Keeneland Horses of Racing Age Sale Selections

Highlighting a few interesting racing/broodmare prospects

After the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale wraps up this week, the Horses of Racing Age portion of the sale will take place. There are a total of 277 horses cataloged for this event, and today I want to take a look at a few of the fillies and mares being offered. I’m looking for horses that I believe can give connections the option to win races in 2024 and have residual value as a broodmare in 2025. To that end, I want mares from strong families who fall into one (or both) of two categories: either they have already earned black type, or they have allowance conditions left to run through. I prefer mares who have shown some degree of speed in their races, and those who have raced (and, ideally, won) at two, but those aren’t hard rules.

Keep in mind that this analysis does not take into account conformation, and is intended as a hypothetical exercise, not a suggestion to buy a horse. Having said that, here are a few horses that caught my eye in this sale, listed in order of preference.

Hip 4015 - Lil Miss Moonlight

There weren’t many horses in this sale that really checked every box for me, but this one did. I love the pedigree of this daughter of City of Light, a sire who just got the most exciting horse of his young career in Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Fierceness. I’ve written in the past about how I like the City of Light/Malibu Moon cross, as they share a mitochondrial haplotype and City of Light is linebred to Malibu Moon’s family 2s via Secretariat and Somethingfabulous. Lil Miss Moonlight is even more appealing from this perspective, as she herself is a member of that same family 2s.

Lil Miss Moonlight did not make the races at two, but debuted in January of her three-year-old season, finishing second in four consecutive races before breaking through with a win in a Horseshoe Indianapolis maiden special weight going 1 1/16 miles on the turf. She returned off that effort to finish third in Canterbury’s Curtis Sampson Oaks, picking up a black type placing, then was overmatched in the G3 Lake George at Saratoga. She has twice run an Equibase speed figure of 90 in her career, and as a daughter of the later-maturing City of Light could be expected to improve as a four-year-old. She has shown the ability to sit fairly close to the pace in her races, though closed from seven lengths back in her maiden win.

Not only does this filly have a black type placing, she still has all of her conditions as the winner of only a maiden race. Her dam just had a yearling colt by Oscar Performance sell for $310k at Keeneland September, and presumably is still producing. I think she could have a very nice season next year, certainly getting some allowance wins and possibly picking up more black type, and I love her prospects as a broodmare with the strong female family linebreeding throughout her pedigree.