Private Feeling's 2yo colt Lookin At Lucky is an Eclipse front-runner

The Live Oak team of owner Charlotte Weber, general manager Bruce Hill and advisors were present in Lexington, KY on Nov. 10 for the annual Fasig-Tipton November Sale, one of the top select mixed sales in the world. The team was looking for a unique offering to add to Live Oak’s elite band of broodmares back at the Ocala-based farm, and they found it in Hip No. 146 – 10-year-old Grade 1 producer Private Feeling.

By the emerging top broodmare sire Belong to Me, Private Feeling proved to be one of the most accomplished and hottest broodmare offerings in this year’s sale lineup, as her 2-year-old son Lookin At Lucky was fresh off a narrow runner-up defeat in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) after a gallant effort from the far-outside post position. The highly-regarded Lookin At Lucky was previously undefeated and is a multiple Grade 1 winner. For Private Feeling, it marked her second “A List” runner of 2009, as her 3-year-old colt Kensei had also won back-to-back Grade 2 stakes in the Dwyer S. at Belmont and Jim Dandy S. at Saratoga to prove he was one of the best sophomores in the country.

That level of production is rare from a broodmare, and it made Private Feeling one of the hottest commodities in Thoroughbred breeding. With a final bid of $2 million, Team Live Oak purchased Private Feeling – who is in-foal to Mr. Greeley making it a full sibling to Kensei – from the consignment of Taylor Made Sales Agency.

“Belong to Me is a good broodmare sire, and her produce record pretty well did it all for us; pretty is as pretty does,” Hill said. “She’s proven and she’s obvious, but hopefully we can keep that (success) up. With all due respect to everybody else, we thought that Lookin At Lucky was the best horse in the field (of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile) after the race. With his post position (No. 13), what he had to go through, and the way he closed, he appeared to be the best horse in there with all due respect to the winner.”

Lookin At Lucky would go on to flatter Hill’s comments by winning the $750,000 CashCall Futurity (G1) on Dec. 19 at Hollywood Park to give the brilliant colt his third Grade 1 win and fourth overall graded stakes triumph of his juvenile campaign – one that makes him a front-runner to be honored as an Eclipse Champion. The Eclipse Awards will be held on Jan. 18 in Beverly Hills, CA.

While 2010 breeding plans have not yet been decided for Private Feeling, the bay mare will join the ranks of Live Oak’s world-class broodmare collection and will take up residence at the storied farm in central Florida.

“We’re very pleased to have her,” said Hill. “We don’t know for sure (which stallion she’ll be bred to). We’ll kick that around a little bit before we make that decision. We don’t have that firmed up yet. She’s carrying a colt (based on fetal sex determination), but that didn’t have any impact at all on our buying her. Colt or filly, we would have been good.”