Another Cloche Call for Don Alberto

Don Alberto Corp. continued to add to its North American holdings last night at Fasig. The Chilean-owned operation, which recently established roots in the Bluegrass after purchasing the old Vinery farm, landed one of the evening’s choicest lots, the 7-year-old La Cloche (Ghostzapper), for $2.4 million. Darby Dan consigned La Cloche, who sold in foal to Tapit. 

“She was one of the mares we wanted to buy,” said Don Alberto matriarch Liliana Solari, who sat alongside son Carlos Heller and advisor Fernando Diaz-Valdes. “I’m very happy. She is a very good mare. She has a very good pedigree, and she’s in foal to Tapit. We said, ‘This mare must be ours!’” 

La Cloche was a talented runner for Darby Dan and the Philips family. She won the GIII Athenia S. at Aqueduct in 2012 and banked just shy of $300,000. But her real appeal lay in her pedigree. Her dam was MGISW Memories of Silver (Silver Hawk), and she’s a half to three other stakes winners, including MGISW Winter Memories (El Prado {Ire}), the dam of the $400,000 Street Cry (Ire) colt who fetched the second-biggest price of all weanlings yesterday. 

La Cloche had a Tapit filly in 2014–her first foal–and is back in foal to the Gainesway sire on an Apr. 12 cover. Asked who the mare might visit next spring, Solari said, “I don’t know; we’ll have to see. First, we’ll see the little one, then we start thinking which stallion.”