Horse Racing

Kentucky Derby Consignor Standings Presented By Keeneland: Wells Bayou Continues To Pay Off For Whitman Sales


3/21/2020 – Wells Bayou with Florent Geroux aboard captures the 107th running of the $1,000,000 Grade II Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby at Fair Grounds. Hodges Photography / Amanda Hodges Weir

Christy Whitman knew she got a bargain when she landed a Lookin at Lucky colt for $18,000 at the 2018 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, and that proved true when she sold him for $105,000 the following year. What she couldn’t plan for was precisely how big of a deal her good deal would become.

From that successful pinhook, Wells Bayou has emerged as a shining point on the resume of Ocala, Fla.,-based Whitman Sales consignment, following the colt’s convincing victory in the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby on March 21.

Whitman can often be found in the back ring of the Keeneland September sale, hunting for soft spots in the marketplace, and she spotted one in a young Wells Bayou in Book 4 of the marathon auction.

“He was a little immature at the time, but he was very well-balanced and correct, and just had a great look and great walk about him,” Whitman said.

Buying out of the back ring isn’t for the faint of heart, with bids and transactions taking place based more on snap decisions, rather than going over a horse with a fine-tooth comb. Many future pinhook prospects are secured this way, and the fast pace is business as usual for Whitman. In fact, it plays to her strengths.

“Somebody asked me if I vet them, and I said, ‘No, I don’t,’” she said about scouting horses from the back ring. “I don’t have time. I’m a smaller buyer. We’ve clawed our way up over the past 13-14 years, and when you’re working with a small budget, it’s hard to go make a short list, and then you can’t get anything off that short list bought because you can’t afford them. It’s not a system that works for everyone, but it works for us.

“I think people are really hard on vet work on horses,” Whitman continued. “Buyers need to understand these are young horses, and a lot of this stuff is really minor. If you’ve got an athlete and he’s got something minor, don’t let that prevent you from buying him…I don’t want something on a piece of paper changing my mind when there’s a good individual standing in front of me. Let them tell you what they’re worth.”

Back in Ocala, Whitman described Wells Bayou as a model student, if one who looked like he’d be a later-maturing two-turn horse.

He was cataloged to last year’s Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. March 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale as Hip 568, and he breezed an eighth of a mile in :10 1/5 seconds.

“I thought it was a really good work for him,” Whitman said. “Even in March, I thought he was a little immature physically, and he was going to be better later on. He galloped out great, and we sold him pretty well, so we were excited about that. He wasn’t our most popular horse that we had in the consignment, but he had his fair amount of lookers.”

Wells Bayou sold to Lance Gasaway for $105,000 at the OBS March sale, and he was placed in the barn of trainer Brad Cox. Gasaway was joined in the ownership group by Clint Gasaway, Madaket Stables, and Wonder Stables.

From there, Wells Bayou has proven himself a capable horse under whatever circumstances are put before him. He’s run at four different tracks in his first five starts, and he came into the Louisiana Derby off a runner-up effort in the G3 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park in his stakes debut. The Louisiana Derby showed he could go long, impressing at a mile and three-sixteenths.

“At OBS March, he breezed on the all-weather track, he won his debut in the slop at Keeneland, and he’s since run at Churchill Downs, Oaklawn Park, and Louisiana, so he’s a very versatile horse, and that’s pretty cool,” Whitman said. “I think that’s going to bode well for his future, that he can run on a lot of different surfaces and any type of track, and obviously, he can get a route of ground.”

Wells Bayou would set up nicely for this year’s Kentucky Derby if the race would have stuck to its regularly scheduled first Saturday in May. However, if Whitman’s assessment of the colt when he was a sale horse in the back ring at Keeneland comes true, that could make him even more dangerous in the Derby’s new spot in September.

“That might just be a plus for him,” she said. “I just think the older he gets, the better he’s going to get, and it goes back to his sire, Lookin at Lucky. They get better with age, and I’m hoping that’ll be the case with him.”





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