'He's a magnificent horse' - Quality Road colt tops Keeneland session at $2.5m

Chiquita and Jeff Reddoch of Stonehaven Steadings enjoyed a banner year at last autumn's Keeneland September Yearling Sale when the breeders sold four yearlings for over $500,000, including the Justify colt now named Nuclear for $1.55 million, from their family-run consignment.

When Chiquita saw racing powerhouses Terry Finley, Mike Talla and Bill Farish bidding on her homebred Quality Road colt on Monday at this year's sale, she could hardly contain her excitement.

The bidding was fast and furious for the handsome bay.

"There are a lot of good buyers that are well prepared with a lot of capital behind them," said Finley. "There are a lot of people that usually get what they want and when you have a number of people that usually get what they want, you have to pay a good price."

Cool and composed under the ring lights as his price climbed with every breath, Hip 97 fetched a final bid of $2.5m when the dust settled.

Stonehaven Steadings farm manager Aidan O'Meara beamed: "He's a magnificent horse, we're so proud of him. He's one of those special ones."

The colt, whose official buyers were the combined partnership of Talla Racing, West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford Racing through bloodstock agent David Ingordo, was the highest-priced individual ever bred and sold by Stonehaven Steadings.

"My husband and I are very excited," said Chiquita Reddoch. "Leah [wife of Aidan O'Meara] and Aidan do an awesome job. It's a good thing to happen to you and I wish it on many people. Especially when you work hard."

West Point Thoroughbreds and Talla Racing purchased Nuclear from Stonehaven last year.

Already the breeders of two Eclipse Award-winning two-year-old champions in Shanghai Bobby and Corniche, Stonehaven will be staying in as a partner on Hip 97 as he embarks on his racing career.

"The mare's been a producer for us, she's proven," Leah O'Meara said. "It's a great opportunity for us as a farm to get to that next level and produce stallions and be a part of a stallion's future."

The colt is out of the Latent Heat mare True Feelings, who was runner-up in the Grade 3 Schuylerville Stakes at Saratoga as a juvenile.

True Feelings, picked up for $210,000 by Stonehaven at the 2012 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, has now produced two million-dollar yearlings, having produced Hip 97's half-brother Nuclear last year. She is also responsible for stakes winner Feeling Mischief (Into Mischief) and Graded stakes-placed Royal Act (American Pharoah).

He was the second of three Quality Road yearlings to top seven figures as a filly (hip 8) from the immediate family of Gun Runner fetched $1.2m earlier in the day's session. Hip 176, a colt, went for $1.15m to BC Stables later in the sale.

"When they're pretty and they're handsome like [hip 97] is, I mean usually you have a good shot [to win races]," said Finley. "You go to the racetracks and you look at those stakes races, the Quality Roads are all big, pretty horses. This horse is the same and we just hope we get to Saturday afternoon with him."

And you can be sure that if the colt does find himself in the winner's circle on a Saturday afternoon, the Reddochs will be right there with him.

West Point Thoroughbreds, Talla Racing and Woodford Racing struck earlier in the day for another Stonehaven-consigned colt, hip 82, a Gun Runner colt out of This Cat Can Dance. Bred by George Waggoner, he went for $775,000.

West Point Thoroughbreds and Talla Racing also combined to buy two other yearlings earlier in the day for a total of $1.3m, which included the first horse through the ring, a Medaglia D'Oro colt that sold for $850,000.

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