Keeneland September Q & A With Mark Taylor

Last month at Fasig-Tipton Saratoga, Taylor Made Sales topped the sale with a WinStar Farm-bred son by Medaglia d'Oro out of Coco's Wildcat. Taylor Made Sales will offer almost one-tenth of the Keeneland September catalogue, a full 440 yearlings. We talked to Mark Taylor about Taylor Made's partnerships with top breeders, and gave him the unenviable task of highlighting one or two special offerings this year.

LM: You work with some of the biggest breeders in the business and presumably that attention to detail and that customer service is what keeps them as clients. Up in Saratoga, you just sold the topper for WinStar. Can you talk about that relationship with WinStar and maybe touch on that horse in particular?

MT: I kind of look at Taylor Made like we're like Bloomingdales or Macy's. We have all the best brands. All the best breeders are here at Taylor Made, so you can find the product of all these great minds and great horsemen and women that are producing these yearlings and foals and mares. WinStar is a great example of that with our sale topper at Saratoga. We have been dealing with WinStar since the very beginning, actually before it was WinStar, it was Prestonwood Farm and we dealt with the Preston brothers. It has been a great relationship for a long time.

We always try to share in their mission. They want to set the bar breeding and they offer the vast majority of the horses they breed at public auction and for a long time, it took a lot of convincing for people to understand that they were putting their horses through the ring and they're like, “Oh, I can't buy off them. What if they're holding back their best?” But then you see all the good horses that they've sold. The proof's in the pudding, as they say. They sell great horses, they raise great horses. They've got a great team out there on their farm. From David Hanley to their managers on the farm, it's just great infrastructure and year in and year out, they're like an annuity. They just produce great product for us to bring to the market.

LM: You've had a very strong year at the track this year with your graduates.

MT: This year was a big year for us because we hit a huge milestone. We all know how difficult it is to be associated with one Grade I/Group 1 winner, but this year, Catholic Boy was our 100th Grade I winner. So it was cool to do that for great long time friends and customers, Fred Hertrich, John Fielding and they've got Rob Tribbett who's their GM and Shane Doyle's their farm manager. Just a great team and the late, great Dr. Phil McCarthy was their original partner who brought us all together and we miss him greatly, but it was a great testimonial to him and to their whole team what'd happened with Catholic Boy and we've got four kind of superstars going right now in Catholic Boy, Diversify, and Rushing Fall, and that program out at Watercress is responsible for three of 'em. The odds are just, it's such a tiny little sliver of the population that hit that barrier and for us to do it 100 times is really significant. But there again, it all goes back to our team and then our customers. It's not about us and all we did was bring these horses to the marketplace.

LM: September looks like another strong group for you. Talk about some of these standouts, maybe two in particular, both by Tapit.

MT: I think start to finish, we're loaded this year. But right at the top, we've got two Tapits here on the farm that I thought were worthy of mentioning. They're both not only great yearlings, but they're out of mares that retired here to Taylor Made off the track.

One is out of Dream of Summer (hip 857), and she has produced racehorse after racehorse. Creative Cause has turned into a great sire. We've got Destin and now Vexatious, a really nice filly, who just won a stakes race very impressively in California.

This is a super colt that is not only a great race prospect, but with that mare's ability to already throw a stallion, the sky's the limit.

Then, there's the filly out of Miss Macy Sue (hip 203). She was recruited to come to Taylor Made and the Albaugh Family didn't want to sell her, they wanted to breed foals. The first star she produced was Liam's Map. Super race horse. Breeders' Cup winner, phenomenally by Unbridled Song which was just an extra source of pride for us. Then she came up with a really nice filly in Taylor S, by Medaglia d'Oro, and then Not This Time, any kind of talent who ran second in the Breeders' Cup, and unfortunately retired after that. Now he's a stallion here at Taylor Made.

So that mare, Miss Macy Sue, she's just … You don't have to think about it. Every year, just pencil it in, she's gonna have the best yearling on the farm. I mean, just an unbelievable producer. This filly that we've got out here this year by Tapit is just a picture. You lead her out there and people don't even know who she's by and their mouth starts watering and then you say, “Well, you better get tied on because she's got the pedigree and the sire power to go with it.” But she's as good as we've raised here in a long time.