Laymon Hopes to Take Front Row at Keeneland January

Steve Laymon watched Goodnight Olive (Ghostzapper) clinch a likely Eclipse Award with her win in the GI Breeders' Cup F/M Sprint at Keeneland in November and the founder of the First Row Partners racing partnership will be back at Keeneland Monday to watch that mare's half-sister Katie's Keepsake (Medaglia d'Oro) (hip 55) sell with the Nursery Place consignment during the first session of the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale. Laymon purchased the unraced mare, in foal to Tiz the Law, for $65,000 at the 2021 Keeneland November sale. At that time, Goodnight Olive had y made just two starts for the First Row Partners, who purchased her for $170,000 at the 2019 Fasig-Tipton October sale.

“[Trainer] Chad [Brown] had told me Goodnight Olive had a lot of promise,” Laymon said. “She had had some ankle procedures done, but we knew she was very talented. So that's kind of why I bought [Katie's Keepsake].”

Of the then 7-year-old mare's price tag, Laymon said, “There was no guarantee that Goodnight Olive was going to be a Breeders' Cup winner. We had a plan and we had high hopes because Chad's skill at accessing talent is so good and he felt like she was a Grade I athlete, so I felt like $75,000 would have been a really good buy for her no matter, with her being by Medaglia d'Oro. We obviously got her for a little bit less than that.”

After breaking her maiden by 8 1/2 lengths in October 2021, Goodnight Olive romped home a nine-length allowance winner at Aqueduct in November. She resurfaced with a pair of optional-claimer scores in New York in early summer before making the jump to graded company where she had immediate success. The dark bay filly swept to victory in the Aug. 28 GI Ballerina H. before concluding the year with a 2 1/2-length win in the Breeders' Cup.

As the filly continued to improve, the partners began discussing what to do with her half-sister.

“We kicked that around a lot,” Laymon said of the decision to sell Katie's Keepsake. “We thought about keeping her for a while, but then with Goodnight Olive's success, we decided to go ahead and maybe make a profit.”

Asked if it was an emotional decision to sell the mare, whose daughter by Street Sense fetched $600,000 at last year's OBS April sale, Laymon said, “Well maybe not as much with her, but it will be with Goodnight Olive. I know some owners collect them and I tend not to be that way. I do have family that I keep that I've had a long time. But I try to make the right business decisions.”

First Row Partners still maintains the mare's short yearling colt by Tiz the Law, who likely be on offer later in the year.

“We will probably sell him in September,” Laymon said. “He's doing well. The reason this mare and the colt were not in November is that we were just not sure how Goodnight Olive would turn out in November. And so we decided to wait. We felt probably in the January sale, she would be a little more of a stick out.”

Laymon, an optometrist from North Carolina, traces his participation in racing back some three decades to Cot Campbell's Dogwood Racing Stable. While First Row Partners' primary focus is racing, Laymon and partners do maintain a small number of broodmares.

“I have five broodmares,” Laymon said. “Typically, I try to keep five or six. That's about my number. Some I have on my own and some I have with some of the First Row partners and some are First Row. This particular one [Katie's Keepsake] is a First Row. I actually bought her for myself and then I thought to be a good leader and a good manager, I should offer her to them. I didn't want to take advantage. And it's fun to have the guys involved. First Row Partners, there are just six of us, and we are scattered across the country, so it gives them a reason to follow the mare as well. A couple of my guys have never done any breeding before.”

He continued, “We buy only fillies, so sometimes you get into the mare business even though you don't want to. We have another Ghostzapper mare that we felt was a somewhat talented horse that never made it to the races, so we kept her. But we try to keep that number limited.”

Goodnight Olive could give Laymon his second Eclipse champion. He was co-owner of Dayatthespa (City Zip), who won the GI Breeders' Cup F/M Turf before being named the champion grass mare of 2014.

Asked what it would mean to add a second Eclipse statue to his collection, Laymon said, “Oh wow. I just never imagined. I started with Dogwood Stable probably getting close to 30 years ago now. Cot Campbell was such a good mentor and he could see I wanted more. Dogwood Stable had maybe only won one Eclipse Award and I was thinking about who was lucky enough to win one. And here we are with a strong chance of winning two. It's just hard to imagine. At the Breeders' Cup, I said there was one connection, besides myself, between Dayatthespa and Goodnight Olive and that's Chad. He's the connection.”

Goodnight Olive, meanwhile, is back in light training after getting a winter break in Florida.

“I went down to check on her in December with the rest of our horses right before Christmas,” Laymon said. “Chad had given her 45 days of just turn out. She's back in light training. It's a little soon [to have a target race]. But Chad is a second-half-of-the-year guy. I would think springtime. Probably the Madison at Keeneland would be a first target. If she's ready, I would think that would be the target because she's done so well at Keeneland. It just makes sense to start there if she's ready.”

The Keeneland January sale will be held Monday through Thursday with bidding beginning each day at 10 a.m.