One in a Million (and a Half)
Meet the breeders who produced the record-breaking $1.5 million Louisiana-bred sold at the OBS Spring 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale
By Denis Blake
It’s no secret that Louisiana-breds are in demand. Thanks to a lucrative state-bred program and robust purses at the state’s four racetracks, buyers have been paying big prices for them at sales within Louisiana, in the southwest and all over the country. But things went to an entirely new level at the OBS Spring 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale on April 18 when a Louisiana-bred son of Tiz the Law brought a sale-topping $1.5 million, the highest price ever paid for a Louisiana-bred at auction.
OBS Spring 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale Topper, Hip Number 1094, a Louisiana bred colt out of Georgian Dancer by Tiz the Law.
As it turns out, the breeders of that record-breaking colt are somewhat new to that aspect of the industry, even though Lloyd Schwing, who with his wife, Laura, comprises Schwing Thoroughbreds, has been involved in racing since he was a boy.
“John Duvieilh (longtime Louisiana breeder and owner) is my cousin,” said Lloyd. “We were born about a month apart, so we are more like brothers. And I’m close with Keith Hernandez (LTBA president) and Stephen Landry (Louisiana State Racing Commission executive director).
“I’ve been in and out of racing pretty much all my life,” he added. “I grew up five blocks from the Fair Grounds. So I started going out to the track when I was like 10, and John and I were also going out to Jefferson Downs as kids. They used to say, if you wanted to find John and Lloyd, either look at the golf course or the racetrack. John and Keith started breeding around 1990, and I always wanted to breed and I always watched them, but I mostly played around on the racing side.”
Although Lloyd has enjoyed and been successful at owning racehorses in the past, he only recently got back into racing and then started breeding Thoroughbreds at the suggestion of his wife.
“My wife and I are both on our second marriages,” he said. “We both lost our spouses, and we had worked together previously and we reconnected over losing her husband because I had already gone through it. Next thing you know, we decided we really liked each other, and we got married in October 2022.”
At that point in time, Lloyd was not involved in racing.
“After I lost my first wife, the passion for racing just wasn’t there,” said Lloyd, who gave away the two racehorses he had at the time. “I said, ‘I’m done.’
“Later on, Laura and I started seeing each other seriously, and I’ve got a room set up at the house with all the win pictures and everything, and she looked at me and said, ‘Every time we come up here, your eyes light up.’
“She said, ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’ I should have said there’s a million reasons why we’re not doing this, but I took that as a green light.”
The Schwings, breeders of the record-breaking colt (Tiz the Law-Georgian Dancer), are somewhat new to the breeding industry
Lloyd and Laura Schwing with Georgian Dancer and her 2025 Gunite filly at Glencrest Farms.
The Schwings not only got back into buying racehorses but also breeding stock. They bought their first two mares under the name L and L Racing at the 2022 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale. One of those was Georgian Dancer, a stakes-placed daughter of Souper Speedy, for a price of $150,000. The unproven mare had just come off the track the previous December, but she caught the attention of both Lloyd and bloodstock agent Clay Scherer, the son of longtime Louisiana-based trainer Merrill Scherer.
“Clay was the one who pointed her out to us, and I liked that her broodmare sire is Riverman,” said Lloyd “She has a great family, and then when you put Tiz the Law on top of it and you look in the second generation there’s Tapit, Tiznow, Indian Charlie and Riverman, and you don’t have to be an expert to recognize those names. So Laura and I take a little bit of credit for it, but a lot of credit has to go to Clay for finding her at the sale.”
The Schwings then rolled the dice by sending Georgian Dancer to Tiz the Law, the Belmont and Travers Stakes winner and Kentucky Derby runner-up who entered stud in 2021 and didn’t yet have any runners on the track. Although they didn’t directly hit the $1.5 million jackpot, as the Schwings sold the resulting colt as a short yearling for $160,000 at the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale (and he sold again later that year in the Keeneland November Yearling Sale for $125,000), they do figure to be rewarded handsomely as they still own the mare, not to mention potential breeders awards once the record-breaking colt starts racing. The $160,000 price for the colt was also a win, as the Schwings were hoping to get $125,000 for him.
The unnamed colt was foaled on March 11, 2023, at Channon Farm near Doyline, Louisiana, and right from the start he stood out.
“Gillian (Taylor) foaled him out, and I tell you it was funny because we woke up to pictures of him and then she called me later that morning said, ‘Lloyd, this little colt is special.’ I’m looking at my wife and told her, ‘He’s eight hours old, how do we know he’s special?’”
