By Ryan Conley
Enduring Legacy, a half-sister to grade I winner Star Over the Bay sold for $215,000 out of the Four Horsemen's Ranch dispersal Tuesday to top the second session of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co. Fall Mixed Sale.
The 5-year-old daughter of Saint Ballado, who is in foal to champion sprinter Speightstown , was purchased as the first broodmare for a new operation called Y-Lo Racing Stable, which has bases in both California and Florida.
Enduring Legacy was the top-selling mare among 10 offered by Four Horsemen's Ranch, which was founded near Ocala, Fla. by F.C. Schwietert in the 1960s. The farm, which also produced such runners as grade I winners as Val's Prince and Beldame Lear, earlier this year announced the closing of its family-run operation.
"She was the best-bred mare I had -- she certainly had the most people looking at her," said Four Horsemen's Ranch manager Jeff Schwietert of Enduring Legacy. "I was hopeful that she would bring a little more, but the market is what it is. I think they got a good buy for their money."
Y-Lo racing is comprised of partners Lolita P. Raquiza and Yvonne T. Cordova, southern Californians who recently left careers in nursing and insurance to form their new enterprise. They are assisted in the Florida half of their operation by former jockey turned bloodstock agent Juvenal Diaz, who once used Cordova's father, Joe, as a jockey agent.
"I tried so hard to get the good ones yesterday and didn't get anything," said Raquiza, a former nursing director at the UCLA Medical Center. "So we decided to scrap the plan and go for the best one in the sale."
The only other six-figure sale recorded was the $105,000 given by Darrell and Lendy Brown's Stonereath Farm for Out with the Old, a 13-year-old Time for a Change mare offered in the Cashel Stud consignment that is in-foal to Peace Rules. The Browns indicated that they would take Out with the Old back to their Paris, Ky. farm and have her bred back to More Than Ready , a combination that previously produced the stakes-winning Portsea.
The top-selling weanling, a Mister Greeley colt that is a half-brother to grade III winner U Can Do It, went to James Culver for $85,000 out of the Perrone Sales consignment. Culver, who has been racing for about five years, recently started a new partnership venture in New York called Dream Team Racing Stables. Culver's associates, John and Carole Rio, will raise the weanling at their Caballo Grande operation near Ocala, Fla.
A total of 186 horses sold in the session for a gross of $4,040,000, yielding an average of $21,720, and a median of $12,000. During the corresponding session last year, 222 horses grossed $4,329,000 and an average of $19,500. This year's buyback rate of 28.5% was up from 21.5% last year.
"We held our own today," said OBS director of sales Tom Ventura. "Hopefully we can keep thing going. Mares the quality of the sale-topper always help, and any weanling with a hot stallion is selling well."
The last of three consignor-preferred sessions will be held Wednesday, followed by open session on Thursday and Friday.
Enduring Legacy topped second session of OBSC sale.
