Emma's Encore: $2,000 Keeneland Purchase, G1 Winner

Great look at Emma's Encore from the Paulick Report. This perfectly illustrates what Matt and I discussed on last week's Final Furlongs Podcast regarding a lack of interest in some horses due to veterinary reports.

The Fowlers sold Emma’s Encore as Hip 4203 at the 2010 Keeneland September sale, when Congrats was clearly going to be a better stallion than the average, for only $2,000. That was a major loss on all the expenses associated with raising and preparing a young athlete, but Fowler said, “the filly was very popular, and if she’d had clean x-rays she’d have sold very, very well, but most buyers just walked away” because the vet report wasn’t pristine.

Keeneland had her nowhere near the top of the sale (Keeneland groups the best horses into the first book, the next best group in to the 2nd book, and so on; for yearlings, each book is then ordered alphabetically by dam's name) so they clearly saw a problem.

Now Emma's Encore is no Paynter when it comes to breeding, but she is from Barbaro's female family and her dam and granddam both are high quality producers. So she's nicely bred, but not immaculately so. But still, $2,000? The average price for yearlings in her book was about $4,200, so she was significantly below average even for her "peers" in the sale.

Now I'm certainly not asserting that you can find this level of horse with any frequency in Book 13 for $2,000, but it is always great to see some outlandish success with low priced horses. It gives me a sliver of hope. Her sale page after the jump.

Emma's Encore was hip 4203 in the 2010 Keeneland September Yearling Sale: