Donato Lanni waited. And then he waited some more.
Hours passed—about 11 of them—May 20 at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale in Timonium, Md., before he was finally able to land his target.
Such is the life of a bloodstock agent.
But when the pen met the paper and Lanni hung up the phone with Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, Hip 544, a Violence colt was the property of Zedan Racing.
"This is going to be a sale like you're going to say, 'I remember when I was there. You know, top 10. I remember I was there." It's a crazy night," Lanni said of the sale that lasted nearly 12 hours.
But it was worth the wait, according to Lanni. That the colt didn't gallop didn't deter him or the other bidders from setting the second-highest sale price of the day, falling $50,000 short of matching the top.
"We love this horse," Lani exclaimed. "He sold himself, and he's just a specimen of a horse. He's a magnificent-looking horse, and he sold himself. ... It's hard to try to find a horse that looks like that."
Selling for $1,050,000, the chestnut was consigned by Top Line Sales and bred in Kentucky by Nasser Omihira.
The colt had entered a sales ring twice before. He sold for $280,000 to Exclusive Equine out of the Paramount Sales consignment at the 2024 Keeneland September Sale. Prior to that, he sold as a yearling at the 2023 Keeneland November Sale for $82,000 to Big Bear Bloodstock out of the Ballysax consignment.
Torie Gladwell of Top Line believed that if the conditions were different, Hip 544 and Hip 55, an Uncle Mo colt that sold far earlier in the sale for $975,000, could have attracted at least twice as much as they did.
"If they both were able to breeze at OBS and on good track and really demonstrate how special they really are, they would be in the $2 million range," she said. "I love the safety for the horses, but that's why I feel like the top buyers who are looking for those three best horses of the year, like Zedan, they need the breeze show and they aren't going to be able find those top, top colts and spend $2 million, $3 million, $4 million if we don't have a breeze show."
As for any consideration of waiting until next month in Ocala to sell the pair, Gladwell said, "I'm not going to complain with a million dollars. That was great. It was four times our money."
The mare, an unraced daughter of Street Boss, has three other foals of racing age, including two winners. But the real depth comes from the second dam, Rare Opportunity. Herself lightly raced—2-0-1 from 3 starts—finished third in the Black-Eyed Susan (G2). She is the sister to Adoradancer, the dam of grade 2 winner Saint Anddan; grand dam of millionaire Ganges; great grand dam of champion Gretzky the Great; and great grand dam to Diversa, dam of grade 1-winner Diversa, among others whose names have earned black type.
