Stephanie’s Kitten to Northern Farm

GI Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf winner Stephanie’s Kitten (Kitten’s Joy) was purchased privately by Northern Farm for $2.8 million. The mare, who RNA’d for $2.95 million at the Fasig-Tipton November Sale this week, was purchased privately Monday, according to breeder and former owner Ken Ramsey.

“Northern Farm and Mr. Yoshida bought her privately the morning after the sale. We sold her yesterday afternoon and she’s going to Japan. We put a reserve on her of $2,999,000 and she did not bring it. After the sale, they came and said they would pay $2.7 million. We told them no, it would take $3 million to buy the filly and we never heard back from them.”

Ramsey said he changed his mind after noticing that the results from the sale were slightly down, and decided that just shy of $3 million would be fair price for the mare.

“After I got up yesterday morning and looked at the results of the sale I saw that the highest price that had been sold out there was $3 million,” Ramsey explained. “The averages and everything were down and the sale is not going to be good as everyone expected. We had already made plans to go ahead and breed her. We brought her back to the farm and made some inquiries about Tapit, and made some inquiries about Dubawi. [Monday morning] the Japanese representative called and said they would pay $2.8 million for the filly. So I said that’s only $200,000 less than we thought, and the market is down, so I think it was a wise move to go ahead and take it. So we sold her for $2.8 million.”