NEWS
More than just sun, surf,
and smiles at Two Beaches
Posted: Monday, March 01, 2010 4:38 PM
by John P. Sparkman
Stacy Yagoda and Jill Julian are well aware that visitors to their consignment at the Fasig-Tipton Calder sale of selected two-year-olds in training could infer more than one meaning from the name of their partnership, Two Beaches.
Yagoda and Julian fully expected the Two Beaches sign to elicit a few chuckles and brighten some faces.
“When Jill and I decided to do this we wanted to come up with something cute,” Yagoda said of Two Beaches, which will sell a Distorted Humor colt at the Fasig-Tipton Calder sale on Tuesday.
“Everyone looks at it and laughs.”
Yagoda and Julian are veterans of the juvenile sale scene but each went through life changes over the last few years that led to their partnership.
“We have been friends for ten or 12 years and we owned a few horses together,” Yagoda said. “I got divorced [from pinhooker Ricky Leppala] about four years ago and took a couple of years off to stay at home and be a mom. I wasn't really ready to do something on my own. Last year, [new husband] Aron [Yagoda] and I decided to go to the sales and look at horses, so here we are.”
Yagoda rode horses for her ex-husband's pinhooking venture, and Julian also worked for many years with a successful pinhooker.
“She was partners with Carl Bowling for the last 12 years,” Yagoda said, “and she's trained and sold some great horses and never really gotten credit for what she did. She moved to the [Florida] Keys to take care of her parents and her daughter last year. She's always done the training herself, so that was really hard for her.
“I think we compliment each other really well, because she's always trained from the ground and I've always been on their backs, so I've learned a lot. You learn something new every day if you keep your mind open.”
Yagoda broke and trained Horse of the Year Favorite Trick and Grade 1-winning sprinter Delaware Township, among many others, with Ricky Leppala.
“My husband and I made a plan. We wanted the better pedigreed horses, not the horse you see from the back wall at Keeneland and follow up to the ring.”
Two Beaches ended up with four horses, the Distorted Humor colt at Fasig-Tipton Calder and three others cataloged for the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. March sale of selected two-year-olds in training.
The Distorted Humor colt is a half brother to Grade 1 winner Mr. Sidney. He is out of multiple Grade 1 winner Tomisue’s Delight, a full sister to 2003 Horse of the Year Mineshaft, by A.P. Indy.
If those two-year-olds sell well, Two Beaches may become a more familiar name to buyers.
“We'd like to buy again,” Yagoda said.
With luck, Yagoda and Julian may be laughing all the way to the beach.
John P. Sparkman is bloodstock editor for Thoroughbred Times
