NEWS
Oklahoma-breds becoming bigger part of Texas yearling sale
Posted: Saturday, August 28, 2010 4:01 PM
by Denis Blake
The composition of the Fasig-Tipton Texas summer yearling sale has undergone major changes over the latter half of this decade as Louisiana-breds have supplanted Texas-breds as the major focus, and now it appears that Oklahoma-breds are getting ready to join the show as well.
The catalog of 363 horses for Monday’s auction at Lone Star Park includes 33 Oklahoma-breds, and while that makes horses from the Sooner State less than 10% of the sale, it represents a sizeable increase from the 20 Oklahoma-breds in last year’s catalog of 370 yearlings.
“Oklahoma is the obvious area of growth here,” said Tim Boyce, director of sales for Fasig-Tipton Texas. “Their program is really on the rise and is beginning to take off.
“For a long time, there just wasn’t much commercial breeding there, but now you are seeing more and more commercial breeders in Oklahoma.”
Two of the biggest breeding operations in Oklahoma, JEH Stallion Station and Caines Stallion Station, both in Wynnewood, have a significant number of Oklahoma-breds in their consignments.
“This is probably the highest number of Oklahoma-breds I’ve had here,” said Ellen Caines, whose 13-horse consignment includes five Oklahoma-breds. “Last year I had several, but this year we’ve really got some top-notch ones.”
In addition to purses and incentives fueled in large part by racetrack slot machines, Caines said the increase of this year’s Oklahoma Classics card for state-breds at Remington Park to $1-million also has attracted attention. The October 22 event will mark the first ever seven-figure racing card in Oklahoma history.
“There’s a lot of people coming down to the sale from Oklahoma looking to buy, so that’s why we are bringing ours down there,” said Shawn Lindsey, manager of the Oklahoma division of Jim and Marilyn Helzer’s JEH Stallion Station, which has eight Oklahoma-breds consigned. “Most are by our own stallions, so we are trying to get them established in the marketplace.
“One of the key things about the Oklahoma-bred program is that you can breed in-state one year and out of state the next year, and you can still make them both state-bred,” Lindsey added.
Among the Oklahoma-breds in the sale are a mix of progeny by Oklahoma and Texas stallions as well as Kentucky stallions such as Smoke Glacken, Mutakddim, Holy Bull, and former Oklahoma stallion Kipling.
“As the money has gotten better, the quality of horses has gotten better,” said Lindsey. “We are getting better mares now, too.”
Even though the Texas sale has yet to attract Oklahoma-breds in numbers that rival those from Texas or Louisiana, which both number more than 100, the auction can boast of selling the leading Oklahoma-bred runner of all time, Kip Deville.
The son of Kipling sold for $20,000 at the 2004 sale before going on to earn $3,325,489 and win the 2007 NetJets Breeders’ Cup Mile (G1). Mark Toothaker, who with Tommy Eastham now operates Lexington-based Legacy Bloodstock, consigned Kip Deville for breeder Center Hills Farm as Liberty Farm of Kentucky, agent.
Denis Blake is a Texas-based Thoroughbred Times correspondent
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Posted by: Rob , Big Horn, WY on August 28, 2010 at 08:26 PM
Texas would be a great central location to have sales for the people of LA, NM and OK. A person would have to be nuts to buy a tx bred and try to run in tx.
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