TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1008281
lot of mares, but you'll like the pedigree of every one; you'll see that they're high end. And we book them to some really nice studs. We might have a dozen to 15 mares, but they're going to be very well- bred, well-conformed animals, either with good racing records themselves or within their families. Pedigree is very important to us. Our current broodmare band is very well pedigreed. You'll see that the dam's sires are Storm Cats, Smart Strikes, etc. We also decided to target very proven sires and certain sires where we feel at the time of mating it makes sense to go to that sire." Being the breeder of Bodemeister helped put Audley back on the map, and so did selling his half-sister, who is by Smart Strike, at Keeneland September 2012 for $1.3 million. They then turned around and sold the dam, Untouched Tal- ent, for $5 million at that year's Fasig-Tip- ton Kentucky Selected Fall sale. Last year they made another statement buying two expensive, well-bred mares. Year after year, the goal at Audley is to get a little bit stronger, a little bit better. It is not easy being a breeder in Virginia in 2018. There is no longer any racing in the state, the great breeders like Rokeby Farm and Meadow Stable are long gone, and, after the death of owner Edward P. Evans in 2011, the assets of his Spring Hill Farm, the last high-volume breeder in the state, were sold at a dispersal sale. Joe L. Allbritton's Lazy Lane Farm is still another operation that no longer exists. Virginia will never again have the cache that Ken- tucky has when it comes to breeding. Kobayashi admits those can be obsta- cles to success, but he also knows that Audley has attributes that even the best and most historic farms in Kentucky have a hard time matching. "Yes, we are in a challenging position,