BUYER’S next opportunity to secure one of Big Brown’s first crop is close at hand as Fasig Tipton prepares to host their all important 2011 Saratoga Selected and Preferred Yearling sales series beginning on August 8 in New York.

The champion galloper and Three Chimneys/Vinery freshman sire (2011/12) is represented by six yearlings at the twin sales including four at the main session (August 13 & 14).

As anticipated, Big Brown proved an instant hit at the recent (FT) July Yearling Sale with buyers fighting hard to secure one of the stallion’s debut progeny.
It was there that Big Brown’s first yearlings to meet the market returned an average of $130,000, almost double that of the overall sale figure – not an easy accomplishment in the stagnant USA bloodstock market.

“The July sale was always going to be an important marker for the stallion and from what we have seen, buyers are still as keen on his first crop now as they were when his weanlings topped the first season sire averages at sales earlier in the year,” Vinery’s Adam White commented.

Big Brown’s Preferred Yearlings draft is split evenly between colts and fillies with the quartet boasting highly commercial pedigrees to go with their commonly impressive physiques.

Lot 224 is a bay filly out of the former crack race mare Sugar Punch who won six of her seven starts at 3 highlighted by a pair of stakes win at Belmont Park.
Lot 254, the second of the two fillies, is a grand-daughter of the esteemed Chapose Springs who won two Grade 1’s in the States – including the Ballerina Stakes.

The first of the Big Brown colts to go through the ring at this sale is Lot 343, a bay like his father, and a half-brother to the Grade 3 runner-up, That’srightofficer.
Finally to one of the stand-out lots in the sale who wears hipsticker #396.
This colt holds obvious future Kentucky Derby aspirations being by one of the most comprehensive winners of the classic in history out of a mare by Smarty Jones who won the 2004 feature in dazzling style.
For good measure, both he and Big Brown were able to add the second leg (Preakness Stakes) of the Triple Crown.
This youngster’s pedigree also includes the 2007 Preakness winner and twice Horse of the Year, Curlin, who adds his considerable weight to a champagne pedigree.

“They are a really nice bunch of horses on paper and we know Big Brown throws lovely horses and the momentum that he takes into the sale after the July auction where he was the leading first season by average augurs well for next week,” says White.

“After this sale, all the focus switches to Keeneland in Kentucky for the September Yearling Sale where we are expecting some of his best yearlings to arrive.”