Arriving at Windfields Farm by helicopter, famed Irish trainer Vincent O’Brien inspected the Maryland-bred yearlings offered for sale by the Chesapeake City, Md., farm and lingered most with a Northern Dancer colt out of *Lachine II. When the sale opened 10 days later, O’Brien’s principal owner Charles Engelhard, with partner Garfield Weston, paid $100,000 for the colt. The highest price for a Maryland-bred yearling prior to the sale was $80,000 for a *Nasrullah colt sold in 1956.
Two years earlier Engelhard had purchased Nijinsky II, trained by O’Brien and ranked the best racehorse in Europe, for $84,000 from the Windfields sale in Canada.
- Leematt, a 2-year-old homebred for C. Oliver Goldsmith and his wife Jean, won his first two starts in a week at Delaware Park by a combined 14 lengths. The gray colt was from the first crop of the syndicated stallion Turn to Reason, who stood at the Goldsmiths’ Longwood Farm in Glenwood, Md.
Named for the Goldsmiths’ longtime employee Leroy Matthews, Leematt was out of Sun Rondeau, the dam of stakes winners Red Monk and Uncle Willie M., both who also stood at stud at Longwood.
- For the fifth consecutive year, Maryland ranked fourth in the nation in foal production, behind Kentucky, California and Florida. In 1968, 1,269 foals were produced in Maryland, compared to Kentucky’s 3,825. Virginia ranked fifth with 996. Other regional states were New Jersey (347), Pennsylvania (265), South Carolina (166), West Virginia (68), North Carolina (56) and Delaware (18).
- Woodlawn Farm in Maryland, developed and operated for years by Walter Edgar and his family, had been transformed. “In some ways, the property has changed beyond recognition,” reported Snowden Carter after a visit. “In others, it was still Woodlawn Farm.”
Becoming part of the city of Columbia, the property – which included the main house and the barn which was once home to Prince Dare and other Woodlawn stakes winners – was now the Columbia Horse Center, an equestrian facility and riding academy offering lessons, camps and shows.
