Wygods’ Colt Is Good for Charity

Marty Wygod and his wife Pam had made a deal before their fine-looking colt, a son of Storm Cat, was led into the auction ring at Keeneland on Tuesday. The majority of the proceeds from the sale, the Wygods decided, would go to Pam’s two charity trusts.

Wygod had estimated that the unnamed colt might bring about $3 million. Storm Cat is the world’s most expensive stallion, standing at Overbrook Farm in Lexington, Ky., for $500,000, and Tranquility Lake, the dam of the colt, was a dual-purpose stakes winner who was tough on both grass and dirt.

The reserve on the Storm Cat-Tranquility Lake colt was set by Wygod at $2.7 million. That’s the minimum a sales consignor expects for a horse; if the bidding stops at anything less, the seller is allowed to buy back the horse.

But when Sheik Mohammed’s John Ferguson and Coomore Stud’s Demi O’Byrne swung into action, the reserve on the Wygod colt was a moot point. As the bidding surged well beyond the $3-million mark and showed no signs of abating, Wygod turned to his wife and said:

“Any chance we could renegotiate that charity deal?”

Smiling, Pam Wygod said that a deal was a deal.

When Ferguson, on behalf of the Dubai sheik, bid $9.7 million, O’Byrne gave up. Even a well-heeled Irishman knows that he’s mismatched against a rival who lands at the Lexington airport with an entourage that travels in two private jetliners.

What Sheik Mohammed bought was the third-highest-priced yearling ever auctioned, behind the $13.1 million that Robert Sangster and partners paid for a Keeneland colt in 1985 and the $10.2 million that the sheik himself spent for a colt at the Lexington sale in 1983. Both of those horses were busts. The record holder, named Seattle Dancer, won two races and earned $152,413; the other, called Snaafi Dancer, never raced.

“Our colt is a great colt,” Marty Wygod said Thursday, “but we never imagined he would bring that much. We thought he had a chance to be the sales topper.”

Tranquility Lake has been bred to Storm Cat four times since her retirement from racing, but there’s no track record for her foals, because the oldest, a 2-year-old colt, is with trainer Bill Mott in New York and has yet to race. All three of Tranquility Lake’s offspring have been colts, and she’s currently in foal with what’s expected to be another colt that will be delivered early next year.

Next April, another of the Wygods’ broodmares, the champion Sweet Catomine, is expected to foal a filly whose sire was A.P Indy, the 1992 horse of the year. Commercial breeders prefer colts, who generally bring higher prices at auction because of their residual value as stallions. Before this year, 33 of the most expensive 41 yearlings ever sold had been colts.

The career of Sweet Catomine, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner last year, ended prematurely after her controversial fifth-place finish in this year’s Santa Anita Derby. The Wygods were criticized for running her, after Sweet Catomine had been secretly spirited away from Santa Anita for treatment five days before the race. After a hearing, the California Horse Racing Board dismissed charges against Marty Wygod.

“We needed to retire Sweet Catomine when we did,” he said Thursday. “If we hadn’t, there was a good chance that we would have eventually retired her unsound.”

The Wygods’ charities, which benefit needy people with their health care, will spill over into aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina, Wygod said.

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At the Keeneland sale, there have been the Storm Cat consignments, and then all of the other yearlings.

On Monday and Tuesday, seven Storm Cat progeny sold for $3 million or more. The 22 Storm Cat lots averaged $2 million a horse.

Storm Cat, who is 22, was bred to 109 mares during this year’s breeding season. Because of his age, he probably will be slightly less active next year.

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The Fair Grounds, the New Orleans track that was flooded and sustained damage to its grandstand after Katrina struck, will run a mini-meet at Louisiana Downs in Bossier City, La., said officials of Churchill Downs Inc., which owns the facility.

The transferred meet will open on Nov. 19 and run 37 days, through Jan. 22. The Fair Grounds had been scheduled to hold an 83-day meet. Some quarter horse dates at Louisiana Downs are being switched to Evangeline Downs in Lafayette, La. Louisiana Downs and Evangeline suffered no damage from the hurricane.

The Louisiana Derby, first run in 1894 and the highlight of the Fair Grounds meet, will not be run in 2006.

In recent years, Funny Cide and Grindstone used the Louisiana Derby as one of their preps before winning the Kentucky Derby.