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The North American 2-year-old auction season has wrapped up, and the major summer race meetings at Del Mar and Saratoga, which traditionally unveil standout juveniles, are on the horizon. Many of this season’s top lots are in training with an eye toward those race meets – including the three top-priced juveniles of the season.

Leading the way this season was a $3.65 million colt by consistent classic sire Curlin, sold to Coolmore’s M.V. Magnier and undisclosed partners at the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream selected sale of 2-year-olds in training. The colt became the most expensive juvenile sold in North America since 2006, and was the highest-priced horse since Fasig-Tipton moved its selected sale to Gulfstream beginning in 2015.

“I don’t think anybody was really shocked,” Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning said of the high price tag. “You could sense and feel that he was a special colt.”

The colt, who is not yet named, is to be trained by Bob Baffert, but had not posted an official work as of June 20. He had worked a furlong in 10 seconds during the sale’s under-tack preview show at Gulfstream.

The colt is out of the winning Bernardini mare Achieving, who is the dam of English Group 1-placed stakes winner Arabian Hope and of stakes winner Counterforce. Counterforce is by Smart Strike, the sire of Curlin.

Achieving is a half-sister to Grade 1 winner Streaming and stakes winners Treasuring and Cascading. Streaming and Treasuring are both by Smart Strike. Achieving’s second dam is Grade 2 winner and blue hen Better Than Honour, the dam of Belmont Stakes winners Rags to Riches and Jazil, Breeders’ Cup Marathon winner Man of Iron, and Grade 2 winner Casino Drive.

A colt by perennial leading sire Tapit sold for $2 million to L.E.B., as agent for West Point Thoroughbreds, its associate Robert Masiello, and Siena Farm to establish a record price for the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s March sale. The New York-bred colt was already named Chestertown for breeders Chester and Mary Broman, who campaigned his dam, multiple Grade 1 winner Artemis Agrotera, as a homebred. Post-sale, the Bromans arranged to retain a one-third interest in the colt.

In a blog post on its website, West Point has announced that Steve Asmussen would train Chestertown, citing his long record of success with runners by Tapit. The colt shipped to the trainer’s staff in Kentucky after taking a few weeks in Ocala to unwind from the sales process.

“When he gets back to the barn after he trains, he wants to see everything that’s going on,” Asmussen said. “Like a lot of the Tapits, he is very intelligent and curious. Fortunately he also really enjoys and is aggressive about his job on the racetrack.”

The record price for a juvenile also fell at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale later in the season, with an Into Mischief filly fetching $1.8 million from Michael Lund Petersen. Into Mischief is a perennial leading juvenile sire and had a standout commercial season.

The filly has also been sent to Baffert, whose current runners for Petersen include multiple graded stakes winner Mucho Gusto, a 2018 Midlantic sale graduate.

“Everybody knew she was a lovely horse,” Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sales director Paget Bennett said. “Hopefully, Mr. Petersen is going to have another cover horse next year.”

The filly, who is not yet named, is out of the stakes-placed Kafwain mare Peggy Jane. She has been working at Santa Anita, most recently breezing three furlongs in 36.60 seconds on June 19, eighth best of 29 that morning.

Led by those three horses, a total of 13 juveniles sold for seven figures during the formal 2-year-old sale season from March to June in North America. Next on the list was a $1.65 million colt by Coolmore stallion American Pharoah sold at at Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream. He became the ninth seven-figure lot from his sire’s eagerly anticipated first crop. The colt, who is a half-brother to classic-placed Grade 1 winner Ice Box, was purchased by Coolmore, who has strongly supported American Pharoah.

A racetrack trainer has not been announced for the colt, who remained in training at Gulfstream following the sale and has now moved to Saratoga, with a pair of four-furlong works there.

The next-highest price for progeny of a first-crop sire on the season after American Pharoah was a $1.2 million colt by Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Liam’s Map, sold to Robert and Lawana Low at the OBS April sale. The Lows extensively use trainer Todd Pletcher, who also conditioned Liam’s Map.

Into Mischief finished a strong juvenile season with three other seven-figure lots: A $1.5 million filly sold to Larry Best’s OXO Equine at Gulfstream; a $1.3 million colt, now named Milano, sold to Team Casse at OBS April; and a $1 million colt sold to Coolmore at Gulfstream.

Curlin and Tapit also finished with other top lots to go along with their season leaders. Coolmore and Kaleem Shah teamed up for a $1.3 million Curlin filly at Gulfstream. The Keeneland April sale was led by a Tapit filly out of Grade 1 winner My Conquestadory, purchased by bloodstock agent Chad Schumer for Prince Sultan bin Mishal al Sau. The $1.3 million filly has been named Miss Tapirado.

The other seven-figure horses from juvenile sale season were a $1.2 million Medaglia d’Oro colt at Gulfstream and a $1 million Quality Road filly at OBS April, both to Narvick International, and a $1.2 million Pioneerof the Nile colt to OXO Equine at OBS March.

This story originally appeared on DRF.com.

The category is admittedly narrow, and the numbers do not exactly overwhelm, but if anyone had to name the most widely known trainer with the highest win percentage entering the weekend, chances are they’d be stumped:

Michael Dickinson.

Yes, that Michael Dickinson, the man who fashioned the Da Hoss miracle at the 1998 Breeders’ Cup, trained super stallion Tapit, and swept the first five places in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup when, in his raw youth, he asked horses to jump. Dickinson’s boutique operation at his Tapeta Farm training facility near the village of North East, Md., has sent out 13 starters this year. Six of them won, five others hit the board, and only one failed to bring home a check.

