Blushing Groom colt tops Keeneland sale

Press, 19 July 1989, Page 43

Blushing Groom colt tops Keeneland sale

NZPA-Reuter Kentucky International horsemen bid $U547.6 million ($83.77m) for 134 colts and fillies on Monday as the first day of the annual Keeneland Selected Yearling Sale gave evidence of a firmer market in the world’s richest thoroughbred auction. An English-Bred chestnut colt, sired by Blushing Groom out of Mountain Bear, fetched the six-hour auction’s top price of SUSI.Sm bid ($2.44m) by Sheikh Maktoum ai Maktoum of Dubai’s Gainsborough Stud, Keeneland racecourse officials said. The 72 colts and 62 fillies sold in the first session of the two-day sale brought an average price of $U5355,269, a 5.1 per cent gain from last year’s average of $U5338,060 based on SUS4S.3m paid for 134 yearlings. The $U5265,000 median price — representing the midpoint of successful

bids with half of the yearlings sold for more and half for less — was 1.9 per cent above the year-ago $U5260,000 in the first session of the two-day sale. “We thought (the price level) would be off but we found it very strong, extremely strong, particularly with the fillies," said Tom Cooper, chairman of the British Bloodstock Agency of Ireland. Though the market was firmer, it was a far cry from the dizzying heights reached a few years ago when intense competition between European-based horsemen for Keeneland’s prized bloodlines generated a world-record price of more than SUSI3m ($22.8m) for a yearling colt. Last year’s top price was SUS3.Sm. Seven yearlings, three of them sired by Mr Prospector, brought winning bids of SUSI million or more on Monday, including SUSI.S?'Sm paid by the British Bloodstock

Agency of England for a bay daughter of Mr Prospector out of Private Colors, which is destined for Elizabeth Moran’s Brushwood Stable. Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum of Dubai’s Brit-ish-based Darley Stud Management paid SUSI.2m for a bay Mr Prospector colt out of Euryanthe. The Maktoum brothers, part of the ruling family of the oil-rich Arab emirate, were the Keeneland sale’s most prominent foreign buyers as they have been in recent years. But a spokesman, Jim Williams, told Reuters there was also “significant” buying by agents apparently representing various Japanese racing interests. “The Japanese were significant here in the early seventies but they haven’t figured so prominently in the last few years,” Williams said. “They were mainly going for the higher part of the market middle.”