Stakes Action

One reason to write this blog is that many folks might not believe my stories if they were not written down.

When I sat down to write my first post on May 31st, I wrote down a list of 7 sires I was interested in. At the top of that list was Dialed In. I thought he was an under-appreciated stamina influence as a grandson son of AP Indy, and he might have been even a better horse if he had not been trained by Nick Zito (sorry Nick).

One week later I selected a son of Dialed In as one of the 20 horses I “bought” at the Ocala sale. I gave each of the horses an imaginary name and explained why I selected them. I called this colt Improver and wrote this post on June 15th:

IMPROVER

Dialed In is kind of a unique sire to me. Usually I am looking at sires were recent results are bad, so they are undervalued, i.e. Bayern or Carpe Diem. Dialed In is the reverse, his results have been good and getting better. His stud fee was increased to $20,000 and the story is he has been attracting better mares. Dialed In is a son of Mineshaft, and a grandson of AP Indy. He was Nick Zito’s last good horse. I wanted to try one improving stallion.

#1019 was a Dialed In out of frightfully slow mare. Fancier never ran better than 75 at Delta Downs. I would actually prefer an unraced mare to one that was this slow. However the is bunch of pedigree. Bernstein (son of Storm Cat) is a decent broodmare sire, I love the Fu Peg as the 2nd dam’s sire. I especially love all the European distance pedigree under the 3rd dam. So a bad runner, but a solid pedigree, lets call this dam marginally average.

Mix in a fast work 21.0 for an April 18th foal, and I am willing to go to 4x for sure. The hammer actually fell at $47,000, or only 2.3x. Call me a happy camper with that price.

Peter Miller agreed, and was the buyer in the real world for one of his owners. This horse might not be that exciting, but he is a very solid value.

Let’s call him:

Quixote’s Improver

When the real buyer, Gary Barber, gave the horse a real name it was Get Her Number. He broke his maiden on the turf at Del Mar in August going 5f and then got 4th in a small turf stakes race going 1 mile at Del mar.

Today he is the co-second choice in the Grade 1, American Pharoah Stakes. The favorite is a $1,000,000 Starlight yearling purchase named Spielberg. Mr. Barber and I “paid” just $47,000 in Ocala.

Get Her Number has every chance to be a better dirt horse than a turf horse, since Dialed In is not really a turf sire. With a win today and this horse will one of the favorites in the Breeders Cup Juvenile.

If I told you I was going to pick the BC Juvenile winner out of the 1315 horses on sale at Ocala for under $50,000 you would have called me crazy. That’s why I am writing this all down.