Hank and Randie Nothhaft with Hannothenavigator · Fasig-Tipton, November 2024
Hannothenavigator sold as Hip 142, Barn 7, at the Fasig-Tipton November Sale’s “Night of the Stars” weanling session on November 4, 2024, bringing $450,000 from Sugar Hill Farm. Ballysax Bloodstock, through Carl McEntee, consigned him as agent for HnR Nothhaft Horse Racing LLC, cataloged under the stable name Living the Life ’24.
The price ranked him fourth of 84 lots sold that session, behind only a $675,000 Flightline colt (Hip 26), a $550,000 Justify colt named No Substitute (Hip 77), and a $500,000 Into Mischief filly (Hip 103). One lot, a Life Is Good filly, was bid to $725,000 but went unsold. Justify was the only sire with two lots in the session’s top four.
The session sold 84 lots for a $14,168,500 gross, a $168,673 average and a $142,500 median. At $450,000, he brought roughly 2.7 times the average and 3.2 times the median.
Standing for inspection ahead of the sale
Justify is undefeated: six starts, six wins, $3,798,000 earned. He broke the 136-year “Curse of Apollo” as the first horse since 1882 to win the Kentucky Derby without racing at two, then swept the Preakness and Belmont to complete the Triple Crown just 111 days after his career debut, the 13th Triple Crown winner in history. He was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2024.
He stands at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Versailles, Kentucky. His fee stood at $100,000 for the 2023 season, when this colt was conceived, and doubled to $200,000 for 2024, the headline figure of that year’s Ashford roster. By the time this colt sold, Justify was an established sire, not a freshman: his first two crops of racing age had already produced the Grade 1 winners Just F Y I, Aspen Grove and Arabian Lion in North America, plus City of Troy in Europe and Opera Singer at the top level in France.
Justify
Living the Life raced 35 times for 10 wins and $1,028,394, campaigning in both England and North America with five wins in each. She won the Presque Isle Downs Masters Stakes (G2) twice and the All American Stakes (G3), and in England took the inaugural All-Weather Championship at Lingfield by seven and a half lengths. She was second in the Great Lady M Stakes (G2) and third in the Santa Margarita Stakes (G1).
Hannothenavigator is her third Justify foal to sell as a weanling and her fourth foal of racing age. Full sister Living Magic (2021) is a stakes winner of the My Dear Stakes and Chelsey Flower Stakes, with $222,917 earned. Full brother Appeared (2022) sold as a weanling at the same sale two years earlier for $285,000. An older half-brother by Tapit, Silver Blur (2019, gray or roan), sold as a yearling for $300,000 to Tom Durant at the Fasig-Tipton Selected Yearlings Showcase in September 2020, where the press described him as “a very well-balanced colt with good size and correct,” and Henry Nothhaft was quoted on the mare’s produce record: “I couldn’t make it up… Everything fell into place.” Silver Blur went on to race nine times across three seasons (ages three, five, and six) for two wins and $30,262 earned.
Living the Life (IRE) · $1,028,394