Moulton Looks for More Timonium Success

A year ago, Susan Moulton enjoyed pinhooking success in the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sales ring when she sold an Into Mischief filly (hip 527) for $450,000 to trainer Linda Rice. Moulton had purchased the youngster just a couple months earlier, paying $110,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Florida Sale. The Texan hopes to repeat that quick success when she sends a pair of recently purchased juveniles through the sales ring in Timonium next week.
“We had a couple selling last year, so I was there to sell, not to buy,” Moulton recalled of the 2016 Florida sale. “I watched the whole breeze show because I was there and what else are you going to do and I liked the way she handled the track. I think the first horse at the sale was scratched, so she was hip 2 and the first one through the ring. When she was bringing $110,000, I thought, 'This is crazy–she is a nice filly, even if I have to take her and race her.' I thought with her size and with the popularity of Into Mischief, she would be a great one to throw back in the Fasig sale in Timonium. So we did that and it worked.”
Now named Littlefirefighter, the gray filly has won back-to-back outings at Laurel Park for Rice and Iris Smith Stable.
While Moulton may have had trouble convincing prospective partners about the viability of her juvenile flipping plan a year ago, her success in 2016 made the idea an easy sell this year. She partnered with Danny Pate to purchase a colt by Mission Impazible for $100,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream sale in February and again to purchase a filly by Uncle Mo for that same price at the Texas Thoroughbred Association's April Sale. Both will go through the ring at the Midlantic auction through the De Meric Sales consignment.
The Uncle Mo filly, who will sell as hip 44 next Monday, worked a furlong in :10 3/5 during Tuesday's first session of the under-tack show. She worked that distance in 11 flat at the TTA sale.
“She is a gorgeous filly with a huge throat,” Moulton said. “She is kind of immature, but she has a big long stride. She needs to grow a little bit more and we thought about OBS June for her, but I just like this [Timonium] track better and we'll have more trainers there.”
The gray filly is out of Pure Value (Value Plus) and is from the family of Madcap Escapade and Dubai Escapade.
Of the filly's price, which was third-highest at the Texas sale, Moulton said, “I really was surprised to get her for that, but we are in Texas and not everyone goes to that sale.”
Moulton's Mission Impazible colt is scheduled to breeze during Thursday's final session of the under-tack show and will sell Tuesday as hip 403. He worked a furlong at Gulfstream in :10 3/5 for consignor James Layden.
“I loved the way he went down the track,” Moulton said of the juvenile. “And I love James Layden, he's a great horseman and he has a good eye. His whole consignment was really nice, we chased all of his horses. We really liked this colt and liked the sire. He just handled the track really well. And he is growing and maturing.”
Racing has been a lifelong passion for Moulton, a native of San Antonio.
“My dad had a couple of broodmares and started running around the bush tracks down here in Texas,” she recalled. “The family loved it and, when we didn't have pari-mutuel in Texas, we went over to Louisiana. I grew up with it.”
Moulton and former partner Charles Weston founded Safari Bloodstock and she found herself getting more hands on in the business.
“I always rode,” she said. “I rode western and I rode jumpers. I started breaking our babies. So I went out and I started galloping them and then I started breezing them. But back then, we bought $10,000-15,000 horses and we hoped to sell them for $40,000.”
Her racing interest was put on hold after tragedy struck the family 10 years ago.
“My little son Will was killed in 2007 in a car crash in Maui, where I was a travel agent at the time,” Moulton explained. “So I quit doing the horses and formed a non-profit called the Will Smith Foundation, a children's foundation, and that's really what I've done the last 10 years until I met Wayne Catalano at a Breeders' Cup about four years ago and decided to get back in it.”
Since returning to the sport, Moulton has enjoyed success in the sales ring and on the racetrack, where she campaigned 2013 GIII Arlington-Washington Futurity winner Solitary Ranger (U S Ranger).
Moulton does maintain a small racing stable, but admits her heart is more into the buying and selling aspect of the game.
“I am racing a little bit, but pinhooking was what I always loved to do,” she said. “It's funny, because I think everyone always thought, 'Oh she's just a girl.' But I love doing it. And if it doesn't work out, there is always racing. Racing is exciting now. Thanks to American Pharoah, we're having some attention from the outside and hopefully we'll get some new owners and new money in. It's just an exciting time to be in racing and in pinhooking. So I'll race if they don't sell. I'm not afraid to do that. I have a lot of good friends who are trainers, so we'll take them wherever they need to go.”
Moulton is quick to say no when asked if she also breeds her own racehorses, but that could change in the near future.
“I bought a filly at [2015] OBS [March for $370,000] and named her Naylor (Afleet Alex) after my dad,” she explains. “She is a half-sister to Valadorna (Curlin), who ran second in the [2016 GI] Breeders' Cup [Juvenile Fillies]. She may be in a little stakes at Churchill this Saturday and because she is named after my dad, I may be in the broodmare business after that.”