A $550,000 Smart Strike colt brought the high price during the first half of the Sept. 16 session of the Keeneland September yearling sale. Bought by Bradley Weisbord, finance and stallion general manager for Ahmed Zayat’s Zayat Stables, the colt was consigned by Gainesway, agent.
“I was stretching my limit (on the price),” said Weisbord, the son of owner/breeder Barry Weisbord who was hired to work at Zayat’s corporate offices in Hackensack, N.J., this February. “(Zayat) said he was a must-have…he said, ‘Go get the horse,’ so I had to get the horse.”
Bred in Kentucky by Gainesway Thoroughbreds, the Smart Strike colt is out of the winning Deputy Minister mare Madame Thor and is a half brother to the stakes-placed Vindication colt Star Defender. Madame Thor, out of grade II winner Broad Dynamite (by Broad Brush), is from the family of millionaire Very Subtle, winner of the 1987 Breeders’ Cup Sprint (gr. I).
The Smart Strike colt was the second colt by that sire to bring a half-million or more during this year's sale. George Bolton paid $1 million for a Smart Strike--Ask Me No Secrets colt during the Sept. 14 session of the sale. That colt was consigned by Greenfield Farm for B.D. Gibbs Farm, agent.