Ups and downs are a fact of life for just about everyone in the Thoroughbred business, with a noteworthy exception being the Mid-Atlantic region’s only major auction sales company, Fasig-Tipton Midlantic, which generally manages to go nowhere but up.

Gross sales, averages and numbers of $100,000-plus offerings all have risen astronomically over the past dozen years. Buyers from major racing centers throughout the country now regularly appear at the sales pavilion in Timonium, Md., hunting for future overachievers.

And this year’s Belmont Stakes weekend can only fuel the demand. In winning the Belmont Stakes, Sarava became the first Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sales graduate to capture a Triple Crown race. Purchased for $190,000 at the 2000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling sale by New Jersey-based bloodstock agent and perennial leading Timonium auction sales buyer Buzz Chace, Sarava was the fourth highest-priced offering at that sale, and now is well on his way to millionairehood.

Sarava’s Belmont Stakes would have generated more than enough bragging rights for one weekend. But, amazingly, it was one of four graded stakes won by Fasig-Tipton Midlantic graduates. Naturally, there’s a story behind every one of them.

Xtra Heat, the invincible filly whose $1,823,305 in earnings have provided Fasig-Tipton Midlantic with a million dollars worth of advertising, registered her 20th career stakes victory in the June 9 Vagrancy Handicap-G2 at Belmont Park.

The last time Xtra Heat passed through the auction ring was at the 2000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-year-olds in training sale, where Maryland trainer John Salzman bought her for $5,000. Running Tide ($50,000, 2001 May 2-year-olds in training sale) remained undefeated in five career starts while winning Delaware Park’s June 8 Leonard Richards Stakes-G3. Mandy’s Gold ($87,000, 2000 May 2-year-olds in training sale) annexed the Chicago Breeders’ Cup Handicap-G3 on June 8 at Arlington Park. The Virginia-bred has so far won or placed in six stakes from 11 starts, earning $307,044. A fifth Fasig-Tipton Midlantic graduate Maryland-bred Willa On the Move distinguished herself in the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes on June 7, finishing second to You.

Willa On the Move, whose name is identical to that of a Grade 1-winning Maryland-bred filly of the 1980s, sold for $47,000 at the 2000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling sale. If there is one key to the auction company’s decade-plus of growth, it would be Mason Grasty, a deeply knowledgable horseman who stepped into the role of Fasig-Tipton Midlantic’s executive vice-president in June 1990. Grasty’s philosophy is deceptively simple: We don’t sell horses he says.

The most we can do is bring the consignor and buyer together at a convenient time. The 2000 Eastern Fall Yearling sale must have been especially convenient, because it was the largest Thoroughbred auction ever to take place in the Mid-Atlantic region. A grand total of 566 yearlings were recorded as sold at that sale, and 19 of them brought $100,000 or more.

Still, Sarava’s breeder William Entenmann, who has long supported the market in the Mid-Atlantic region, had reason to believe that his colt would stand out, if only because he was the lone son of Wild Again in that sale.

Wild Again (by Icecapade) has proven himself of top caliber on the race track and at stud, but waited until he was 22 years old to have one of his offspring win a Triple Crown event. Standing at Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky., for an advertised $50,000 live foal fee, Wild Again has a lifetime yearling auction sales average of $81,675.

But Sarava’s yearling price tag was right on the mark 16 Wild Again colts were sold at auction in 2000, for an average of $191,563. The $190,000 sales price was a reasonably fair return for Entenmann, who purchased Sarava’s dam Rhythm of Life (by Deputy Minister) for $180,000 at the 1998 Keeneland November sale with the Belmont Stakes winner in utero.

And it was an outstanding deal for the buyer, Chace’s major client Ernie Paragallo, who turned around and sold Sarava at the 2001 Fasig-Tipton Calder February 2-year-olds in training sale for $250,000.

For pinhookers, Timonium has become a land of opportunity which is a bigger drawing card, for many people, than the remote prospect of uncovering a classic winner. And with good reason.

There’s more to the story of Chace and Paragallo’s adventures at the 2000 Eastern Fall Yearling sale. They also bought a Marquetry colt for $220,000, whom Paragallo decided to keep and race in the name of his Paraneck Stable. That colt, named Artax Too, made it to this year’s Belmont Stakes, but finished last.

With Fasig-Tipton’s Timonium sales becoming major league, maybe it’s time to launch serious plans for a new sales facility. Considered a state-of-the-art auction pavilion when it was constructed in 1965 (with heat and air conditioning among its widely touted amenities), the squareish cinder block building on traffic-congested York Road has little allure by today’s standards.

Then again, its plainness could be part of the attraction. People go there, not for the opportunity to see and be seen in the heart of downtown Timonium, but to buy and sell horses.

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