The action picked up in a big way during the second half of the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July yearling sale opener July 20 when a Rock Hard Ten filly and a Bernardini colt each sold for $350,000.
Agent Dennis Yokum signed the ticket for the Rock Hard Ten filly on behalf of Ernie Moody’s Mercedes Stable, which raced Rock Hard Ten in partnership with Madeleine Pickens.
Agent Richard O’Gorman, acting on behalf of John Ferguson and Darley, signed the ticket for the Bernardini colt. Produced from the group II-winning Lyphard mare Lyphard's Delta, the colt is a half-brother to graded stakes winners Indy Five Hundred and Delta Princess. He was consigned by Lane's End, agent.
A winner of seven of 11 starts, Rock Hard Ten earned $1,870,380 and won or placed in seven graded stakes, including a second in the 2004 Preakness Stakes (gr. I). He won the seven-furlong Malibu and 10-furlong Santa Anita Handicap (both gr. I) during the same Santa Anita meet, joining Spectacular Bid and Round Table as the only horses to pull off that feat.
Rock Hard Ten stands at William S. Farish’s Lane’s End Farm, where his 2009 fee was $30,000. Rock Hard Ten’s 2007 fee, in which this year’s yearlings were conceived, was $50,000. His first foals, 2-year-olds of 2009, already include stakes winner Long Lashes, who won the Balanchine Ballygallon Stud Stakes in Ireland June 26.
Consigned as Hip No. 147 by Bluewater Sales, the Rock Hard Ten filly was produced from the winning Seattle Slew mare Incredible Story. She was bred in Kentucky by Cobra Farm.
Bernardini, winner of the 2006 Preakness (gr. I) and Travers Stakes (gr. I), is also represented by his first crop as yearlings of 2009. He stands at Darley near Lexington, where his 2009 fee was $75,000, down from $100,000 in 2007.
O’Gorman said the $350,000 Bernardini colt will go to Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley operation. He noted that Darley has some Bernardini homebreds and that Sheikh Mohammed believes the stallion is throwing some outstanding individuals.