Corinthian Colt Tops Final F-T Texas Sale
by Jessica Martini
A colt by GI Metropolitan H. winner Corinthian brought $75,000 to top Tuesday’s Fasig-Tipton Texas 2-Year-Olds in Training and Horses of Racing Age Sale at Lone Star Park. The auction, which was the final to be staged by Fasig-Tipton Texas, saw 66 horses sell for a total of $1,161,900. The average fell 22.6% to $17,605 and the median decreased 13.3% to $13,000. A year ago, 80 horses sold for a total of $1,818,700. The average was $22,734 and the median was $15,000. The buy-back rate was 33.3%.
“We had a 67% clearance rate, which is not bad for a 2-year-old sale,” said Fasig-Tipton Texas Sales Director Tim Boyce. “Our average did go down, but we just didn’t have the moon and stars line up on a lot of horses–the good works with the good breeding.”
Carl Moore, who campaigned 2010 GII Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner Chamberlain Bridge (War Chant), made the sale-topping bid on hip 115. By Corinthian, the yearling is out of stakes winner Bountempo (Cape Town) and from the family of Canadian champions Benburb and Chopinina. Ray Bryner consigned the bay colt on behalf of B & C Bloodstock, which purchased the youngster for $12,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October sale.
Fasig-Tipton Texas has conducted auctions at the Lone Star Park sales pavilion since 1997. The racing industry in Texas was dealt a crippling blow last November when a Texas judge ruled the Texas Racing Commission had overstepped its authority by authorizing historical racing terminals intended to supplement purses.
Boyce put the blame on the state’s declining racing industry squarely on the Texas legislature.
“The efforts by the racing commission have been very proactive and very encouraging, but the legislature down here has been problematic for many years,” Boyce said. “The problem with the legislature is that it’s your partner–in that you give it money for taxes–it’s your regulator–with its racing commission it tells you what you can and can’t do–and then it’s your major competitor by having a lottery machine at every gas station. It professes that it doesn’t want to increase the imprint of gambling and yet it puts a lottery machine in every new gas station. Well, the racing commission did what needed to be done and was proactive with regulations with instant racing, which by many interpretations fits, only to have a judge cut it off at its knees and then have the legislature pull them in front and slap them around a little bit in a committee hearing on funding. That type of reaction makes it look like the legislature doesn’t really care for racing. Our opinion is that, over the years it’s been going down and down and down, and by now the only movement, I’m afraid, in Texas racing is circling the drain. So we just thought it would be a good idea to get out.”
The Texas Thoroughbred Association has sponsored the auctions at Lone Star Park, but Boyce said the organization has made no announcement on potential future sales. TTA officials did not return calls for comment as of press time.