The opportunity to buy into a filly from a well-raised, productive and active family nurtured by one of the world’s most successful breeders for nearly a half-century doesn’t come around often. When it does, and all the right players take interest and dig deep, the rewards are plentiful.
Such a scenario unfolded Tuesday night during the second session of the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale of selected yearlings when Hip 191, a filly by Medaglia d’Oro bred by Josephine Abercrombie’s Pin Oak Stud, enticed a prolonged bidding duel between two major players and sold for a sale-topping $1.45 million.
Mandy Pope, who is building a powerful breeding operation of her own in Ocala, outlasted a very stubborn B. Wayne Hughes to buy the filly, who was consigned by Craig and Holly Bandoroff’s Denali Stud on behalf of Pin Oak. Pope and Hughes, seated in the same section just a row apart, fired salvos at $100,000 increments from about the $700,000 point until the bidding reached $1.2 million.
Hughes shook off bid spotters several times before jumping back in, at each point requiring a little more time to reconsider. Pope was more bullish, not hesitating a bit lodging her bids while seated alongside her advisor Todd Quast and trainer Ralph Nicks. Hughes’ last bid was $1.35 million and after Pope responded with $1.45 million he shook off the bid spotter for the last time.
“I figured she was going to be around $1 million, so a little higher than I had hoped,” Pope said after accepting congratulations from Craig Bandoroff and Pin Oak’s Clifford Barry. “I knew if I wanted her I was going to have to go after it.”
The Medaglia d’Oro filly helped spark an extremely strong final session that helped bring final returns closer to last year’s results, and joined Hip 140, a colt by leading sire Tapit who brought $1.25 million early in the session, as the lone seven-figure buys of the two-day sale.
Barry watched the bidding duel between Pope and Hughes from inside the pavilion, well most of the battle at least.
“I closed my eyes after a half-million,” he said. “Look, the crew at the farm is there every day, working hard. Everybody knows it takes a special horse to make something like this happen. The guys that put in the work, everybody at the farm, they work hard every day to get one ready. This is special for them, too. I bet they’re doing backflips tonight. They were texting me here today, saying, ‘good luck, good luck, fingers crossed,’ that kind of stuff.
“Were we expecting it to turn out like this? By no means. This far exceeds even the dreams we had. And it’s even nicer to know she’ll go to a good home in Mandy Pope. We appreciate Spendthrift in there. It takes two people to make it happen.”
Barry said he and Abercrombie endured a stressful last month, after the filly out of stakes winner Whisper To Me, by Thunder Gulch, was catalogued for the boutique Saratoga sale.
A half-sister to multiple graded stakes winner and $369,029-earner Overheard from the family of Chris Evert, Six Crowns, Chief’s Crown, Winning Colors and Confessional, the filly showed all the signs back in Kentucky at Pin Oak that she’d be up to the rigors of the Saratoga sale. She was tested during presale showings at Denali’s consignment in Barn 7 across Madison Avenue from the main sales grounds.
Bandoroff said he’s never shown a yearling as much as his crew showed the Medaglia d’Oro filly, estimating she was brought in front of potential buyers 280 times from the time she arrived on the sales grounds until Tuesday afternoon.
“I’ve been doing this 25 years and I’ve never shown a horse as much as she showed,” Bandoroff said. “It was unbelievable. I kept teasing, that I’ve cut off scoping before, but I’ve never cut off showing before. But you can’t. I always tell people, especially up here, they’ve got to want to do it. The horse has to come up here, a girl’s got to act like a woman and a man’s got to act like a man. She was the queen from the first time I ever saw her and she was a queen up here.”
To read the rest of the Saratoga sale recap, download Wednesday’s digital edition The Saratoga Special presented by Keeneland Sales.
