Stakes winner Alter Moon brings $675,000 at Horses of Racing Age sale

The next-to-last horse through the ring at Monday's Fasig-Tipton Selected Horses of Racing Age Sale brought the day's second-highest price when Alter Moon was purchased by agent Steve Young for $675,000.

A late addition to the sale consigned by Taylor Made Sales Agency as Hip 574, the three-year-old daughter of Alternation was coming off a victory in the June 30 Azalea Stakes at Gulfstream Park to increase her record to three wins and two seconds in seven starts, with earnings of $128,255.

"She's a lightly raced young filly with a lot of ability that is coming into her own and she's going to go to New York and we will see how good she is," said Young, who purchased the filly for an undisclosed client.

Sale results

"She has a good pedigree on the bottom side, she's by a young sire. I think she can run a tick farther than she's been running but that might be getting ahead of ourselves."

As for future plans, Young said that the filly will be transferred from the barn of Jose Velez to that of two-time Eclipse-winning trainer Chad Brown.

In an afternoon filled with stakes winners and six-figure purchases, Young was pleased that Alter Moon's price was right on what he considered to be market value.

"I think the price was exactly what I thought she was going to bring," he said. "There were horses early in the venue that brought what I would consider to be retail so you are always wondering what is going to happen on one side of the fence when the market is strong. But on the other side, when you see a horse bring more than you think, sometimes that takes a buyer off a horse that you were going to bid on so, like most things, you can overanalyze it.

"It's a great opportunity. It's great for the people from Florida that had her and I think it's great for us, and hopefully she builds on what she's done. I think she's gotten better with racing, and we couldn't be happier with her."

As the price-topping entrant consigned by the Taylor Made Sales Agency, Marshall Taylor expressed his pleasure with the overall return and explained why the sale holds such particular value for his clients.

"We had a good sale," he said. "We had her and we've had a few other horses sell really well. We sold, I think, most of our horses. A couple big ones we RNA'd—Rich Mommy and King Humor— but hopefully they'll go back to the connections and maybe come back next year.

"I think it's important because it gives owners an opportunity to take money off the table. For example, Alter Moon, if he (owner) ran her who knows what she would go on to do, but it gave that owner an opportunity to put her in a sale midway through the year and get a good amount of money—and it gave the buyer an opportunity to race her the rest of the year and hopefully add on to that."

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