By Jessica Martini
Arkansas businessman Frank Fletcher, who has been a major factor in absentia at recent OBS sales, was on hand to personally sign the ticket at $800,000 to acquire a filly by Quality Road during Tuesday’s first session of the April sale.
“I’ve been buying colts down here for years and I decided I needed to get on the other side of the track a little bit and buy some ladies,” Fletcher said. “She looked very good.”
The dark bay filly (hip 95) is out of Betty Brite (Medaglia d’Oro), who is out of a full-sister to Tiznow. She was consigned by Eddie Woods and worked a quarter during last week’s under-tack preview in :22 flat.
Fletcher, whose business interests include the Fletcher Auto Group, purchased a colt by Into Mischief for $400,000 at last year’s OBS April sale and set a then-record at the June sale in 2015 when going to $575,000 for another son of the same sire.
“I haven’t been here personally in two or three years, but I’ve bought a lot of horses here,” Fletcher said. “I haven’t been here since they started remodeling, but I love Ocala. This is a great place and hopefully I’ll be able to buy two or three more horses at the sale.”
He continued, “We are excited. It’s always a gamble, it’s a gambling business. But it’s a fun business and I travel all over the country going to races–it’s what I do for fun.”
Bred by John Gunther, Eurowest Bloodstock and Celebre Investments, hip 95 RNA’d for $190,000 at last year’s Keeneland September sale. After the buy-back, bloodstock agent Pete Bradley purchased a 50% interest in the filly from Gunther.
“She just kept getting better all along,” Bradley said of the filly. “Eddie Woods and Angela did such a great job with her because she was backwards when we bought her. The frame was there and she had the natural talent, but they got her to be what she brought.”
Of the filly’s final price tag, Bradley said, “We knew she would sell well, but that was more than we had expected.”
Quality Road, sire of last year’s Eclipse champion 3-year-old filly Abel Tasman and champion 2-year-old filly Caledonia Road, was also represented Tuesday in Ocala by hip 127, a bay filly from the King’s Equine consignment who sold for $310,000 to Susan Moulton. —@JessMartiniTDN
For more, go to www.thoroughbreddailynews.com