Pair of $700,000 yearlings spark opening session of Harrisburg yearling sale
by Ray Cotolo
Auction action returned to the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, PA on Monday (Nov. 3) for the 2025 Standardbred Horse Sales Company sale. The opening session, with 170 yearlings cycling through the sales ring located in the belly of the complex, saw two yearlings sell in the $700,000 range.
Climatic Hanover, selling as Hip #94, earned the title of session topper at the slam of a $725,000 bid by Tor Hagmann. Hagmann purchased the three-quarter sister to millionaire Maryland for Kjell Anderson, whom Hagmann has worked for over the last few years. Anderson rose to prominence starting in 2021 when his Muscle Hill colt Rebuff won the Breeders Crown 2-Year-Old Colt Trot and then the Kentucky Futurity the year after – a redemptive win from his sixth-place finish as the odds-on favorite in the 2022 Hambletonian.
“We’ve still been buying nice horses every year,” Hagmann said.
On the yearling he bought for Anderson, Hagmann said, “She is a very good-bred thing; it’s a beautiful filly. I think it’ll be a great racehorse and hopefully a great prospect for a broodmare.”
Aside from direct blood to last season’s Dan Patch 2-Year-Old Trotting Colt of the Year Maryland, Climatic Hanover is out of the Father Patrick mare Crucial, who herself is a half-sister to Dan Patch and O’Brien Award winner Venerable. Hagmann also said the plan is to send Climatic Hanover to Lucas Wallin, who won his first Breeders Crown with Kjell Anderson on Rebuff, for training.
Andrew Harris emerged with another high-ticket item a few horses earlier when winning the auction for $700,000 on Hip #85, a Chapter Seven colt named Seven Pledges that Harris said was one of two horses that were “must take-homes.” The other — a filly named Sootie Hanover — went for $485,000, the fourth-highest price of the session.
“Bill [Pollock] said, ‘Get what you want, so if you want those two the worst, make sure you get those two,’” Harris said. “Then, we set prices on the rest and try to stay within those prices on the other ones. We were underbidders on a couple and there were a few we didn’t get our hands on, but those two were the two I said I wanted the most coming here.”
Seven Pledges is the first foal from the Resolve mare Clockwork Orange, who is a half-sister to last season’s Dan Patch 3-Year-Old Trotting Filly of the Year Allegiant, a million-dollar winner that has since raced overseas in Sweden as a 4-year-old.
“I didn’t think he would go that high; I was shocked,” Harris said. “I saw that Torgen [Hagmann] and all of those guys were bidding on him and, you know, he’s just a fantastic colt and the Chapter Sevens you can see today — they are paying for Chapter Sevens. It costs a lot to buy a Chapter Seven right now. He’s the best sire in the game right now, so you’ve got to pay for them.”
Harris and company acquired Sootie Hanover earlier in the day. Selling as Hip #27, the daughter of Bulldog Hanover is the third foal from the Captaintreacherous mare Shining Beauty, who is out of two-time O’Brien Award winner and Dan Patch 3-Year-Old Pacing Filly of 2012 American Jewel.
“I thought it was one of the best families and the individual herself, she was just amazing,” Harris said. “If you look at all the people who were the underbidders on her, they’re the people you want to see as underbidders on a horse like that. I didn’t want to pay that much, but it does make you feel good that other people are chasing her also for that much. It’s just one of those things, that you’ve got to pay a big price for a filly like that.”
The two high-budget yearlings, part of the total five Harris walked away with on Monday, continue an investment by Bill Pollock and Bruce Areman to specifically buy yearlings out of proven families often at any cost necessary. Last year, the team made Harrisburg history when buying the sale’s first million-dollar yearling in Cambridge Hanover, who himself is a three-quarter brother to Maryland and therefore a full brother to the 2025 session topper Climatic Hanover.
“The individual has to match the page and that’s why they are the big prices, because everybody can see the page and see that they are nice,” Harris said. “That’s what you want. Everybody can buy a Mustang, but if it doesn’t have a 5.0 engine then you’re not winning any races. The page is the engine and you have to see that the components for the engine are there. That’s what these pages prove – yeah, these pages can go fast and now you need the individual to match it.
“Unfortunately, when we like the individuals, so does everybody else and so they all sell really high. That’s just part of it. It’s still a crapshoot after that. We don’t know tomorrow if they are worth five dollars or if they will be worth a million. It’s hard to tell, but that’s the gamble of this business.”
After splashing onto the sales circuit with deep pockets and hunger to succeed, Harris also said that he and his team of Pollock and Areman continue to evolve their approach to complement the lofty investments they’ve already made with the budding breakthroughs some of their horses have made, most notably their Downbytheseaside colt Brandon Blvd who went for $425,000 last fall in Lexington but has since set a Canadian record when winning his Breeders Crown elimination as part of a campaign with nearly a half-million dollars in the holster.
“We bought a lot of fillies last year so we have future broodmares and stuff like that,” Harris said. “We had a really good year with the horses like Brandon Blvd and he’s a potential stud prospect, so now we’re looking at it like we’ve got a lot of fillies and so we need to add, hopefully, some of these trotting bloodlines that can maybe turn into studs, too.
“Eventually, down the road, that’s where the money is at. If you get one of those, it pays for everything we’ve ever done. The goal is to definitely hit on one of those and you end up with a superstar trotter and it pays for everything we’ve ever done in the game. That’s the goal.”
Between Harris’s two purchases and sales topper Climatic Hanover, one horse sold for $500,000 — Hip #152, a Gimpanzee colt named Command Center. Robert Lindstrom purchased the colt, the sixth foal from world champion Mission Brief, and will send him to Marcus Melander, who has trained every other foal from Mission Brief including this year’s Mohawk Million winner Apex. “Staying with the family,” Melander said.
MONDAY NUMBERS AND NOTES
The opening session of the Black Book Sale grossed $16,293,000 from 170 sold, down 1.6 per cent year-over-year, with an average of $95,841 – a 13 per cent decrease from 2024. Last year’s sale saw 150 horses go through the ring.
“I think it was a buyers’ market today, I really do,” said Dale Welk, president and director of operations for the Standardbred Horse Sales Company. “I think there were some great buys made today and I’m hoping some great things come out of it. Because that really helps the whole situation — not just the sale, but it helps all of our consignors and owners that sold with us, in the long run, it’s good for the buyer but it’s good for them, too. It’s good, in a way, for everyone, but it’s tough on breeders and owners now to sell them at a discount price, so to speak. It’s happened with everyone, probably in this building. They’ve sold some for $10,000 that’s won $500,000 or $600,000, then the next year they sell the brother or sister for $100,000. It’s one of those kind of things.”
Welk also noted the opening session showed that the middle market continues to appear absent from the purchasing, with the top-stock horses selling for expectedly high prices but other horses slipping through the ring at polar-opposite figures.
“It was a strange, strange day,” Welk said. “Talk about a rollercoaster… you’d sell one for $300,000 or $400,000, then the next five would sell for $10,000 or $12,000 and then we’d get another one for $500,000. It was a very weird sale, I guess.
“The middle market is virtually not there. There’s no middle; the middle fell to the bottom. Tomorrow, we’ve got a ton of real good Captain Coreys, so hopefully tomorrow will be okay. I hope, in the end, I’m not down 14 per cent altogether, but it’s one of those things… they’ve spent more than $100 million on yearlings already at other sales. It’s a little depressing, but it’s the market. We can only sell what we’re brought, and we can’t make people raise their hand.”
Session two of the Standardbred Horse Sales Company yearling auction will start today (Nov. 4) at 10 a.m. Hip numbers 181 through 559 will go through the ring.
