We Speak Horse Racing
From the Track to the Sales Ring: Keeneland’s November Sale Follows the Breeders’ Cup Spotlight
When the racing ends at Keeneland, the business of racing begins. Three days after the track hosts the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, Keeneland opens its 83rd November Breeding Stock Sale on Tuesday, Nov. 3, with nine sessions running through Nov. 11 — and the catalogue keeps growing.
Keeneland announced Thursday that five horses have been supplemented to its November sales, lifting the Breeding Stock Sale catalogue to 3,407 horses, with 268 cataloged in the elite Book 1 that opens the auction at 1 p.m. ET on Nov. 3. The new additions are headlined by Dothraki Sea, an 11-year-old daughter of Union Rags in foal to champion Flightline and the dam of Grade 2-placed Mc Vay, and a 50 percent fractional interest in Stellify, the multiple Grade 3 winner who set a course record at Churchill Downs and romped in the Kentucky Downs Ladies Marathon (G3).
The wider catalogue reflects the changing of the guard in the stallion ranks: it includes the first mares in foal to Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan and champions Citizen Bull, Fierceness, Sierra Leone and Straight No Chaser, along with the first weanlings by Preakness winner Seize the Grey, Belmont winner Dornoch and champion National Treasure. A standalone Horses of Racing Age Sale follows on Nov. 12, capping a fortnight in which Keeneland is the center of the Thoroughbred world on the track and in the ring.
We Speak Horse Racing
Blink and You’ll Miss Them: Englishman, Shisospicy and Ways and Means Headline the Breeders’ Cup Sprints
Championship Saturday at Keeneland will pause for breath exactly three times — and each pause lasts about a minute. The Breeders’ Cup’s sprint divisions, the Sprint (G1), the Turf Sprint (G1) and the Filly & Mare Sprint (G1), bring together the fastest horses in the world, and this year’s editions are loaded.
The $2 million Sprint drew 19 pre-entries and is expected to fill all 14 starting gates for the second straight year. The horse they all have to catch is Englishman, Cherie DeVaux’s 3-year-old sensation whose lone defeat came in the Pat Day Mile (G2) and who has otherwise dominated his generation in the Woody Stephens Stakes (G1) and H. Allen Jerkens Memorial (G1). He faces older horses for the first time, with T O Elvis and Forego Stakes (G1) winner Hymn — trained by Ron Moquett, who won this race at Keeneland in 2020 with Whitmore — among the dangers. Last year’s winner, Bentornato, is sidelined and will not defend his title.
On the grass, champion female sprinter Shisospicy returns to defend her Turf Sprint crown for Jose D’Angelo despite having raced only once since last year’s Breeders’ Cup, while the Filly & Mare Sprint revolves around Ways and Means, whose 5 1/2-length Ballerina Stakes (G1) romp on Aug. 29 makes her the standout as trainer Chad Brown chases a record fourth victory in the race.
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