BY CYNTHIA McFARLAND
OCALA, FL—The 2025 juvenile sales season gets rolling on Tuesday through Wednesday this week with the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company March Sale of Two Year Olds in Training with a total of 814 head catalogued for the three-day auction.
The catalog features 2-year-olds by all stallions currently occupying the top five rankings on the North American Leading Sires list—Into Mischief, Gun Runner, Vekoma, Practical Joke and Constitution. Popular sires Justify, Tapit, Nyquist, Curlin, Not This Time are also represented.
Entries also include juveniles sired by the top five stallions on the First Crop Sires list for the racing year 2024—Vekoma, McKinzie, Tiz the Law, Complexity and Volatile.
Florida sires represented include Awesome Slew, Adios Charlie, Gunnevera, Khozan, Rogueish, Tunwoo and Win Win Win plus first crop sires Leinster and the late Uncle Chuck.
“We’ve got an awfully good group of horses again this year. It’s always amazing how the consignors regularly up their game with the quality of horses. I think that’s proven by the number of international buyers we have show up,” OBS Director of Sales Tod Wojciechowski said.
There’s a good reason OBS is known as “The Two-Year-Old Source.”
In 2024, graduates of OBS 2-year-old sales had 238 stakes wins, 75 graded stakes wins, 15 Grade 1 wins, accounted for 31 Breeders’ Cup entries and four Eclipse Award finalists.
The 2024 OBS March Sale has produced multiple graded-stakes winners, including Grade 1-winners Scottish Lassie, who scored in the Frizette; and Del Mar Futurity-winner Gaming.
Many people may not remember that perennial leading sire Into Mischief is an OBS March grad. B. Wayne Hughes purchased the Harlan’s Holiday colt for $180,000 from the consignment of M&H Training and Sales as agent, at the 2007 sale.
“The new year always brings a little bit of uncertainty, but I think the recent success of the OBS 2-year-olds in training graduates at the highest levels is really going to help. It inspires confidence in buyers and I think it’s going to bring business back to the well. When people are successful, they like going back to the source where they bought those runners,” said David O’Farrell, general manager of Ocala Stud, which has participated in the OBS March sale from its inception.
At last year’s March sale, Ocala Stud consigned homebred Nooni, the $1.8 million sale topper. The Florida-bred filly by Ocala Stud’s Win Win Win was purchased by Zedan Racing Stables and the Bob Baffert trainee went on to win the Sorrento Stakes (G3) as a juvenile.
O’Farrell noted that Ocala Stud has 18 head consigned this March.
“About half are homebreds and the others are offered for clients,” he said.
Owned by Jimbo and Torie Gladwell, Top Line Sales ranked among the top five consignors at the 2024 OBS March sale, selling 21 head for $3,464,000. At the 2023 March sale, Top Line Sales consigned the sales-topper, a Good Magic colt, who sold for a sales-record equaling $2 million to agent Donato Lanni for Zedan Racing. Muth is now a multiple graded-stakes winner of $1,589,600.
(Muth’s Under Tack Video)
“I still feel like this sale has the select vibe. Most people put their biggest, fastest, strongest horses in this sale,” Torie Gladwell said.
“We have 37 consigned this year. It’s a really good group of horses—from freshman stallions to proven stallions—including three Uncle Mo colts.”
“Being a [OBS] shareholder, we focus mainly on the OBS sales and try to take most of our horses to the March and April sales. We support Fasig-Tipton sales, too, but OBS is in our backyard. For us, OBS is key. There’s a lot of overseas contingents who come to this sale to fill orders from all over—Korea, Japan and Europe. It’s nice to see those buyers come back every year,” she added.
Gladwell points out that weather can play a factor at the under tack shows in March.
“The track stays cool, but there are often strong headwinds. Buyers have to realize that does play into how fast these horses are performing,” she noted.
“One thing we did differently this year is we allowed consignors to enter horses as ‘gallop only’ and make that designation at time of entry. This was in response to requests by consignors and buyers. It appears on the catalog page, so people know it wasn’t ‘plan B.’ Most horses are breezing, but a handful are galloping. This is the first year we’re doing this,” Wojciechowski said. “They’ve always been able to gallop if they wish, but with the ‘gallop only’ designation on the catalog page, it gives buyers confidence that this was the plan all along with that horse.”
With sessions beginning at 11 a.m. EDT each day, Hips 1-272 will sell on Tuesday, March 11, while Hips 273-544 go through the ring on Wednesday, March 12. The sale concludes on Thursday, March 13 with Hips 545-814.
“We’ll continue to have internet bidding during the live sale. It came about during Covid and now we don’t know how we lived without it,” Wojciechowski said. Buyers can register for bidding approval on the OBS website here.
At the 2024 OBS March sale, 454 juveniles sold for a total of $65,239,100, bringing an average price of $143,698.
Check Florida Sire Stakes Eligibility: OBS March Sale
Return to the March 10 issue of Wire to Wire
