Team Live Oak adds another top Medaglia d’Oro filly
RSS Feeds Monday, September 21, 2009

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Live Oak Plantation added a nice prospect to the racing stable when it acquired the sale topper – a lovely filly by red-hot sire Medaglia d’Oro – at the OBS August yearling sale. It took less than a month for the Ocala-based operation to get another top daughter of Medaglia d’Oro, as Team Live Oak – led by Mrs. Charlotte Weber and general manager Bruce Hill – were on hand at the annual Keeneland September yearling sale in Lexington, KY to purchase Hip No. 570 for a session-topping price of $1.3 million during Day 3, Sept. 16th.

Medaglia d’Oro has emerged in 2009 as one of the hottest names in the stallion game, siring 11 stakes winners – 5 graded – from his first crop which includes the superstar filly Rachel Alexandra. His fillies have been particularly special, headed by the aforementioned Rachel Alexandra, who is arguably one of the industry’s brightest stars to grace the racetrack in years.

Live Oak has now added a pair of Medaglia d’Oro’s best yearling fillies offered at public auction this season, nabbing the top individuals at both OBS and Keeneland. Hip 570 is a gorgeous, strong-built bay filly out of the graded stakes-producing Unreal Zeal mare Beaties for Real. She entered the sale ring Wednesday with a tremendous presence, and the buyers quickly responded by making her the highest-priced filly in the sale.

“She’s a very strong, well-balanced filly. I would certainly say she’s elegant and very nice,” Hill said. “She’s what we’re looking for—an end-user, long-term investment.”

Consigned by Francis and Barbara Vanlangendonck’s Summerfield sales agency, the filly is a Florida-bred and was raised across town from Live Oak’s Ocala-based operation at Gilbert Campbell’s Stonehedge Farm South. She is a half-sister to Grade 3 stakes winners Friel’s for Real and Ryan’s for Real.

Although not the direct underbidder, among those bidding was a representative of Darley, which stands Medaglia d’Oro. Hill said the final price was as far as Live Oak was going to go.

“We were hoping it would be less than a million dollars but we’re not surprised,” Hill said. “We’ve got bruises from bidding against [representatives of Sheikh Mohammed] all year long and years past, so we anticipated that. We anticipated we would have to reach down to get her.”


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