By Jessica Martini
My Limit (Wagon Limit–Piney Woods, by Valid Appeal), the dam of recent GI La Brea S. winner Birdatthewire (Summer Bird) was taken out of the Keeneland November sale two months ago, but she is expected to keep her engagement at the first session of the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale next Monday. Still, the decision to sell the mare almost didn't happen, according to co-owner Ralph Kinder of Alliance Bloodstock.
“We went ahead and entered her in November,” Kinder confirmed. “I said, 'We have to enter her just in case Birdatthewire jumps up and wins a Grade I, it would be crazy not to sell her.' We didn't sell her in November and we pushed her to January. We had actually already sent the e-mail in to scratch her and then [Keeneland Director of Sales] Geoffrey [Russell] came out after she won the La Brea saying that she was in the sale. So I told Billy Murphy, my agent, 'Let's go ahead and sell her.' She was already in the catalogue, but she was scratched.”
Kinder, who co-owns My Limit with music manager Erv Woolsey, first became involved with the mare when she was offered at the 2011 Keeneland January sale. She sold in foal to Mineshaft to Rusty Roberts for $10,000.
“Rusty Roberts and I were at the sale and we were looking for mares in foal to Mineshaft,” Kinder said. “He bought two of them that day and we flipped and I got her. I bought her for a client I had at the time–Lynn Jones had her.”
The mare's Mineshaft colt sold for $50,000 at the 2011 Keeneland November sale and for $140,000 at the 2012 Keeneland September sale.
My Limit's second foal bred by Jones was Birdatthewire. The filly RNA'd at the 2013 Keeneland January sale and Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July sale before selling for $23,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October sale.
“We bred her back to Summer Bird [in 2012], but she lost that filly and we bred her back to Into Mischief,” Kinder said. “I bought her for Erv and I around that time–in January 2013.”
In foal to Into Mischief, My Limit RNA'd for $35,000 at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky February sale, but with the exploits of Birdatthewire, the mare was soon to garner plenty of attention.
A maiden winner at Churchill Downs in November 2014, Birdatthewire put herself in the running for the 2015 GI Kentucky Oaks with wins in the GII Forward Gal S. and GII Gulfstream Park Oaks. It was about that time that Kinder and Woolsey started thinking that their expected long-term investment might make a tidy profit in the sales ring.
“I started getting a lot of calls after Birdatthewire won the Forward Gal,” Kinder said. “Erv said he would give me half of her if I wouldn't sell her. So that's when I said, 'Ok, let's sell her.'”
Kinder and Woolsey, whose clients include country music star George Strait, own approximately 40 mares in partnership.
“We breed everything to race,” Kinder said. “We will buy young mares every year and sell them back in November carrying their first foals off the racetrack. But we don't buy anything that we won't keep for a broodmare.”
My Limit, catalogued as hip 163, sells in foal to Giant's Causeway through the consignment of Bill Murphy. Kinder thinks the 15-year-old mare will be well-received.
“I don't think we'll have a problem selling her,” he said. “I think we'll probably see what we want to get out of her with a March cover to Giant's Causeway.”
The Keeneland January sale gets underway Monday morning at 10 a.m. and continues through Friday.
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