I believe it was the great Joisey breeder FREDDYrico MOsio who said it best...
 

"Breed the slowest you have, to the slowest you can afford, and hope for the best"

.....

Yet another glorious vindication of this belief occured today.

Fasig Tipton Calder hip #59 sold for a cool $250,000

His sire Giacomo currently stands for 5K.

His dam Fifth Avenue Doll was last seen on the racetrack in 2005 .. when she was almost lapped in a 3-turn $2,500 claiming race at Charles Town.




While most male horses who can't beat anyone in the field for a $2,500 claiming tag at Charles Town often end up on the dinner plate of this guy...



... these "half-a-nickle" claiming races at Charles Town are proving to be splendid places to look for Cubic Zirconia in the rough caliber broodmare prospects.

According to the catalog page ... this strapping son of Giacomo was only Fifth Avenue Doll's 2nd foal ... her first foal is "unplaced in two starts in England"

Viva La Giacomo!!!

She did win 10 times

He's looks good though, or did in 2008 anyway

Looking through charts - all 10 wins came for a tag while on or near the bottom. Her 2nd career win came for 5K N2L.

She was sound ... and a productive horse for a 7K yearling buy ... I'll give her that.

Giacomo the move-up stallion!

alot of these prices are head scratchers on the high and low side

At least Giacomo was sound. Slow and sound.

FTFY

Stronach has had a lot of success making stallions out of horses that others thought werent worth standing....but I think he is way off base with this one.

I don't think the great Giac-Oh-Mo-Ian Hope!! was all that much of a head scratcher.

He was a 180k yearling buy to start with ... and he looked pretty decent in the preview video ... so 250K is within reason of what you might have projected him to sell for based solely on what he sold for as a yearling and how he breezed.

I thought he looked decent in the video. I liked the Rockport Harbor that sold in the 60's too.

mostly that 250k compared to what some of the others have gone for in here seems odd

His stud fee's only 5K. It's not crazy high expectations we are talking about or anything ... and heck ... they should have kept Giacomo racing with the way the older male division totally deteriorated once he retired.

In Giacomo's final career start - he was 4th beaten 4.5 lengths to Invasor, Bernardini, and Premium Tap in the BC Classic - while running a 109 Beyer. Retired sound.

Maybe his offspring might show more speed than you'd expect ... his sire and dam both had absolutely tremendous raw speed ... he... ah, not so much.

Lion Heart's dam was a $5k claimer at Suffolk if I recall.

he started at 10k and while Stronach always breeds his own mares to his stallions he seemingly was breeding him to way more than Giacomo had a right to breed. They also sold a ton of mares in foal to him including some nice, young prospects but I refused to put money into a giacomo foal and passed on all of them.

Very early on she was.

She also ended up becoming a stakes winner - and running very fast figures later on - I think Frank Stronach owned her for a while when she raced.

She was more a rags to riches race horse ... than a slowpoke bottom feeder with stamina.

I love to monitor these sales for future bets - and more importantly bet againsts - for when these horses start to debut a few months down the line.

This sale isn't one of my favorites ('sup FT Texas and OBS April) for finding possible live debut sprinters to follow for betting purposes because it's easily the highest quality of them all & not big in the way of quantity.

One of the horses from this sale I loved the tape of was the Dehere-Friend of a Friend filly. She left ya with that 'ahhh, now that's a debut winner right there!' feeling.

She ended up selling for 250K to - sadly - Bob Baffert. Probably going to debut on synthetic now and there goes any price...even probable ML bet-down price (for singling into P3's) gets shaved some cause of Baffert.

But anyway ... forget about what you're looking to bet on or against in the future .. and put yourself in the position of the buyer.

The sire Dehere stands for 10K.

The dam Friend of a Friend was a cripple of moderate ability who once blew an easy lead in a 7.5K N2L claiming race at River Downs.



According to the catalog .. this is Friend of a Friend's 2nd foal .. her first foal is UNRACED.

As a buyer looking at expensive horses - you're getting the worst of the gender with her, you're getting a very unfashionable pedigree for the money, you're getting a filly who is very likely to have distance limitations, you're getting a filly who is probably more likely than most to have soundness issues.

It's a lot of knocks for a quarter million ... and in a market like the one a few years ago .. she would have certainly sold for a good bit more money.

So Dam wise, would you substitute Top Royelle for FOAF?

Not apples to apples I know, but just askin'

Top Royelle was a much better race horse ... and I would think would have much more of a right to be a better broodmare. How good the foal will be is always a dice throw.

That Dehere filly brought 250K because - IMO - because she was lights out in the under track show. Baffert got himself an athlete.

While most male horses who can't beat anyone in the field for a $2,500 claiming tag at Charles Town often end up on the dinner plate of this guy...




I Cried!!