Dickinson did not run a horse until March 22, the second day of spring. Such a schedule aligns with his traditional British upbringing, which teaches that the late fall and winter months belong to the National Hunt circuit. From any angle, though, 6 for 13 for a small stable is not a bad run. On Saturday, he’ll have a shot to win another with the 5-year-old mare Bayberry, owned by John Teas, in the $100,000 Power By Far Stakes at Parx Racing.

On a mild midweek afternoon, Dickinson was busy turning out Bayberry and the rest of his string onto the generous farm pastures. He’s got about a dozen in racing trim right now, with more in the pipeline for owners like George Strawbridge and Charles Fipke.

“Three very promising fillies for George, in fact,” Dickinson said. “We get them all out every day, for as much as four hours. It’s good for their minds, their lungs, their digestion.”

Dickinson stepped away from training in 2007 to devote more time spreading the gospel of Tapeta Footings, the engineered surface that can be found at three North American racetracks – Golden Gate Fields, Presque Isle Downs, and Woodbine – with nearly 400 racing days among them in 2019. He returned to training in 2016, intent on applying new twists to old methods.

Still, if he never saddled another winner, Dickinson will have made a contribution to the sport that someday could save the game’s bacon. Prompted by the rash of fatalities at Santa Anita Park earlier this year, the idea of synthetic surfaces as an alternative to main-track dirt is making a comeback from their roller-coaster ride of a decade ago. Asked in a Thoroughbred Daily News interview if an engineered surface is among the options for future NYRA surfaces, CEO David O’Rourke replied: “Synthetics – the science behind it is a lot different than it was 10 years ago. It’s a product that’s improving. I’m very interested in discussing it.”

Dickinson began exploring surface technology in the mid-1990s. By the time this reporter paid him a visit in the spring of 1999, the trainer had laid a Tapeta galloping course around part of the farm’s perimeter.

“Safety is the most important thing,” was Dickinson’s message then, and now.

“If you protect the horse you are protecting the jockey,” Dickinson said. “Theirs is such a dangerous profession, so you must do all you can.”

Like so many industries with a large stake in the status quo, horse racing in the early years of this century had to be faced with doomsday scenarios before changes were considered. Spikes in equine fatality rates at major tracks were becoming alarming, even to the most hardened of racing veterans. Engineered surfaces were seen as a solution, and they might have been if the major players in the nascent revolution had embraced two basic concepts:

Consistency within a racing circuit, and uniformity of engineered surface.

Instead, there was Keeneland Association going into business with the British company that made Polytrack, while Churchill Downs, just down the road, refused to lose the dirt over which the Kentucky Derby was run.

By contrast, the California Horse Racing Board ordered that all the state’s major racing meets had to have an engineered surface to be granted dates. Then, the board turned the tracks loose with the unregulated mandate, triggering a gold rush of companies with competing products. At one point, in 2008, the five major California tracks had five different surfaces, including a lingering dirt course at Bay Meadows, which received special dispensation because it was about to close.

The crazy quilt allowed for no real collaboration in maintenance challenges, no meaningful shared data based on weather patterns, and no chance for horses to become accustomed to one surface before they were shipped to another. A decade later, Hollywood is gone, Bay Meadows is gone, and the last engineered surface still standing out West is the Tapeta main track installed by Dickinson at Golden Gate Fields.

Dickinson, ever restless, continues to fine-tune his surface. In addition to the three North American tracks, Tapeta can be found in such disparate locales as the island of Tasmania, the Godolphin training center in Dubai, and Newcastle Racecourse in Northern England, where Enable ran last fall before her victories in the Arc de Triomphe and Breeders’ Cup Turf. There is also plenty of Tapeta at Tapeta Farm.

Politics and economics conspired to end the first wave of synthetic surfaces, and now, with horse racing in the public’s crosshairs because of equine fatalities, politics and economics might bring them back. PETA is on the prowl. Tapeta may be part of the answer.

This story originally appeared on DRF.com.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Sadler’s Joy, winner of the Grade 1 Sword Dancer in 2017, has twice worked three furlongs this month at Belmont Park and is targeting a return to the races in the Grade 2, $250,000 Bowling Green Stakes at Saratoga on July 27, trainer Tom Albertrani said Thursday.

Sadler’s Joy has not started since he finished third behind Enable in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Churchill Downs last November. Albertrani said it was by design that Sadler’s Joy did not run at Gulfstream Park during the winter. He won graded stakes at Gulfstream in both 2017 and 2018.

“The plan was not to run him at Gulfstream but have him prepared for a mid-summer into the fall kind of campaign,” Albertrani said.

Albertrani said the mid-range goals for Sadler’s Joy are the Bowling Green, a race in which Sadler’s Joy finished third in both 2017 and 2018, and the Grade 1 Sword Dancer, a race he won in 2017 and finished sixth in last year.

Albertrani called last year’s BC Turf, run over yielding Churchill turf, one of Sadler’s Joy’s best races.

“He beat all of the horses that beat him throughout the year and then two fillies from Europe beat him, and it was on soft ground, which is not his preferred surface,” Albertrani said.

Sadler’s Joy, a 6-year-old son of Kitten’s Joy owned by Woodslane Farm, has a record of 6-3-6 from 22 starts and has earned $2.15 million.

Dyna Passer, a 3-year-old half-sister to Sadler’s Joy, won a 1 3/8-mile maiden race on May 23 here. Albertrani said he may run her in the Open Mind Stakes at Monmouth Park on June 30 with the hope of using that as a stepping-stone to the $750,000 Saratoga Oaks Invitational on Aug. 2.

“She looks like she could certainly be an interesting prospect,” Albertrani said.

This story originally appeared on DRF.com.