actually showed her eight times down there. She did nothing wrong. She had a clean X-ray, she was back to normal. So I just went back to training her at home and, on the ground, she moved great. She doesn’t move well on the aggregate. She came to what I am thinking of her today.
Also sharing the third longest bullet is a dirty thing because attractive (hip 35, videotapes) deposited by James Layden and an asshole Realistic jokes (hip 56, videotapes) deposited by Wes Carter on behalf of Crossed Sabres Farm.
Crane joins the inaugural June sale in Midlantic with the largest shipment in its catalog.
“[Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Sales Director] Page [Bennett] has always been great to me and she asked me if I could save some nice horses here,” Crane said of her decision to target the auction. “So Socialization, we intentionally saved her here and there are a few other horses that we have saved here. The Kantharos it’s dirty, I don’t want to go back to OBS June because she doesn’t like the look and I know it. I’m sure there are some horses here that would rather have a dirty surface. And I think buyers will prefer the dirt surface. It’s a more authentic representation of what you’re going to get.”
Despite the low volume of June auctions, Crane sees the auction’s growth potential, but has agreed that this year’s first sale may not have enough horses to attract a bench buy big.
“I don’t understand why it’s not gaining momentum [in the future]” he say. “But if I were a buyer, I would join this sale [this year] because I think there are bargains to be had. I have contacted several top buyers and they are not coming. So I think it’s going to be a buyer’s market and that’s a shame because I have a great team and I won’t get the rewards at some point. But in the end, I will be in this business for a long time so everything will be fine. Hopefully they will buy running shoes from us now and then they will buy from us in the future.”
While many of Ocala’s major operations skipped this year’s Midlantic June sale, the Central Florida cavalry were represented by a number of shipments, including those by Tom McCrocklin and Raul Reyes’ King’s Equine.
“Fasig-Tipton in short,” McCrocklin said when asked why he decided to return to Timonium this year. “I know they want to try. It was the first time walking overhead and maybe it was an opportunity to sell some horses. We’ll see how it goes.”
McCrocklin, who sold a $700,000 Awesome Slew pony during the May sale in Midlantic last month, brought 11 ponies to the June sale. The auction comes about two weeks after the sale. The minor sales season for OBS’s June sale ends traditionally, but McCrocklin thinks this later date shouldn’t intimidate buyers.
“If you’re trying to buy a nice racehorse, it doesn’t matter if you bought them a month, two weeks ago, or now,” says McCrocklin. “Not that we entered the Twilight Zone because it was two or four weeks later. And there are some nice horses here. Personally, I’ve seen beautiful horses train here all week. I would invite everyone to take a look at them.”
Asked if he was worried about a lack of buyers during the drop, McCrocklin said: “Yes. Absolute. But look, a lot of these horses are now bought remotely, you can get photos, walking videos, gallop times, bragging videos, online auctions, phone auctions. So if you don’t want to come, I get it, but that’s no excuse not to go through the process and buy a horse.”
Reyes brought six horses for his second trip to Timonium this year. Shippers, a longtime top performer at Barretts’ reduced and now-defunct May sale, aren’t worried about the smaller category.
“I’ve always liked small sales,” Reyes said. “I used to go to California when they had smaller sales and I did really well there.”
According to Reyes, as always, Timonium’s location at the intersection of several racing venues will prove advantageous in attracting buyers.
“There are a lot of tracks that are too close and people need horses,” Reyes said. “They’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”
