Sold for $4.5 Million, Estrapade Is Heading Back to the Track

Rival trainers have not seen the last of Estrapade.

After winning the $400,000 Yellow Ribbon Stakes at Santa Anita Sunday, the 5-year-old mare was sent to Lexington, Ky., to be sold at a breeding-stock auction. But on Tuesday, after buying Estrapade for $4.5 million at Keeneland, Allen Paulson of Encino said she will continue running next year and in fact might resume her racing career later this month at Hollywood Park.

“She’s in her prime and there’s no sense retiring her now,” Paulson said. “She can win a million dollars, and maybe an Eclipse Award. I’d think the Matriarch would be a perfect race for her.”

The $200,000 Matriarch Stakes will be run at Hollywood Park Nov. 24 and will give Estrapade a shot at a fourth major victory this year. Pebbles, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Turf Stakes against males, is the leading candidate in the yearly Eclipse voting for best filly or mare on turf, Estrapade’s chances having been weakened by the fact that she’s done all her racing in California.

Paulson, 63, who earlier this year sold his majority interest in the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. in Savannah, Ga., to Chrysler Corp. for a reported $636.5 million, has bought several horses for $1 million or more in the last three years, but none for as much as Estrapade.

Through a partnership in the Summa Stable, which consigned Estrapade to the Keeneland sale, Paulson already owned 20% of the mare. One of the other bidders Tuesday was Nelson Bunker Hunt, also a Summa investor who bred Estrapade through a mating between Arc de Triomphe winner Vaguely Noble and Klepto.

“Although I wanted this mare a lot, the $4.5 million was about as high as I was prepared to bid,” Paulson said. “If they had gone any higher, I might have let Bunker or somebody else get her.”

Paulson said that Estrapade will be returned to the barn of Charlie Whittingham, who has trained her since she left France and began her racing career in the United States a year ago.

Estrapade was not the sales topper at Keeneland Tuesday. Later in the day, Princess Rooney was sold for $5.5 million to George Aubin of Houston. Princess Rooney, bought for $38,000 as a yearling by Paula Tucker of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was last year’s champion handicap filly or mare and is in foal to Danzig, a young stallion who already has sired Chief’s Crown.

The record for a broodmare was set Sunday when Miss Oceana, in foal to Northern Dancer, was sold for $7 million to Peter Brant, Carl Icahn and partners.

The purchase of Estrapade concluded a flurry of heavy spending by Paulson, who bought lifetime breeding shares in Seattle Slew for $2.4 million and in Nijinsky II for $1.25 million.