Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
LADY ELI THE MARQUEE OFFERING AT KEENELAND
Champion Lady Eli, who captivated the racing world with her fiery spirit and battle with laminitis, is familiar with the Keeneland grounds. She is twice a graduate of Keeneland’s sales and found the winner’s circle in a pair of graded stakes starts there.
Lady Eli will get a chance to make one more headline at Keeneland as she is the star attraction of the Keeneland November breeding stock sale, where she is likely to at last come through the ring after two prior scratches from the prominent mixed auction.
“I can’t say enough about this horse,” said Chad Brown, who trained Lady Eli throughout her career. “She is the best turf horse I have ever trained. She has the heart of a champion. She is equine perfection. She is the personification of world-class talent, courage, precocity, soundness, and, above all, the will to win. Lady Eli always brought her best game. She didn’t need a racetrack, a condition, a position in the race, or a distance, and she certainly never needed an excuse. It’s unlikely I will ever have another one like her.”
Keeneland has cataloged 4,509 horses for the November sale, which runs from Monday, Nov. 5, through Friday, Nov. 16. In a change of format for 2018, the sale will open with a single, exclusive Book 1 session, before continuing with Books 2 through 7.
As always, the Keeneland sale could pick up major catalog updates from the Breeders’ Cup, set for just days before, down the highway at Churchill Downs.
“The strong global appeal of the November sale sets it apart from all other breeding stock sales,” said Bob Elliston, Keeneland’s vice president of racing and sales. “This auction is the primary source for domestic and international buyers for stakes-winning fillies and stakes-producing mares in foal to the world’s most exciting stallions while being a key market for weanlings and horses of racing age. We look forward to the November sale building on the strength of the recent September sale and the excitement of the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs.”
It is Lady Eli, however, who is the star attraction of Book 1. The daughter of Divine Park was a $160,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase in 2013 and sold for the same price at the 2014 Keeneland April sale of 2-year-olds in training to the Sheep Pond Partners of Jay Hanley and Sol Kumin. The filly won the first six starts of her career, including
the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf and 2015 Belmont Oaks. But heading back to the barn after the latter race, she sustained a hoof injury that developed into laminitis.
Lady Eli successfully beat back that dreaded disease and returned to the races 14 months later, winning the Grade 1 Flower Bowl Invitational and finishing a narrow second in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf in a brief 2016 campaign.
Lady Eli had been cataloged for the 2016 Keeneland November sale, as Kumin and partners do not have a breeding operation,
but the partners withdrew her in favor of racing one more season. She rewarded them richly with wins in the Grade 1 Gamely and Grade 1 Diana stakes. However, in the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf – which was scheduled to be her final start, as she was again cataloged at Keeneland November – she endured a rough break from the starting gate and was stepped on, losing a shoe and eventually finishing seventh. That was the only unplaced effort of her career,
which she finished with a mark of 14-10-30, earnings of more than $2.9 million, and the 2017 divisional Eclipse Award. Lacerations to her hind legs led to her again being scratched from the sale in order to recover.
Lady Eli was bred to War Front this year, with her last cover on April 4, and is offered carrying her first foal by that popular international sire. Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm, where she has been boarded during her recovery and early pregnancy, will consign Lady Eli on behalf of her owners.
“Lady Eli was the ultimate champion,” Hill ‘n’ Dale’s John Sikura said. “She was an elite performer every year and won Grade 1 races on both coasts . . . . Ultraconsistent in delivering elite performances, she is the rarest of champions with a will to win and tenacity to match her matchless talent.”
Two-time Horse of the Year California Chrome leads first-crop weanling sires with representatives in Keeneland November’s elite Book 1 portion, with seven. Other first-crop weanling sires with youngsters accepted into Book 1 include Kentucky Derby winner and champion Nyquist, fellow Eclipse Award champions Flintshire and Runhappy, multiple Grade 1 winners Exaggerator and Frosted, and graded stakes winner Not This Time.
This year’s first-crop weanling sires represented throughout the sale also include Eclipse Award champion turf male Big Blue Kitten; Cartier Award European champion Air Force Blue; Breeders’ Cup winners Hit It a Bomb, Tamarkuz, Texas Red, and Tourist; Grade 1 winners Brody’s Cause, Mshawish, Outwork, and Slumber; and graded stakes winners Anchor Down, Cinco Charlie, Firing Line, Ironicus, Laoban, Mosler, Optimizer, Producer, Protonico, Speightster, Upstart, and War Dancer.
While the most well-known racing and broodmare prospects will be offered toward the front of the sale, the secondweek sessions of Nov. 13 and 14 will be highlighted by male racing prospects, racing or stallion prospects, and stallions in a market that has grown in recent years. Recent graduates of this portion of the sale include multiple Grade 1 winner Diversify.
Those offered as stallion prospects or racing/stallion prospects this year include Brazilian Group 1 winner Vettori Kin, who is a Grade 3 winner in the United States; graded stakes winners Big Bend, Decorated Soldier, Great Stuff, Guest Suite, Projected, Switzerland, Ticonderoga, and Timeline; stakes winners Counterforce, Hedge Fund, Seattle Serenade, and Uncontested; and graded-placed Combatant, Gift Box, Machtree, and Prospect Park.
A handful of active stallions also are on offer, with those shopping at this sale typically including foreign markets looking to boost their bloodstock industries. The most familiar name in this category in the catalog is I Want Revenge, the 2009 Wood Memorial winner whose oldest runners are 3-year-olds. The Stephen Got Even stallion most recently stood at Millennium Farms in Lexington, Ky., as did fellow sale entrymate Hakassan, a Chilean champion whose first foals are yearlings.
Other stallions on offer are graded stakes winner Exhi, sire of stakes winner Victory Day and standing at Highfield in Canada; Grade 2-placed stakes winner Japan, who stood at Waldorf Farm in New York and whose first foals are yearlings; and stakes winner Make Music for Me, a former California stallion whose first foals are 3.