THE Keeneland April Two-Year-Olds in Training and Horses of Racing Age Sale returned to the calendar this week after a five-year hiatus and featured for the first time a selection of horses in training. Sales officials were pleased with the outcome and are hopeful of building on this year’s restart. Keeneland sold 67 horses for $6,083,500. The average was $90,799 and the median $40,000.

Keeneland held the April Sale from 1993 to 2014, and graduates include six classic winners: Belmont winner Palace Malice; Preakness winner and champion Lookin At Lucky; Kentucky Derby, Preakness winner and champion Big Brown; Kentucky Derby, Belmont winner and champion Thunder Gulch; and Kentucky Oaks winners Keeper Hill and Gal In A Ruckus. The 2014 auction produced champions Lady Eli and Roy H.

“We’re in a rebuilding process for this sale,” Keeneland director of sales operations Geoffrey Russell said. “Some people were willing to rebuild with us, and some people wanted to wait and see. We hope they saw and will participate next year.”

“Trade was very good,” he continued. “The racehorses were well received. Strong trade continued into the two-year-old portion of the sale. The Tapit filly was on everybody’s list, with a good update from Bourbon War and a great work she turned in during the Preview Show. Her sale showed the money is here for those kind of horses.”

The two-year-old daughter of multiple champion sire Tapit and Grade 1 winner My Conquestadory, mentioned by Russell, sold to Chad Schumer for $1.3 million to top the sale. This full-sister to recent graded stakes-placed Bourbon War is just the second foal of her dam who won the Alcibiades Stakes at two and was placed in the following year’s Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks.

During Monday’s Preview Show, which featured juveniles working over the dirt track and turf course, the sale-topping filly breezed a furlong in the co-fastest time of 10 seconds.

“She is a tremendous physical, she had a superb breeze and her gallop out was really strong,” said Schumer, who bought the filly for Prince Sultan Bin Mishal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia. “She is by one of the leading sires of all time and she has a massive pedigree. A Tapit with that kind of pedigree, you have to expect to pay that kind of money. She was an obvious choice.

“Once you get above a certain number it is kind of numbing. I have never gone that high before, so it has not sunk in yet. Hopefully, she will be a Grade 1 horse.”

SALE-TOPPER

Hartley/De Renzo Thoroughbreds consigned the sale-topper. “We shipped in about 10 days ago,” Dean De Renzo said. “The weather is a little cooler than Florida, and they thrive when they come here. She is a May foal, and we have taken our time with her. We wanted to target a sale that is a little later in the year. We hope that Keeneland continues having this sale because we love the timing and we love to sell here.

“Everybody is here – owners, trainers, bloodstock agents and farm owners who see a filly like that and think she will have a lot of broodmare value later after she races. That is a reason we brought fillies here, to attract breeders who are in this area.”

At $500,000, the top-priced horse of racing age was this year’s Grade 2 Fair Grounds Oaks third-place finisher Sweet Diane. Ina Bond’s River Bend Farm acquired the three-year-old daughter of Will Take Charge, who has been in the money in each of her five career starts. ELiTE consigned Sweet Diane who is from the family of champion Good Magic and Grade 1 winner Magical Maiden.

“This is a new direction for us,” River Bend farm manager Larry Weeden said. “We have been selling yearlings here for almost 30 years. We have a broodmare band of about 12 and try to focus on quality rather than quantity. Eddie Kenneally trains for us. We have high hopes that this will turn into something fun.”

Sweet Diane has 22 points on the Road to the Kentucky Oaks to rank 16th on the list of leading point earners. The top 14 will earn a spot in the starting gate for the $1.25 million Grade 1 Oaks at Churchill Downs on May 3rd.