Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
AMERICAN PHAROAH PASSING ON HIS BEST TRAITS
The Keeneland September yearling sale isn’t exactly the pressure cooker of Kentucky Derby week, where hordes follow the favorite’s every move on the grounds, the walkover is an emotional gauntlet, the paddock is packed, and finally, a crowd of more than 150,000 belts out “My Old Kentucky Home” in one voice just before the horses enter the starting gate.
But the auction is its own kind of highpressure environment. Sale yearlings, most venturing away from their home farms for the first time, must be on their best behavior for prospective buyers, navigating a crowded shed row among other anxious young horses to show dozens of times in a day. On sale day, they make the hike across the grounds to the crowded back ring, with buyers and spectators taking one last look, and then step into the small auction ring with an unfamiliar handler, faced with a cacophony of bid spotters calling out in concert with the auctioneer’s booming voice.
American Pharoah’s famously mellow and kind nature allowed him to handle the maximum pressures of the racetrack with ease, one contributing factor in his 2015 Triple Crown sweep, breaking a 37-year drought in the classic series. And he has passed that personality on to his offspring, allowing them to showcase themselves at their best in the commercial market. His first crop of yearlings is averaging $626,338 heading into the Keeneland September sale.
Summerfield sold an American Pharoah colt for $1 million at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale and a filly for $450,000 at the Fasig-Tipton New Yorkbred sale just a few days later.
“Mentally, they handled everything,” said Francis Vanlangendonck of Summerfield Sales.
“She got out 94 times [to show], and she never backed up, she never slowed down, just like the colt did at the first sale. They have a great mental capacity. That’s what Bob Baffert told me about American Pharoah – he’d just run and go home and go to sleep. This filly and the colt, we’d show them all day, and as soon as we’d shut down, they’d lay down and go to sleep. No issues with the mental part of it.”
American Pharoah, who stands at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud, has 81 yearlings cataloged at Keeneland September, 66 in the first four days that make up the marquee Book 1 portion. The group includes a half-sister to last year’s saletopper, sold to Coolmore for $2.7 million. Last year’s topper and her half-sister are out of the Grade 2-placed Beau Genius mare Pretty ’n Smart, whose eight foals to race are all winners, led by Grade 1 winner Cupid, Grade 3 winners Heart