I met my old lover
on the street last night
She seemed so glad to see me
I just smiled.
And we talked about some old times
and drank ourselves some beers
Still crazy after all these years.
-Paul Simon, 1975

The Thoroughbred bloodstock industry met its old love again on July 17-18-not out on the street but at the Keeneland Association sales pavilion in Lexington. And though all the participants were a little older if not wiser than the last time they had seen her, there were plenty of smiles and plenty of celebratory beers.

Indeed, everyone was very glad to see the crazy old girl-this grande dame known as the Keeneland July sale of selected yearlings-in robust good health after all these years.

Although the smallest catalog in Keeneland July's selected sale history had led critics once again to proclaim the imminent demise of the July sale, the industry's renewed love affair with the grand lady who flaunts the most gaudy and expensive jewelry in the Thoroughbred world pushed the average for the sale to $621,015. That surpassed the official record average of $581,932 set last year by 6.7% and even soared beyond the actual but unofficial record of $593,109 set in 1984 before Keeneland removed buy-backs from calculations.

The 180 horses through the ring and 130 sold-both record lows for the sale-assured that total receipts of $80,732,000 would be nowhere close to the 1984 total of $175,932,000, but the total did surpass the 1999 gross by 5.1%. Buy-back rate remained virtually level at 27.8%.

"I don't think anybody thought it was going to be like this," said W. B. Rogers Beasley, Keeneland's director of sales. "It helps to have a great crop of yearlings, but the history of this sale-it's consistently the best sale to buy graded stakes winners anywhere in the world. The people who want to win those races, this is where they come."

Leading the parade of buyers who want to win graded stakes were Satish and Anne Sanan, owners of Padua Stables, who bought both the highest-priced colt and the highest-priced filly. The Sanans had been forced to sell 12 horses for $10.8-million at the 1999 Keeneland November sale when the value of stock in their IMRGlobal Corp. plunged, but by May its value had rebounded from around $8 to almost $20. That led Satish Sanan to warn before the sale that he would be a force once again after ranking as the July sale's leading buyer in each of the last two years.

Sanan, accompanied as always by partner and trainer D. Wayne Lukas, was more forceful than ever, buying 12 yearlings for $14.4-million, topped by a $3.6-million Mr. Prospector filly out of Molly Girl (a Seattle Slew full sister to leading California sire General Meeting). That price came within $150,000 of the world record for a filly set by the Seattle Slew filly Alchaasibiyeh in 1984. Alchaasibiyeh was winless in six starts but has thus far produced a multiple graded stakes winner and a graded stakes-placed winner for Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum's Darley Stud Management.

"She was my top filly of the sale equally with the Serena's Song," said Lukas, who bid for Padua. "It was a toss up. We'd like to have bought them both, but you're dealing with dear friends, and you have to give a little and take a little.

"The Mr. Prospector fillies-it's the end of the line, and they're already priceless as broodmares. That adds to the price, but we still went further on her than we anticipated."

"She's a beauty," said breeder John Mabee of the sale-topping filly, "but that's more than we expected for her."

"We have a lot of that family, and you can't keep all of a family like that," his wife, Betty Mabee, added. "It's very exciting to sell one for that much. It's just like winning a $1-million race."

Taylor Made Sales Agency consigned the sale topper.

Dear friends

The "dear friends" to whom Lukas referred were Irish agent Demi O'Byrne and his clients John Magnier of Coolmore Stud and Michael Tabor. Lukas trains for both Padua and Tabor and Magnier, and for Robert and Beverly Lewis, sellers through Craig Bandoroff's Denali Stud of the Storm Cat filly out of the Lewis's champion filly Serena's Song, by Rahy.

Although all concerned clearly admired both fillies greatly, O'Byrne left the Mr. Prospector filly for Padua and Padua in turn did not bid for the Storm Cat. Lukas, of course, is likely to train both regardless of the owner. The Padua-Coolmore pas de deux left Lukas to outbid Aaron Jones, another survivor of the crazy old days at Keeneland, for the sale topper and O'Byrne to outlast Reynolds Bell, representing Jayeff B Stables, for the daughter of Serena's Song. The diminutive but very strong, broad-backed filly went to the Coolmore team for $3.4-million, joint-third-highest price for a filly in history.

Lukas, caught in the middle of the desires and ambitions of three close friends and clients, anxiously inquired, "Is Bob (Lewis) happy with the price?" until consignor Bandoroff arrived to reassure him that Lewis was his usual ecstatic self.

Padua's bankroll also proved thick enough to pluck the sale's highest-priced colt, a big, powerful son of Gone West out of multiple Grade 1 winner Lakeway, by Seattle Slew, consigned by Eaton Sales as agent. Trainer Bob Hess Jr., acting for David Shimmon, opened the bidding at $1-million, but that gambit failed to deter the determined Lukas, who steadfastly covered Hess's every move. After the young California trainer declined further bids with "safe" sign and walked away from his post near the press box, the auctioneers tried to induce his father, trainer Bob Hess Sr., to continue, but the hammer fell at $3.3-million in Lukas's favor.

"We knew he was a nice colt," breeder Mike Rutherford said, "but you never know what you're going to get when it goes over a million."

Rarefied air

The three $3-million-plus yearlings led a parade of 24 horses sold for seven-figure prices, equaling the third-highest total in the sale's history and highest since an equal number of seven-figure horses sold in 1985. As shown in the accompanying decile chart, those 24 $1-million yearlings were a clear indication of the market's obsession with those horses perceived as the very best. The top 20% of the market rose more than 20% compared to 1999, but all other segments fell. Times were especially tough in the bottom 30%, where average price declined more than 20%.

Buyers were similarly focused on yearlings by the most expensive sires, as shown in the accompanying chart of returns by stud-fee range. Although percentage returns were, as always, higher for lower stud fees, the $1,477,113 and $846,286 averages for yearlings by stallions with six-figure stud fees are indicative of buyer preferences.

The two top-of-the-market pinhooks at the sale both came unstuck, however. A big, somewhat coarse full brother to Old Trieste, purchased for $1.3-million at 1999 Keeneland November by Paul Shanahan and consigned by Eaton Sales as agent, was led out unsold at $925,000. The very next horse in the ring, Eaton's Sadler's Wells colt out of Madame Est Sortie (Fr), by Longleat, purchased for $1.4-million by agent M. W. Miller III at the November sale, met the same fate at $1.45-million.

"I don't know what we're going to do with him," said the latter colt's co-owner, Tom VanMeter, who is also co-owner of Eaton Sales. "We might send him to Goffs (Premier sale in October) or put him in training and send him to Europe. We'll have to see what the other partners want to do.

"It's rarefied air, what we were trying to do. There's only two or three guys that were suspects to buy him-Demi, (John) Ferguson, maybe (Ahmed bin) Salman-and if you don't hook one of them, well ..." he said. "You have to overcome the stigma of people knowing they have to pay that much going in." With those two buy-backs at the top, pinhoo