Carrolls double up at sale

Justin and Stefanie Carroll’s Out Of This World Racing nearly doubled the quantity of its stable while also adding quality on Monday night at the Fasig-Tipton horses-of-racing-age sale. The Carrolls, via trainer Mike Maker, purchased a pair of stakes winners, going to $525,000, the third-highest price of the auction, to acquire Happy Mesa and later adding Dreamin for $125,000.

The Carrolls are not new to racing – stars of previous iterations of their program include stakes winner Journey Fever, the champion Illinois-bred 2-year-old filly of 2003. Their run with Maker, however, began just last year, when they asked him to claim a filly for $75,000 out of a maiden race on Feb. 3, 2016, at Gulfstream Park.

“I know Mike does a great job moving horses forward,” Justin Carroll told racetrack publicity. “We wanted a trainer based at Churchill but who also ran in Florida and Chicago and looked at his background.”

The filly they claimed turned out to be Try Your Luck, who won the Dueling Grounds Oaks by 7 1/2 lengths last September at Kentucky Downs. She has placed in three graded stakes – including the Grade 3 Pucker Up at Arlington Park, in which she crossed the line first in a blanket finish but was disqualified to third for interference. She has been the centerpiece of Out Of This World’s three-horse stable. Maker also trains the maiden On John and Shezaprado, who has won once from five starts this year, for the barn.

The Carrolls now have two other stakes winners in the barn. Happy Mesa rallied from last to win the Hilltop Stakes going away in May at Pimlico for her second career stakes victory. She stopped the clock in 1:33.61 for the mile on turf, just missing the course record of 1:33 2/5, recorded in fifths, established by North East Bound in 2000.

“She’s a lovely filly with a nice pedigree,” Maker said. “Justin Carroll loved her and really wanted her.”

Happy Mesa, by Sky Mesa, is from the family of champion and prominent producer Chris Evert. It is the family of champions Winning Colors, Chief’s Crown, and Deep Sky.

Dreamin, a 4-year-old daughter of Woke Up Dreamin, had won three straight races coming into the Fasig-Tipton sale, including the Saylorville Stakes just four days prior. It was the third career stakes win for the Iowa-bred. Dreamin’s family traces to prominent broodmares such as Battle Creek Girl, Far Beyond, Soaring, and Wings of Grace.

Made You Look doesn’t go far

Multiple graded stakes winner Made You Look drew a high bid of $190,000 during Monday night’s Fasig-Tipton horses-of-racing-age sale – but you don’t have to look far to see where he is headed.

Three Chimneys Farm appeared on the sale ticket for the 3-year-old More Than Ready colt, with the racing-and-breeding entity buying out partner Let’s Go Stable. The two groups went in together on the colt at the 2015 Keeneland September yearling sale for $360,000 and campaigned him in partnership through his first nine starts in the care of trainer Todd Pletcher. Made You Look won the Grade 2 With Anticipation Stakes as a juvenile at Saratoga and added the Grade 3 Dania Beach Stakes this year.

Made You Look’s second dam is Hall of Fame racemare Serena’s Song, the dam of six stakes winners. Notably for the Three Chimneys prospect, that group includes sires Grand Reward, Harlington, and Schramsberg. It is the immediate family of champion Honor Code, whose first foals arrived this year.

Distinta to Taylor Made group

It would have been bold to predict that California Chrome would have something to do with the most expensive offering of the Fasig-Tipton July select horses-of-racing-age sale, but that was the bet that paid out when Grade 2 winner Distinta sold to Medallion Racing for $600,000.

The Medallion Racing syndicate is an offshoot of Taylor Made Farm, conceived after the operation’s positive experience with the two-time Horse of the Year in which they took on several partners to campaign the horse and later stand him at stud.

“Medallion Racing is something that we came up with that’s kind of an offshoot of the experience we had with California Chrome and Cathryn Sophia,” said Mark Taylor of the Taylor Made operation. “We just thought buying into proven horses that can run in high-level graded stakes was a great way to get people in the business. If you go and buy an unproven horse, it’s still a great experience, but you might go through a lot of partnerships and never get to the promised land.”

Distinta, a 5-year-old Summer Bird mare, won the Grade 2 Inside Information Stakes at Gulfstream Park two starts prior to the sale, putting her squarely in the Medallion Racing profile.

Taylor said Medallion Racing would own a 25 percent stake in Distinta, along with three other partners. Decisions regarding her trainer and the roadmap for the remainder of 2017 and beyond would be left up to the partners, who have their own trainers.

Taylor Made Sales Agency also consigned the mare. Though Distinta’s sale was a somewhat internal transaction, Taylor said steps were taken to ensure it was on the level. He and two other staff members operated separately in the interest of Medallion Racing, while his nephew Marshall Taylor and sales associate Sebastian Angelilo handled the business of selling the mare.

“We didn’t even want to know what the reserve was,” Taylor said. “I knew she was going to cost north of $500,000, but that was pretty much our last bid there. We said if we could get her for $600,000, we’d take a shot, and if we can’t, let somebody else have her.”

Elite Sales makes big debut

No one can say Bradley Weisbord and Liz Crow of Elite Sales don’t know how to make an entrance.

The duo debuted their venture at Monday’s Fasig-Tipton sale and finished with five of the day’s six most expensive offerings.

Publicly launched in May, Elite Sales specializes in consigning horses in training and broodmare prospects fresh off the track.

Leading the group was the auction’s second-highestpriced offering, Adorable Miss, a multiple stakes-winning Kitten’s Joy filly who sold to Bluewater Sales as agent for an unnamed client for $585,000. Adorable Miss was previously owned by Mathis Stable and trained by Todd Pletcher.

“Everybody raves about how Todd Pletcher takes care of his horses, so she’s an easy one,” Weisbord said about Adorable Miss prior to the sale. “Hopefully, her new owner will be able to campaign her in Grade 1s and Grade 2s this summer. I think it’s too close to get to the Lake George or the San Clemente, given she just ran on July 4, but the next series of races, she’ll be dead live for.”