The Boersma family’s Flying Dutchmen missed out on buying graded-stakes winner Slammed, who sold for $1.1 million at the Fasig-Tipton November Sale Monday, but the operation was still able to get in the family when purchasing that mare’s half-sister Smash Ticket (hip 383) for a Session-Topping $600,000 out of the Legacy Bloodstock consignment Wednesday at Keeneland.

“We tried to buy the sister the other night at Fasig and got outrun there,” said agent Hunter Rankin. “We wanted to have some of that family. It’s a running family and we liked the mare physically. We are just really happy we got her.”

The 5-year-old Smash Ticket, who sold in foal to Nyquist, won the 2022 Weather Vane Stakes and was third in the 2021 GIII Sorrento Stakes. Her half-sister Slammed, who was purchased Monday night by Stonestreet, won the 2022 GII Thoroughbred Club of America Stakes. Both mares were campaigned by the partnership of breeder Brad King, Stan and Suzanne Kirby and Barbara Coleman. Smash Ticket followed her weanling by Jackie’s Warrior into the sales ring Wednesday. The colt was purchased by Todd and Shawn Hansen’s HX3 Incorporated for $30,000.

Flying Dutchmen has been building up its broodmare band to fill its recently acquired farm in Kentucky. Through two session of the Keeneland auction, it had purchased five mares.

“We are just trying to get some really nice, fast mares that were good on the track,” Rankin said. “We are trying to develop them both through here at the sales and also through the yearling program that we’ve got. These guys are really committed to the long-term and they want to breed to race and have a lot of fun. I think ideally they would like to get to 30 or 35 mares. We bought a farm just off of Old Frankfort and we are excited about that. So, we are trying to populate that a little bit.”

Also during the Wednesday session, Legacy Bloodstock sold a lovely filly from the first crop by Jack Christopher for $160,000, the top price for a weanling filly so far by the Grade 1-winning Coolmore stallion.

-edited from www.thoroughbreddailynews.com