A Colt Named "Woody"

He wasn't the most expensive or best-bred horse in the Fasig-Tipton Florida select of sale of 2-year-olds in training. But he might have been the toughest.

The Stormy Atlantic - Deep South colt is so tough that he once, apparently, tried to eat wood. One day, when he was a yearling, the people taking care of him found a chunk about the size of adult pinky finger jammed into his jawbone.

Did he try to chew down a tree? Did he try to gnaw his way through a fence to freedom? Was he tired of eating grass? No one really knows.

The injury required veterinary treatment and was ill-timed, because it was right before the 2007 Keeneland September yearling auction. The colt couldn't eat normally, and at one point, his breeder, Mike Akers of Dapple Bloodstock, thought about scratching him.

But even though the dark bay or brown colt was a little on the thin side, he still brought $85,000 at Keeneland from Florida pinhookers Tony Bowling and Bobby Dodd. They pointed him for the Fasig-Tipton Florida juvenile auction, where he earned them a handsome profit when he sold to Fox Hill Farms for $610,000.

The colt's nickname? Woody, of course.

His second dam produced the winner Garifine, who, at $1.8 million, is the highest-priced 2-year-old in training ever sold by OBS.