As I read with interest Joe Clancy's Fasig-Tipton fall yearling sale wrap-up in the November edition, I was touched by the story of how Becky Davis had named a filly after something her daughter had said to her years earlier. That filly, How My Heart Works, has become a prolific broodmare -- topping the sale with yearlings in 2023 and 2024.
Her Nyquist colt was the most expensive in the 2023 edition of the sale on a $205,000 bid by Thorostock and Seth Morris Thoroughbreds. This year her City of Light filly sold for $165,000 to Parx Racing-based LC Racing and trainer Butch Reid.
In his November article Joe wrote that history had been made at Timonium when two yearlings out of the same mare topped the sale in consecutive years. This is, indeed, a signal accomplishment and it reminded me of a period a decade ago when Dixie and I almost pulled off the same double.
Before I tell that story, I want to say how greatly I admire Becky's achievement. To top any sale takes luck, horsemanship, wisdom and guts. Luck because we are all playing the genetic lottery every time we select a mating for any mare. Horsemanship, because how we care for our mares, deliver their foals, and raise and prepare those foals requires years of experience. Wisdom because, while many have data and information and some have knowledge, very few have the wisdom to evaluate the horse and the market and bring those two together at just the right time.
Most important is the guts you must have to bypass glitzier options in the yearling market while watching thousands of yearlings sell for hundreds of million dollars in Kentucky and Saratoga while you wait patiently for the first week in October. Believe me, this is torture. Becky Davis and her parents, Tom and Chris Bowman, have all those attributes in spades.
Our own brush with history occurred in 2010 and 2011.
I have written so often about our mare Christmas Strike that readers are probably sick of her, but I will never tire of writing about our "horse who changed everything." Our entire business was so inextricably tied to her career that it is almost impossible to tell stories of Charlton in the 21st century and leave her unmentioned.
We bought the daughter of Smart Strike and the Green Desert mare Christmas Gift for $10,000 in November 2001 in foal to Pleasant Tap and sold that colt, who became stakes-placed, at Timonium for $35,000. After a barren year, we sold her 2004 Holy Bull filly, who became stakes-placed, for $100,000. In 2006, after buying out our partner, we sold her Out of Place colt for $42,000 to Mark Reid. That colt became Double Down Vinman, a stakes winner of 20 races and $540,204.
After two more successful sales ($70,000 for a Lion Hearted colt and $65,000 for a Stormin Fever colt) we, for some reason, offered the mare at Keeneland November 2008. Sent into the ring, in foal to After Market, with a $100,000 reserve she failed to sell and we brought her back to Charlton where she produced a chestnut colt.
The After Market colt was a smasher from day one. The colt was from the first crop of that stallion, who had done all of his winning on the turf at a time when turf sires were considerably more suspect than at present. We knew he was a good colt but, as we had sold all of Christmas Strike's foals at Timonium, I don't recall ever discussing sending him anywhere else. The colt, beautifully prepared by Dixie and her team, went to the sale as, clearly, our best horse.
When selling at Timonium, at that time, you were really trying to attract an audience of two. Samantha Siegel's Jay Em Ess Stable and Ellen Charles' Hillwood Stable were the leading buyers of expensive yearlings for many years. Siegel had an entire team of advisors and Charles had the legendary horseman Rodney Jenkins at her side. As a seller, if you could attract those two, you were going to have a very good day. In 2006, Siegel's team had rejected Double Down Vinman as being too small. Four years later, I was happy to point out his 20 wins and half-million dollars in earnings.
Jenkins came to see the colt and then returned with Charles. They both admire big, beautiful horses and he fit their bill. By the look on Rodney's face, I could tell he was sold. I wasn't as sure of his owner. The night before he was to sell I got a call from the pinhookers who had bought Christmas Strike's first foal. They wanted to buy the colt before he went to the ring. Feeling cocky, I quoted a price of $125,000 thinking that was a premium. They elected to pass.
Sale day found me in Timonium dealing with numerous vettings while Dixie was in Pennsylvania Hospital where our daughter Carly was in labor awaiting the delivery of her first child. As Carly labored, Dixie and our son-in-law Justin watched on the computer as the After Market colt strode into the ring and became the subject of an intense bidding duel between Jay Em Ess and Hillwood, resulting in a sales-topping bid by Siegel of $250,000. I left Timonium shortly thereafter to drive to Philadelphia where I met Wren Charlton Overcash -- 10/5/10 will always be a holiday at our house.
While all that excitement was happening, Christmas Strike's weanling -- a bay son of Harlan's Holiday -- was happily cavorting in the fields at Charlton. I had always liked the Storm Cat line for the mare and Harlan's Holiday was by Harlan, a Storm Cat son totally proven in the stud. The following year, realizing that the mare had developed a following at Timonium, we again chose to stay at home with her colt and sell in Maryland.
Here is where the story diverges slightly from the tale of How My Heart Works. The Harlan's Holiday colt was a star in October, but he only managed to be the second-highest priced yearling at the 2011 sale on a $180,000 bid from Larry Karp's Barlar operation. Only a $200,000 Hard Spun colt from the Paramount consignment topped our colt.
Later that fall we sold Christmas Strike's Hard Spun weanling colt, bred in a foal share with Darley, for $195,000 at Keeneland November. Perhaps if we had hung onto him he might have topped the 2012 sale. As a consolation we did top that sale with a $300,000 Audley Farm-bred Malibu Moon filly out of Never Fail. The buyer? Ellen Charles.
