Enduring Legacy, a half-sister to grade I winner Star Over the Bay sold for $215,000 out of the Four Horsemen’s Ranch dispersal Tuesday to top the second session of the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. Fall Mixed Sale.
The 5-year-old daughter of Saint Ballado, who is in foal to champion sprinter Speightstown, was purchased as the first broodmare for a new operation called Y-Lo Racing Stable, which has bases in both California and Florida.
Enduring Legacy was the top-selling mare among 10 offered by Four Horsemen’s Ranch, which was founded near Ocala, Fla. by F.C. Schwietert in the 1960s. The farm, which also produced such runners as grade I winners as Val’s Prince and Beldame Lear, earlier this year announced the closing of its family-run operation.
“She was the best-bred mare I had—she certainly had the most people looking at her,” said Four Horsemen’s Ranch manager Jeff Schwietert of Enduring Legacy. “I was hopeful that she would bring a little more, but the market is what it is. I think they got a good buy for their money.”
Y-Lo racing is comprised of partners Lolita P. Raquiza and Yvonne T. Cordova, southern Californians who recently left careers in nursing and insurance to form their new enterprise. They are assisted in the Florida half of their operation by former jockey turned bloodstock agent Juvenal Diaz, who once used Cordova’s father, Joe, as a jockey agent.
“I tried so hard to get the good ones yesterday and didn’t get anything,” said Raquiza, a former nursing director at the UCLA Medical Center. “So we decided to scrap the plan and go for the best one in the sale.”