Say you had squirreled away four and a half million dollars somehow, and decided to buy the best mare your money could get you. The 2018 Fasig-Tipton November Sale and day one of Keeneland’s November Sale offered opportunity galore, in the glorious presences of Stopchargingmaria, Lady Eli, and My Miss Sophia. I’m not ignoring the staggering price paid for Lady Aurelia by Barbara Banke at Fasig, $7,500,000, but the fact that she was buying out a partner indicates that she was paying only fifty to seventy-five cents on the dollar, in all probability. As we will never know the real price paid by Banke of Stonestreet Thoroughbred Holdings, and because Lady Aurelia is such a collector’s item with deep personal meaning for Ms. Banke, leaving her out of the four-million-dollar question seems to make sense.

Stopchargingmaria was acquired by Mandy Pope for $4.4million. Pope seems to have an endless desire for Tapit’s offspring, and the fact that this mare was in foal to him on an early cover certainly increased her value (Pope also bought her weanling filly by Pioneer of the Nile for $1.9million). A winner of over three million dollars, via her path through winning such Grade One races as the Alabama S., the CCA Oaks, and the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, Stopchargingmaria must be considered an important mare, and she was absolutely gorgeous in the ring. By Tale of the Cat, the only pedigree knock on her (and one must search hard) is that her broodmare sire is Montbrook, rather undistinguished.

When Lady Eli went through the Keeneland sales ring, she had the regal gravitas of queens and goddesses, which agreed with earlier assessments of her personality: she tolerates humans, as if they are beneath her, and is always all business. John Sikura of Hill ‘n’ Dale, Lexington, acquired her for $4.2million, and felt lucky to get her, as he was sure she should have brought more. In foal to War Front, that hottest of sires at this year’s sales, the auctioneer’s cliché of “she looks the part” feels appropriate here. Though her sire, Divine Park, has been sent to Korea after his stud career, with the exception of Lady Eli, failed to take off, her dams’ side, with Saint Ballado and Green Dancer as broodmare sires, offers exceptional possibilities.

Finally, there’s My Miss Sophia, acquired by Steve Young, agent, for an anonymous client at Keeneland just a couple of hours after Lady Eli went through the ring. Though she only won just over $600,000, and was only G1 placed, she is by Unbridled’s Song, an undisputed star among broodmare sires, and she too was in foal to War Front, for a superb cross. Young gave $4million even for her, and because the baby’s inbreeding to Danzig doesn’t seem to worry anybody else, it certainly won’t worry me.

For my four million dollars, however, give me Lady Eli, because of her intangible factors: her utter toughness. It’s not just that she won Grade One races at two, three, four and five, or that she was Champion Turf Female. It’s her battle back from life threatening laminitis, only to continue her destruction of competitors and maintain her competitive edge and desire to win, that makes her, to me, the best for my mythical money. If she can pass on to her offspring half of her toughness, she will make race horses. It’s the intangibles that fuel the dream, after all, as aren’t thoroughbreds the stuff that dreams are made of?

-- Roberta Smoodin