2023 colt by Tiz the Law our of Georgian Dancer
“Gillian (Taylor) foaled him out, and I tell you it was funny because we woke up to pictures of him and then she called me later that morning said, ‘Lloyd, this little colt is special.’ I’m looking at my wife and told her, ‘He’s eight hours old, how do we know he’s special?’”
Sometimes you just know, and he is indeed proved to be special.
After being foaled in Louisiana, the colt made his way to Kentucky. The Schwings reside in Texas and also have a small farm in Simpsonville, Kentucky, where they spend considerable time. So the Louisiana-bred grew up about an hour from the Schwings’ farm at Glencrest Farm near Lexington.
“John Greathouse and everyone at Glencrest laid that foundation in him, and they did a hell of the job raising him,” said Lloyd.
Every breeder has high hopes for a young foal, and the Schwings were no different, but they certainly didn’t think he was going to set an all-time record for Louisiana-breds.
“He was a nice, nice foal but we were a little bit apprehensive in the beginning because Tiz the Laws weren’t really getting the attention,” said Lloyd. “But he just developed into a super specimen of a horse, and we are real proud of him.”
After selling him as a yearling, the Schwings followed the OBS sale with great interest, especially after the precocious 2-year-old posted a :10 flat breeze for an eighth of a mile as one of the fastest at the sale.
“We watched him breeze live, and it was really impressive,” he said. “This dude turned into a man!”
Of course, there are no one-furlong races, so what impressed Lloyd—and apparently many bidders—is the way the colt galloped out after the breeze.
“After he crossed the wire, he had the third-fastest gallop out, and when I watched him after I thought in my head, this could be a Derby horse,” he said.
With a quick breeze recorded, it was all but assured that the colt would bring good money on sale day, but the Schwings had no idea he would hit seven figures.
“We were sitting there in the car in a parking lot watching it on the phone, and we were kind of thinking maybe $300,000 to $400,000,” Lloyd recalled about sale day. “After he hit $300,000 and it just started going up a $100,000 each time, Laura and I were just looking at each other and shocked, is this really happening?
“Keith gave me a call after, and he told me the previous highest price Louisiana-bred was $750,000, so he didn’t just break the record, he crushed it.”
Unfortunately, there is not a yearling sibling of the expensive colt, as Georgian Dancer’s next foal, a Louisiana-bred colt by Maximus Mischief, died after being born with a ruptured bladder and suffering complications from surgery to fix the condition.
The good news is that the 9-year-old mare does have a New York-bred Gunite weanling on the ground, and the Schwings are excited about the future for that foal.
The current plan is to send Georgian Dancer to Liam’s Map for a 2026 foal, but the couple is not sure if she will foal in Louisiana, New York or Kentucky, as they have tried to rotate their handful of broodmares between the three states.
“Louisiana is definitely on the table,” Lloyd said about potential locations for Georgian Dancer to foal out.
Schwing said it’s a fluid situation, and they are just taking things one step at a time, especially considering the value of the mare and her foals could change dramatically if her Tiz the Law colts lives up to his billing.
The Schwings are thrilled that the colt sold to Spendthrift Farm, St. Elias Stable and West Point Thoroughbreds and reportedly will be sent to the sport’s all-time leading trainer by wins, Steve Asmussen.
“It seems like (the colt) gets better and better,” said Steven Venosa of consignor S G V Thoroughbreds LLC in an OBS press release. “As he was showing (at the sale), several people would come and look at him every day and every day he just really blossomed. The (Tiz the Laws), they’re running on dirt, they’re running on turf. They’re showing up at 2-year-old sales. And most importantly they are sound. To bring a horse of that size and work the way he did was very impressive.”
The Schwings have four racehorses on the track, including a part of 2024 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1) runner-up Vodka with a Twist, but they plan to concentrate on and grow their breeding operation moving forward.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the racing part of it, but Laura really fell in love with the breeding side of it, and so did I,” Lloyd said. “I’ve learned to cheer on sires, and I’ve learned that I’d rather try to breed the stakes winner than buy the stakes winner. After we run our course with the racehorses that we have in training, I think we’re just going to stick to breeding and expand our operation.”
For now, the Schwings are anxiously awaiting the racing debut of the special Louisiana-bred colt while they continue their new-found passion for Thoroughbred breeding.
“We’re really excited that he turned out the way he did and really excited for the state of Louisiana and the breeding program,” said Lloyd. “Hopefully he can go out and do something big, and then he can become a poster child to promote Louisiana-breds.”