A Lemon Drop Kid filly brought the top price of $375,000 during phase I of the dispersal of the late Carl Lizza Jr.’s Flying Zee Stable Oct. 26 at Fasig-Tipton’s Newtown Paddocks complex in Lexington. The dispersal was held following the third and final session of the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall yearling sale.
Donato Lanni, the bloodstock services director for Hill ‘n’ Dale Farms in Central Kentucky, purchased the bay yearling for Leonard Lavin’s Glen Hill Farm in Florida.
“She’s a lovely filly,” Lanni said. “All the right guys were on her. Everybody waited for her. I’m happy to have gotten her from Flying Zee. (Lizza) was a great breeder and he did so much for the industry. It’s good to have one from such a good operation.”
The filly is a half sister to the winner Luxury Appeal (by Johannesburg), who finished second in the Sleepy Hollow Stakes at Belmont Park and the Restrainor Stakes at Aqueduct in 2010. Their dam, Salty Romance (by Salt Lake), captured the 2003 Boyd Gaming’s Delta Princess Stakes at Delta Downs Racetrack & Casino and was the runner-up in the 2004 Santa Ysabel Stakes (gr. III).
“She checked every box,” Lanni said of the $375,000 yearling. “She moved great. She did everything right.”
Lizza’s breeding program was based in New York, where big increases in breeders’ awards have been announced for next year and a video lottery terminal casino is scheduled to open Oct. 28 at Aqueduct. The filly and the other Lizza horses offered were registered New York-breds, but where the $375,000 yearling was born wasn’t much of a factor in the decision to purchase her, according to Lanni.
“When you like one that much it really doesn’t matter where they’re foaled,” he said.
Based on Fasig-Tipton’s calculations, the final figures for phase I of the dispersal included a gross of $1,236,700 for the 35 yearlings sold. The average price was $35,334 and the median was $15,000. The buy-back rate was 10.3%.
Hidden Brook consigned the dispersal’s horses.
“I thought it was a decent sale,” Hidden Brook managing partner Sergio de Sousa said. “It was a successful program and the horses were foaled in New York and then raised on a successful farm (Florida-based Ocala Stud) that had short notice to get them ready (to be sold). They looked good. The well-bred and mature horses sold well, and I bet there will be quite a few good racehorses out of the group.”
The New York-bred status of the Lizza yearlings “certainly helped to some point, especially for perhaps the less commercial kind of horse,” de Sousa said. “But there were some horses in there that you could have sold anywhere and they could have been bred anywhere, and they still would have brought good money.”
Lizza died in this past July at the age of 73. He raced 1981 champion 3-year-old filly Wayward Lass.