$10 million mare Havre de Grace paces robust mixed sale

LEXINGTON, Ky. – It was with a remarkably steady hand that Mandy Pope, the owner of Whisper Hill Farm in Florida, signed her world-record $10 million receipt for 2011 Horse of the Year Havre de Grace on Monday night at Fasig-Tipton’s November selected mixed sale. But buying the champion mare hadn’t been as easy as it looked, Pope said.
“I was nervous,” Pope said after making the purchase. “I’m still nervous. I’m totally overwhelmed.”
At $7 million, the bidding had paused long enough that Pope and her adviser, Chris Brothers, thought they had won the star of the sale. But the bidding took off again. By the time it reached $9 million – Ashado’s 2005 world record price for a broodmare prospect – even the most jaded auction-goers and hard-bitten horsemen in the pavilion were holding cell phone cameras aloft to record Havre de Grace’s extraordinary sale. At $9.7 million, asked to raise her bid, Pope and Brothers leaned together in the pavilion seats and considered, carefully but quickly, what to do next.