Midlantic sale has high bar

Mage, a graduate of the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-yearolds in training sale, returned to Maryland a year after that auction as the Kentucky Derby winner.

Less than 48 hours after he was expected to start in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes, horsemen will head to the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, some 15 minutes away, for this year’s Midlantic May sale. The auction has steadily grown in prominence from a solid regional sale into one of the leading auctions in the nation, buoyed by a constant stream of graded stakeswinning graduates.

“Everyone at Fasig-Tipton is very proud to call Mage a Midlantic May graduate,” Fasig-Tipton Midlantic director of sales Paget Bennett said.

This week’s two-day sale, with sessions beginning at 11 a.m. on Monday and Tuesday, is the first of two juveniles sales Fasig-Tipton will hold in Maryland this year, with a single-session auction set for June 28. Both sales, which offer 2-year-olds the opportunity to be showcased over the dirt track at Timonium, will likely receive some added interest due to the hiatus this year of FasigTipton’s Gulfstream sale.

There are 603 horses in the catalog, including supplemental entries, for this week’s sale. Last year, the catalog numbered 636 horses.

“We purposefully tightened up our numbers just a bit, while adding increased quality,” Bennett said. “We have strong sire power, quality individuals, and from what I hear from our consignors, horses that have showed very promising ability in their early training.”

The storylines of several future graded stakes winners converged at last year’s Midlantic May sale, demonstrating the depth of what the auction has attracted. The first session of the 2022 sale established a strong marketplace, led by a $725,000 filly from the first crop of Girvin. She is Faiza, who won her first five career starts, including four graded stakes, en route to Friday’s Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan at Pimlico.

Early in the second session, a Bernardini colt sold for $3.55 million, smashing the previous sale-record price of $1.8 million paid for eventual Eclipse Award champion Gamine at the 2019 edition. The Bernardini colt is Hejazi, a Grade 1-placed winner.

Meanwhile, bloodstock agent Ramiro Restrepo and Gustavo Delgado, Jr., son and assistant to trainer Gustavo Delgado, were waiting for two juveniles to come to the ring later in that session.

“We narrowed it down to two horses,” Restrepo recalled. “If you can believe it, it was this Good Magic colt or the City of Light filly.”

When the Good Magic colt came to the ring, with less than two dozen horses separating he and the City of Light filly, Restrepo and Delgado Jr. had set a budget of $200,000. Because of the strength of the marketplace and their strong feelings about the colt, they wound up over budget, with the hammer falling at $290,000, eliminating their opportunity to bid on the filly.

Restrepo, who also works as Fasig-Tipton’s South Florida market representative, and Delgado Jr., who helms OGMA Investments, took Sterling Racing and Commonwealth as partners in Mage to offset their costs, and the four-pronged partnership is now on the ride of their lives. As for the filly, Mimi Kakushi sold for $250,000 and went on to win this year’s U.A.E. 1000 Guineas and Group 3 U.A.E. Oaks, and finished eighth in the Kentucky Oaks when shipping internationally off a layoff.

“This is like an NFL combine,” Restrepo said of 2-year-old in training sales. “The scouts, the GMs, you’re there doing your due diligence. Everyone wants to do their best job, and identify the best potential talent for whatever your budget is . . . . A Grade 1, the Kentucky Derby, it’s part of your dream, it’s part of your process. When you draft a player, you want to draft a Hall of Famer, a difference-maker for your organization, and that concept, that’s what we’re doing when we’re buying racehorses.”

In addition to champion Gamine, Kentucky Derby winner Mage, and graded/ group performers Faiza, Mimi Kakushi, and Hejazi, other standout graduates of the Fasig Midlantic sale in recent years include Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Spun to Run, multiple Grade 1 winner Got Stormy, and Grade/Group 1 winners Beyond Brilliant and Switzerland.

At the under-tack show, six distinguished themselves by tying for the bullet 10-second furlong during the threesession under-tack preview show. That is a solid time on Timonium’s five-furlong track. Last year, when Hejazi worked a furlong in 9 4/5 seconds to fuel his record sale, it marked the first time since 2012 that a juvenile had broken the 10-second barrier.

A filly by four-time reigning leading sire Into Mischief who is a full sister to his multiple graded stakes winner Engage was among those to share the bullet. Also in the group were a filly from the final crop of champion Arrogate, who has Grade 1 winners in each of his first two crops; a Take Charge Indy filly who is a full sister to graded stakes winner Take Charge Paula; a colt by successful young Florida sire Awesome Slew; a colt from the second crop of 2022 leading freshman sire Bolt d’Oro; and a colt by classic sire Twirling Candy.

Among the smaller group of juveniles to work a quartermile, a colt from the second crop of Triple Crown winner Justify and a colt from the first crop of multiple graded stakes winner Catalina Cruiser shared the bullet, each going in 21 2/5 seconds.