Krupp Showcases Arcangelo Colt at Fasig-Tipton Saratoga

Meredith Krupp already loves Saratoga Springs, N.Y. She loves the town itself; she loves the enthusiasm of the people at the races, and she loves how fully the track is integrated into the community. The evening of Aug. 10 may give her yet another reason to love the upstate New York racing mecca: a horse that she co-bred is going through the ring that night at the 105th edition of Fasig-Tipton's The Saratoga Sale of selected yearlings. From the Eaton Sales consignment, Hip 34 is a bay colt from the first crop of Arcangelo (Arrogate) out of the Pioneerof the Nile mare Nile River Queen. Krupp purchased the mare in the name of Townley Park Bloodstock for $9,000 at the 2023 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Winter Mixed Sale. "I really bought her for my friend Colt Pike," said Krupp, sitting in a small office at the Eaton Sales barn on the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga grounds. "He and I really enjoy finding updates in a pedigree, and Colt said that the mare's half sister, a yearling Nyquist filly, had sold to Ciaran Dunne for $170,000 and was going to a 2-year-old sale." Krupp prides herself on sticking to her budget at sales, and she had decided that she'd go no higher $7,000 for Nile River Queen. "Thank God Colt was with me," she said. "The bidding hit $7,000, and he said, 'Come on, one more. What's $9,000 compared to $7,000?' So I hit it again and the hammer went down, and in April, her half sister Affirmative Lady won the Gulfstream Park Oaks. We didn't even buy her because of Affirmative Lady; we bought her for the half sister who became Cavalieri." Cavalieri was retired earlier this year after winning all five of her starts, including the 2025 B. Wayne Hughes Beholder Mile Stakes (G1). Krupp immediately bred Nile River Queen to Cyberknife and entered her in the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, where she was an RNA with a final bid of $75,000. "She's a smaller mare and she's not perfect up front, so commercially, she's kind of hard as a resale," Krupp said. "I think people are afraid to be the one to get the first foal out of a mare like that." Following that sale, Salley Pike and Tyler Clarke bought interests in the mare. Krupp was saving money to buy a farm (she has since purchased, with partner Lee Warren, the old Timber Town Farm in Lexington, renaming it Pine Branch Farm), so she was a little disappointed about the RNA, but she was also philosophical about it. "I'm in the game," she said. "I figured I'd take her home and see what happens, and when the first foal came out, I was like, 'Wow, he's pretty nice.'" That Cyberknife colt, bred in partnership by Krupp with Salley Pike and Washington Fork, sold for $170,000 at the 2025 Keeneland September Yearling Sale after drawing a final bid of $70,000, below his reserve, earlier that year at the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale. Now 34, Krupp has been buying and breeding mares for nearly 10 years. She's consigned horses and prepped them for sales; she's worked at breaking farms and in their offices. But she's never sold a horse at Saratoga. "I wanted to sell him here because he just has an amazing walk and is so classy, and I wanted to be able to show that off," she said of the Arcangelo colt. "I've never really even wanted to sell here because it's such tough competition, and if you don't do well, it's pretty lonely. But the September sale at Keeneland is such mayhem, and I didn't want him to be shoved into a later book where I couldn't showcase him. I think he deserves more time to be looked at. He's one of the classiest horses I've ever been around. I was just talking to Alberto, the guy who's showing him, and he said, 'It's like a driving a BMW when you walk him.'" Krupp has degrees in Spanish and marketing from the University of Kentucky, and while she lets her business sense guide her decision-making, there's also a sentimental attachment to selling this particular colt. "Salley's husband and Colt's dad, Al, had cancer, and he came out to the farm last July," she said. "It was the very last time I saw him, and he was sitting in the car and we were bringing horses out to him. He saw this colt, looked at me, and said, 'Hon, you're going to be just fine.'" Al Pike died in late July 2025. "We all miss him a ton," she continued. "He knew horses, and Colt's grown up in it. I know that Salley's really excited to be here, and I think Al would be really proud of us. He'd be thrilled with what this horse has turned into."