The Daughter of Nodouble Brings $1.15 Million at Keeneland Sales

Jim Mamakos, a Pasadena attorney who gave up his practice five years ago to concentrate on horses, stood near a back door to the Keeneland sales pavilion Monday afternoon as an auctioneer asked for bids on a chestnut filly he had sent into the ring.

The bidding on this daughter of Nodouble started at $100,000 and progressed, mostly at $25,000 increments, beyond the $500,000 mark.

Ron McAnally, who trains some of Mamakos’ horses, stood in front of the owner and both men tried to appear nonchalant as the bidding reached $750,000. Inside, though, their hearts were fluttering.

The bidding got to $1 million and finally ended with Tom Jones, a trainer for oil-rich Arabian horse buyers, getting the filly for $1.15 million.

That’s not close to the record for a filly at the Keeneland sales--the same Arabs bought a daughter of Seattle Slew here last year for $3.75 million--but it was the second highest price anybody paid for a filly Monday as 144 blueblood yearlings were paraded before what proved to be a good spending crowd.

The biggest price of the day was $2.6 million, which was paid by Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid al Maktoum and his three brothers for a colt by Northern Dancer, and later matched by Three Chimneys Farm of Lexington for a son of Seattle Slew.

When the bidding on his filly stopped, Mamakos, 56, turned and left the sales arena for a hallway outside. Mamakos’ nonchalance was oozing out of him, and when his wife Jeannette and Jack Robbins, the veterinarian, congratulated him on the sale, it was time to act appropriately.

“Christmas comes in July sometimes,” Mamakos said, beaming. “Every once in a while, you hit a home run.”

In the last couple of months, Mamakos has epitomized the ups and downs of the horse business. In June, his good colt Fali Time, who was never the same after he got banged around by Gate Dancer in the 1984 Kentucky Derby, got sick and died. Now, several weeks later, Mamakos has walked out of a sales pavilion with more than $1 million in his pocket.

Mamakos wouldn’t say what he thought his filly was worth before she entered the ring. “There was no reserve (the minimum amount that a consigner privately tells the sales company it will sell a horse for) on her,” Mamakos said. “I thought she could sell on her own. I would have bought her back if she hadn’t reached a certain figure in the bidding.”

The Nodouble filly is a full sister--they have the same parentage--to M. Double M., a 4-year-old Mamakos colt who has recovered from arthroscopic knee surgery and won the Pretense Handicap earlier this month at Hollywood Park.

“Timing has a lot to do with it, and that win by M. Double M. helped,” Mamakos said. “But even without that, this was a good-looking filly, and she was checked by four veterinarians who found her completely sound.”

Mamakos owns Mazda’s Miracle, the dam of the million-dollar filly, and he bred her in ’83 to Nodouble, who stands for a $50,000 stud fee.

Nodouble, a top handicap horse who was voted the best in the country in some polls in 1969-70, is far down on the list of leading sires, and his average yearling has brought an average of less than $50,000.

The Mamakos filly is the only offspring of Nodouble being offered at either the exclusive two-day sale here Monday and today and a third-day sale of lesser horses on Wednesday.

“I’m glad to see Nodouble gain some acceptance and respect,” Mamakos said.

“I may breed Mazda’s Miracle back to him again next year.”

The Nodouble filly’s price was the highest Mamakos has gotten in seven years at Keeneland, although he and Tom Gentry consigned a horse, a son of Seattle Slew, who brought $2.9 million last year.

Mamakos and Gentry share a farm near here and Mamakos sold his home in San Marino to Gentry a couple of years ago before making the move to Pasadena.

Late Monday, Mamakos and Gentry sent a son of Spectacular Bid into the sales ring. He brought only $175,000, one of the lowest prices at the sale. There’s a limit to the number of presents under the tree when Christmas comes in July.