Good Magic Colt Swiftest at OBS

A colt by Good Magic (hip 546) turned in the fastest furlong through three sessions of the four-day under-tack show for the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's March Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training when covering the distance in :9 3/5 Thursday in Central Florida. The bay juvenile, out of Hoppa (Uncle Mo), is consigned by Top Line Sales.

“He had prepped in :10 flat over here, so we knew if the track was back to its original condition, that he had every shot of going :9 4/5,” said Top Line's Torie Gladwell. “We really didn't expect the :9 3/5, but we knew he was extremely fast and he's a very efficient mover and tries really hard anytime we turn him loose.”

The colt, part of the Gladwell family's pinhooking partnership, was purchased for $190,000 at last year's Keeneland September sale.

“A lot of people liked this horse at the sale,” Gladwell said. “There were quite a few people that we knew were bidding on him besides us. He is a little light on page and he still brought a lot of money even with Good Magic not being really hot yet.”

Since the September sale, Good Magic has been represented by graded stakes winners Curly Jack, Blazing Sevens and Dubyuhnell, while his son Reincarnate, winner of the GIII Sham S. in January, is on the Derby trail following a third-place finish in the GII Rebel S. last month.

Top Line was also represented Thursday by a first-crop son of Maximus Mischief (hip 421) who worked a furlong in :9 4/5. The graded-stakes winning sire, who has 24 juveniles catalogued in the March sale, also had a filly (hip 456) work the furlong in :9 4/5 for the Dark Star Thoroughbreds consignment Thursday.

“We have quite a few of those,” Gladwell said of Maximus Mischief. “He's really stamping them, the four or five of them that we have. They have the big white flashy blaze, which I love. They are good sized and put together well. The thing that I love about them the most is their personalities. They are pretty chill, laid back Into Mischief-type horses who just go out and do their job. They have a very strong hind leg and good muscle.”

With three days in the book and one session still to go, Gladwell was asked to rate the consistency of the OBS surface this week.

“The first day was probably, I want to say, the best day for buyers to sit up there and watch horses go,” she said. “It was fair all day long. The second day, they thought it was going to be too fast because of the cold weather that came in that night, so they actually slowed it down for the first page. And there were a lot of aggravated consignors. They tightened it back up for the second and third pages. The first-page horses yesterday didn't really get a fair shake, but I think all of the people sitting up there watching had a pretty good idea. They could tell the horses were trying a little bit harder, laboring almost, on the first page. Today, they didn't change anything from yesterday after they started tightening it back up and there was definitely a huge difference today. It was maybe a little too fast. But if the track is fast and the horses come back good, then I don't care. Our horses are all coming back really good.”

Four horses shared Thursday's bullet quarter-mile time of :20 4/5: a filly by Goldencents (hip 469, video) consigned by Galvan Brothers Equine; a filly by Arrogate (hip 526, video) consigned by Tom McCrocklin; a colt by Valiant Minister (hip 531, video) consigned by Golden Rock Thoroughbreds; and a filly by Munnings (hip 558, video), also consigned by McCrocklin.

Asked if she expected demand for horses to remain high during next week's first juvenile sale of the season, Gladwell said, “The viewing stands are full, the parking lot is full. We are showing from 2 o'clock until almost 4. We have been showing non-stop, so I think it's going to be a great sale.”

The final session of the under-tack show gets underway at 8 a.m. Friday. The March sale will be held next Monday through Wednesday with bidding commencing each day at 11 a.m.