Flatter Half to Capo Bastone Brings $500,000

A Flatter half-sister to GI King's Bishop S. winner Capo Bastone (Street Boss) brought $500,000 yesterday at September, the second-highest price for a yearling on the day. Consigned by Kitty Taylor's Warrendale Sales as hip 1515, the daughter of SP Fight to Love (Fit to Fight) was hammered down to Richard and Sue Masson's Green Lantern Stables. 

“We had our son Patrick and Jenine Sahadi looking at horses, and this was their favorite horse,” said Richard Masson. “She's a very feminine, classy horse. She'll be broken by Mickey Prager in Camden, South Carolina, and we'll take it from there.” 

Green Lantern uses several trainers, including Christophe Clement, Simon Callaghan, Rusty Arnold and Arnaud Delacour. Green Lantern currently has about 30 broodmares, “And with a physical like that, I think she'll eventually make a great broodmare,” said Masson. 

The Massons have been involved in racing for about 20 years. Their runners have included the GI Maker's Mark winner Karelian (Bertrando), MGSW Gotta Have Her (Royal Academy), and the South African champion Iridescence (SAf) (Caesour), who they campaigned with Team Valor International. 

“We've had a number of good horses over the years,” said Masson. “None currently, but we're trying to rectify that.” 
Warrendale was offering the Flatter filly for breeders Hargus and Sandra Sexton, Tom Bozarth, and Brandi and Steven Nicholson's Silver Fern Farm. 
The Nicholsons have been partnering with the Sextons on their breeding stock for the past five or six years, but it was an earlier partnership with Bozarth that brought the mare Fight to Love into the Sexton's broodmare band. Sandra Sexton, speaking over the speaker on Brandi's cell phone, gave credit to Bozarth for purchasing the mare privately. “This was a Tom deal,” she said. 
In addition to Capo Bastone, the Sextons and Bozarth bred the GSP filly C J's Leelee from Fight to Love. C J's Leelee is now the dam of the good 3-year-old C J's Awesome (Awesome Again). 
Fight to Love has a weanling full-sister to Capo Bastone and is currently in foal to the red-hot Super Saver. 
Steven Nicholson, who with his wife was on his way out of the sales grounds when the TDN caught up with them from the window of their Nissan Armada, said the Flatter filly was always a standout. 
“She was always a big horse, and she stayed healthy all the way through,” he said. “She always had a lot of presence about her and was just a nice filly.” 
He admitted the price was something of a surprise. “Realistically, when you look at Flatter commercially, you wouldn't have been thinking this kind of money. But as the sale went on, and we were getting so many looks, we started getting more confident as to how much money she might bring. We thought $250,000 to $300,000, but when you have these types of buyers, and they x-ray clean, there's no telling. At this level, the horses have to jump through so many hoops, and obviously she did that for us.” -LM