by Pete Denk

Bloodstock agent Ray Bell went to $350,000 to land a weanling filly by Unbridled’s Song on Thursday at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale.

The gray or roan filly is out of the unraced Thunder Gulch mare Offshore Breeze, a half sister to 1996 champion two-year-old male and sire Boston Harbor. Cloudburst, a Storm Cat half sister to Offshore Breeze, sold for $900,000 on Wednesday at Keeneland.

The Unbridled’s Song weanling filly was bred as a foal share between Peter Blum and the Unbridled’s Song Syndicate. Taylor Made Sales Agency, agent, consigned the filly. Unbridled’s Song stands at Taylor Made Stallions in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

“That filly was a very good individual, and she’s out of a really nice mare from a hot family,” said Taylor Made’s Mark Taylor. “She has a typical Unbridled’s Song look—a lot of quality, a good clean neck, good shoulder, very good balance, and very correct.”

Bell said he bought the filly for a California client who intends to race her.

“She had a tremendous amount of presence about her. She was very correct, very well balanced, just everything you’d want in a horse,” Bell said. “Although the pedigree was maybe not quite what you’d find in the first [Keeneland November sale] book, she certainly has some depth through the second and third dams, so we’re very pleased.

“Now we just have to hope she develops and matures and goes the right way. As you know with these weanlings they can develop in a lot of ways, hopefully mostly good, but they can do other things too. At least we’ve established we have something good to work with.”

Other than the Overbrook dispersal mares, weanlings have been the strength of the Keeneland sale so far. Five weanlings sold for $300,000 or more on Thursday and another nine cracked the $200,000 mark.

Peter O’Callaghan of Woods Edge Farm, a weanling-to-yearling pinhooker, said the market for weanlings is not unlike what it has been the last few years.

“It’s the same way it has been, and really it’s tight for both sides,” O’Callaghan said. “It’s hard to buy the really good ones, and it’s hard to sell anything else.”

Pete Denk is sales editor of Thoroughbred Times