IN EARLY 2020 I wrote at length about Josephine Abercrombie following victory for Mucho Gusto in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup. At the time she was aged 94 and still running, with the assistance of her manager, Kildare-born Clifford Barry, the famous Pin Oak Stud.

On September 12th, Fasig-Tipton will offer the farm’s remaining broodmares, weanlings and some fillies of racing age at the company’s Newtown Paddocks in Lexington. The catalogue is available now to view online.

Separately the farm will have 14 yearlings sell at the upcoming Keeneland September Sale. These sales bring the curtain down on some six decades of Ms Abercrombie’s involvement with thoroughbreds.

Horses have always been a part of Josephine Abercrombie’s life. She was an accomplished rider in her youth, competing successfully on quarter-horses and Saddlebreds on her father’s ranch in west Texas. He was an oilman.

In 1949, she made her first foray into thoroughbreds and three years later she and her father acquired 1,348 acres in Woodford County, Kentucky and named it Pin Oak. The original farm raised Simmental cattle, grew tobacco, asparagus and other crops, and began the business of raising thoroughbreds. Success came quickly on the racecourse, and Grade 1 winners resulted.

New farm

In the 1980s Josephine focused on establishing a breeding operation to provide bloodstock for her passion of racing. She developed a new Pin Oak, near the original property, and transformed a 750-acre hunting preserve into a thoroughbred nursery from the ground up. She started standing stallions, which have included prominent sires Sky Classic, Peaks And Valleys, Maria’s Mon and the now 24-year-old Broken Vow. The latter stood this season alongside Grade 1 sire, and Pin Oak homebred, Alternation.

Ms Abercrombie has bred and/or raced more than 100 stakes winners. That list includes Eclipse Award winners Laugh And Be Merry and Sky Classic, as well as Canadian Sovereign Award recipients Peaks And Valleys and Hasten To Add. You can add to that Broken Vow, a homebred Grade 2 stakes winner, veteran of the stallion roster and sire of champions, and current stallion Alternation.

Overheard

Half of the lots catalogued for the September 12th sale are in foal mares. Graded stakes winner Overheard (Mucho Uno) sells in foal to first season sire McKinzie (Street Sense), who stood at Gainesway for $30,000. Her first two foals are winners and her filly foal by Triple Crown winner Justify (Scat Daddy) will sell immediately after her.

The penultimate lot in the sale is Grade 2 winner and Grade 1-placed Gold Medal Dancer (Medaglia D’Oro). Her first foal is a winner this year, and she is covered by Ashford Stud’s Munnings (Speightstown) who commanded $40,000 this year. The last lot in the catalogue is her colt foal, born on February 11th, by Candy Ride (Ride The Rails), the sire of Gun Runner. Also due under the hammer is Gold Medal Dancer’s unraced two-year-old daughter Dance Routine (Into Mischief).

Leading sire

Gun Runner is the leading first-crop sire in the USA in 2021 and he is the covering sire of Overheard’s winning half-sister Tell All (Broken Vow). Also for sale is the 17-year-old dam of Overheard, Whisper To Me (Thunder Gulch), and she is due in January to the first-season stallion Volatile (Violence) who stands at Three Chimneys.

Bound to attract lots of interest is Grade 3 winner Don’t Leave Me (Lemon Drop Kid) carrying to Spendthrift’s Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Authentic (Into Mischief). The mare will be sold just ahead of her second produce, a filly foal by Medaglia D’Oro (El Prado).

The sale opens with a filly foal by Ghostzapper (Awesome Again), the first produce of the stakes-placed Missive (Alternation). Missive’s half-brother, a colt of 2021, by Looking At Lucky (Smart Strike) is also catalogued, while other foals include sons and daughters of Flatter, Union Rags, a filly by Street Sense (Street Cry) out of a winning War Front (Danzig) mare, and a colt by Dialed In.

The catalogue can be viewed on www.fasigtipton.com