Fast Filly Make Sense at Barretts
by Jessica Martini
When hip 116 became the third horse to turn in the one-furlong bullet time of :9 4/5 during Friday’s under-tack preview of the Barretts Selected 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale, the speedy move wasn’t a surprise to consignor Kim McCarthy.
“She had previously breezed really well,” McCarthy revealed Saturday morning. “So I was, I don’t want to say cautiously optimistic, but when I saw that breeze I was thinking, ‘I kind of like this.’ And she was really happy here. So I expected a good work. I was thinking she might be able to go that fast, but I would have been happy with a :10.”
By GI Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, the juvenile is out of stakes winner Bold Angel (Cat Thief). Her third dam is Angel Fever (Danzig), the dam of Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus.
“She is a large, lanky beautiful filly,” McCarthy said of the January foal. “She’s the kind that you say, ‘Wow. Look at her.’”
Monday’s Barretts sale will be the bay’s fourth trip through the sales ring. She was bred by Hunter Valley Farm, which purchased Bold Angel with her in utero for $65,000 at the 2012 Keeneland November sale. The filly herself RNA’d for $100,000 at the 2013 Keeneland November sale and again for $115,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July Sale. She most recently RNA’d for $34,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October sale.
“I’ve had her since the beginning of February,” McCarthy said. “She was in Louisiana getting ready.”
After a break of some two decades, McCarthy began consigning under the McCarthy Bloodstock banner in 2010.
“For a while, when I was younger, I thought, ‘This is what I’ll do,’” McCarthy said of her early days in sales prep. “And then you find a boyfriend and you get married and things take you in different avenues. So I hadn’t done it for 20 years and now here we are back doing it again.”
McCarthy admitted she originally thought to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a trainer.
“My father is a horseshoer and he trained racehorses,” she said. “When I was going to school and thinking, ‘What am I going to do when I grow up,’ I decided I was going to train horses. Then I realized, that’s a lot of work–seven days a week. Who wants to work seven days a week the rest of their lives? So then I thought maybe no more training and I started doing some books. I do books for a few trainers.”
McCarthy Bloodstock has consignments at both yearling and 2-year-olds sales in California, but McCarthy admits she especially enjoys working with the juveniles.
“I just love the 2-year-olds,” she said. “They are a lot of fun. You see them change every day. I don’t have children, so this is my in-place-of-children.”
Hip 116, the last entry in the catalogue, will be the final horse to sell at the Hinds Pavilion in Pomona–Barretts home since its inception in 1989. Starting with its May sale, the company will hold its sales at Del Mar.
“I am very sad [about the move],” McCarthy said. “This is the best track to train on. The horses stay healthy. You don’t have any soundness issues. The facility is fabulous. But it just looks like the people that run it aren’t interested in staying in the horse business or any animals for that matter. It’s kind of sad.”
The Barretts Select sale begins Monday at 2 p.m. PT.