Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Sale Day 1 Picks

Plenty of exciting horses are scheduled to sell at Saratoga this year

Saratoga season is officially here, and with it the catalog for the Fasig-Tipton select sale, which will take place on August 7th and 8th this year. While the sale itself is still a few weeks out, and it will be a while before we get pictures and videos of these yearlings, I wanted to dedicate two posts to this sale rather than have to narrow down my selections even further.

Of course, in this sale every horse is conventionally well-bred and there are always really obvious pedigrees that a quick glance at the page will tell you all you need to know. In this first half of the select sale, we have half siblings to six G1 winners. I’m staying away from those for the most part (though I did have to talk about the linebreeding on one such horse), and trying to find horses with angles that don’t jump off the page quite so much.

I narrowed down my shortlist to highlight five horses from horses that will sell on day one of the two-day sale, and will be back the week before the sale with selections from the second day.

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Hip 118 - f. Constitution x Nina Fever (Borrego)

This is the half to a G1 winner that I just had way too much to say about to resist highlighting here. I won’t bore you too much with the details on the page - Nina Fever was arguably the best U.S.-bred daughter of her sire, who himself was a brilliant racehorse on his day (if you haven’t seen Borrego’s Jockey Club Gold Cup, it’s a performance worth watching).

Nina Fever comes from the legendary family 1x of La Troienne, though despite the obvious black type on the page this is one of the less prolific branches of the family - her 7th dam, Businesslike, did give us the excellent racehorse and broodmare Busanda, whose influence on the breed has been stamped via her son Buckpasser, but when compared to the descendants of other daughters of La Troienne, Businesslike’s branch of the family is a little on the lighter side. Having said that, a light branch of La Troienne is a strong branch of any other family, and Nina Fever is already the dam of a G1 winner in Nickname.

Offspring of Nina Fever have been very commercially popular - last year, her yearling by Into Mischief sold for $1.35 million at Keeneland September. She has had two foals that are not yet winners. One, by Stay Thirsty, was 0-for-2 in maiden special weight company, and is now a broodmare who has produced a winner in her first starter. The other is a three-year-old by Justify who finished second in his only start but has three straight works starting at the end of June, so could yet add to his dam’s tally of winners.

I love the choice to send Nina Fever to Constitution, and she sold for $500,000 at Fasig-Tipton November while carrying this foal. The cross of Constitution with Nina Fever creates linebreeding to the families of both Constitution’s sire, Tapit, and damsire, Distorted Humor. Borrego is from the same female family 9f as Distorted Humor, while Nina Fever’s second damsire Relaunch is a full brother to the third dam of Tapit.

Both of these stallions have seen success when returned to their own female family, and Constitution has also done well with this tail-female line - he has graded stakes winner Glass Ceiling from the Baby League branch of the family, plus three stakes placed winners from family 1x.

The cross of Tapit over Relaunch is solid enough, with 8% stakes winners from 387 starters, but Constitution takes that to a whole new level - the son of Tapit has had eight stakes winners in 31 starters out of mares carrying Relaunch (25.8%), including G1 winner Tiz the Law. Constitution has also had some success with mares carrying Borrego’s sire El Prado, with a stakes winner in 14 starters (7.1%).

The cross of Distorted Humor over Borrego has not had a stakes winner in four starters, but it’s appealing due to their shared female family, and the cross of Distorted Humor over mares carrying Borrego’s 7th dam Escutcheon in the first 8 generations has produced five stakes winners, including a G1 winner, in 74 starters (6.8% SWs). Moving that up to sources of Borrego’s 4th dam Smart Deb gives you a strike rate of 10.2% stakes winners from 49 starters, including Argentinian G1 winner Art Show, whose third damsire Logical is a half brother to the third dam of Borrego. Four of these five stakes winners came in South America, but Distorted Humor’s son Drosselmeyer has stakes winner Illusion Artist, whose third dam is the second dam of Borrego.