After a slightly slow start to proceedings, the Fasig-Tipton Calder Sale in Florida, USA concluded with gains in both average and median, plus some extremely encouraging results for the Darley stallions.
Bernardini, whose first runners will hit the track later this year and include the progeny of some 46 G1 winners or producers from his first US-conceived crop, was responsible for the highest-priced filly of the sale when Katsumi Yoshida went to US$520,000 to secure his daughter out of Tap Your Heels, dam of G1 winner and promising young American sire Tapit.
Earlier in the session, Bernardini’s colt out of proven Stakes producer Marozia was bought by Todd Pletcher for half a million dollars.
Fellow first-season sire Henny Hughes (pictured) had five sell on Tuesday, averaging a healthy US$262,000. His highest price (and the fifth highest-priced colt of the sale) was US$700,000, paid by Rick Porter’s Fox Hill Farm for a colt out of the G2-placed mare Refugee. The top price for a filly by Henny Hughes was US$275,000, given by Thoroughbred Futures for the daughter of Open Window (Trempolino), whose first three foals to race have all become winners.
Henny Hughes' and Bernardini's first southern hemisphere crops are now weanlings.
