Saying the filly reminded him of grade 1 winner Kimari, Ben McElroy went to $400,000 to land a Munnings filly named Vitamunn at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale Sept. 20 in Lexington.
McElroy purchased Vitamunn for David Mowat's Ten Broeck Farm, which also campaigns Kimari, also a daughter of Munnings who won this year's Madison Stakes (G1) at Keeneland.
"She is the spitting image of Kimari," McElroy said. "We loved her—had to really stretch for her. … When she walked in the back ring she swelled up—very like Kimari when she runs in the big races."
Consigned by Lane's End, agent, as Hip 2163, the filly is out of the winning Awesome Again mare Vitae, who has produced three winners from as many starters. She was bred in Kentucky by Asiel Stable. Vitae is out of multiple stakes winner Bonita Meadow, who has also produced stakes winners Meadow Bride and Prairie King. She hails from the family of champion 2-year-old filly Tempera.
"This is the only one I wanted for Dave Mowat. We have tried on a few throughout the week and got beat. When I saw this filly yesterday, I said 'We have got to have this one,'" McElroy said. "Dave has been a really good client for a while now. We have had some really good fillies and he listens when I say these are the ones, and hopefully this is the next one."
The filly was the second-highest-priced Munnings yearling sold at the sale through Monday. A Munnings filly consigned as Hip 758 was acquired for $550,000 by Maverick/Siena out of the second day of selling for Book 2.
"She is a beautiful filly, young at that, being a mid-May foal," said Allaire Ryan, director of sales at Lane's End. "She was bred and raised by Gail Radke (Asiel Stable) out of Kansas, who has been a longtime friend and client of ours. They are homegrown and organically raised; it makes our job easy.
"The filly did it all herself, I can't take any credit," Ryan added. "I'm glad people appreciated her and her physical at this stage, I'm delighted for Gail. It's always been Gail's program to take yearlings to the sale and sell them, so we are conservative on our approach to reserves.
"I knew that the filly would do well today, I didn't know she would do that well though and the fact that she did is the cherry on top."
