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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
It was an earlier-than-usual morning for trainer Mark Casse's team April 1 as they welcomed Arkansas Derby (G1) winner Sandman to Churchill Downs just after 4 a.m. ET to begin his preparations for the $5 million Kentucky Derby (G1).View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Mark Stanley had a fair idea what must have happened when hearing a sudden cascade of message alerts as they drove along. “Based on, nobody calls to tell you a horse ran bad,” he says wryly. “We were out with our grandkids, so I'd taped the race. And then my phone just starts exploding. So I knew he must have won, even before we got back and watched it. Obviously I have nothing to do with him, now, but we've enjoyed following him a lot more than I thought I ever would, watching somebody else's horse. But that's what's fun about this whole business. Those 20 or 30 guys texting about the race, it's like a team, everybody rooting for everybody else.” And, in fairness, Stanley does still have skin in the game. As a first foal, Owen Almighty's success in the GIII Tampa Bay Derby is a valuable boost to his dam Tempers Rising (Bayern); and any breeder is going to enjoy the ride, once a colt starts being measured out for a blanket of roses. The GI Blue Grass Stakes will be a crucial junction for the Speightstown colt, with options of proceeding towards the GI Kentucky Derby or reverting in distance for the GII Pat Day Mile. And that might well boil down to whether he takes sooner after his dam, who herself contested a Classic at Churchill Downs only five years ago, or his sire. Tempers Rising won just a maiden in 14 starts for Stanley, but after running second in the GII Fair Grounds Oaks was given her chance in the postponed GI Kentucky Oaks of 2020, by no means discredited with a midfield finish. “I always thought her a better racehorse than her record showed,” Stanley says. “She was always knocking on the door, and made over $300,000.” At one point Tempers Rising was put in a digital sale, but that was never more than an experiment and Stanley unhesitatingly retained her at $150,000. On her eventual retirement, he then made another astute call–one that other breeders would do well to emulate–in sending this unproven mare to a proven veteran in Speightstown. The resulting colt was obviously a cracker, judging from the $360,000 paid for him as a foal at Keeneland by Sycamore Hall Farm. “Yes, he was good-looking,” Stanley says. “But I'm a bit of numbers guy, and when I looked into it, Speightstown's weanlings sold about as well as his yearlings. So I went ahead and put him in the November Sale, and it worked out.” (Sure enough, the colt proved a pretty neutral pinhook in realizing no more than $350,000 from Boardshorts Stables at Saratoga the following summer.) So can the breeder offer Flying Dutchmen, the owners of Owen Almighty, any encouragement regarding his potential to stretch out? “Well, I think that these guys have done a lot better than I ever do, so I'm going to stay out of it and just enjoy whatever they do,” Stanley emphasizes. “I thought the Pat Day was a good spot, but I understand Derby fever, too. I always thought that the mare just needed a little speed, and of course that was Speightstown's calling card. But from what we're seeing, he got some endurance from his mother, too. So the combination seems to have worked out pretty well.” Owen Almighty as a foal | courtesy Taylor Made Whatever happens, Tempers Rising has enjoyed an immediate vault in status, vindicating Stanley for the further opportunities she has been given since. Her second foal, a Constitution colt, was pinhooked from the September Sale at $185,000 and has been catalogued by Tradewinds Stud at the upcoming Arqana Breeze-Up Sale. Next in line is a colt by none other than Not This Time; and while Tempers Rising missed last year, that left her vacant for an early cover by McKinzie this time round. “We were real excited about the Not This Time, even before all this,” Stanley says. “He's put together the same way as Owen, very athletic, but a little bigger. He's at TaylorMade, where they obviously see a lot of the stallion's foals, and they think a lot of him out there.” Stanley got to know the Taylor family as Little League baseball coach to Duncan's son Marshall, and his interest in other sports has also been stimulated by daughter Alex's marriage to Chief Stipe Davenport, who has just succeeded his father Scott as Bellarmine University basketball coach. Alex, for her part, has long been integral to the Stanley equine program, as it was her toddler tantrums that prompted the naming of its very first recruit. That was back in 1993, when Stanley joined a gang of pals for a weekend at Saratoga. “There were 16 of us, my brother and 14 other guys,” he recalls. “And actually Kenny McPeek was in that group. Well, you know how smart you get at the track sometimes. And we decided that instead of just betting on these horses, we'd get together and buy one. They had a 2-year-old sale, first time I've known them do that during the meet, so we went over and circled the three fastest times. And the one that fell in our price range was this Temperence Hill filly. I signed the ticket [for $70,000] and we went out and celebrated for two days. Two weeks after that, the bill comes. And not a one of them could be found. Not one of the 15! So now I was in the horse business.” Alex was two at the time and, playing on the sire's name, Stanley named the filly Her Temper. Within weeks of entering McPeek's barn, she had won a Turfway maiden and a Keeneland allowance; and the following spring, back at Keeneland, she added the GII Beaumont Stakes. So were there 15 guys kicking themselves then? “Well, virtually every time there are 16 guys in the winner's circle photo!” replies Stanley with a chuckle. Keeneland was already a track dear to his heart. “I've no background at all in racing, I'm from West Virginia, but when I came to U.K. [to study engineering] we'd go out there Friday afternoons,” he recalls. “Mainly because of the girls! But I got into the whole atmosphere and pageantry. And then, working with Kenny early, he's so good with his owners, at communication and keeping you involved.” Variations on a theme since Her Temper include GI Ruffian Handicap winner Swift Temper (Giant's Causeway), sold privately to Japan after falling shy of her reserve at $2.05 million at the 2009 Keeneland November Sale; and Quiet Temper (Quiet American), a $90,000 September yearling who won the GII Fair Grounds Oaks the following year. Stanley, who manufactures auto parts for Toyota, mischievously explains that only the fillies are branded this way. “Boys don't have tempers!” he says, plainly not in earnest. “But as Alex got older, and that first horse having done pretty good, she took pride in the names. Remember we've also had graded stakes winners called Golden Temper (Forty Niner) and Pleasant Temper (Storm Cat), too. So we've tried to match Alex through the stages of her life.” Stanley's mother also contributed to the family's engagement with the program. “She and I used to love going to the track together in the mornings,” Stanley recalls. “She especially loved watching them get a bath after they'd worked. She used to follow Pleasant Temper, in particular, and Elliott [Walden, trainer] treated her like a queen. When that filly ran in Chicago [in 1997], Elliott arranged a limo to pick her up from the airport, and we had lunch in the stakes room, all the shrimp you could have, wine, whatever. “And then we ran terrible! About a month later, my mother's having open heart surgery and I'm sitting with her in the hospital. And it comes up on the screen that Arlington was closing–it was back when they were battling the riverboats–and she turned to me and said, 'I knew they were giving me way too much.' She thinks she broke them.” Mark and Nancy Stanley | courtesy Mark Stanley That longstanding connection to the Walden family connects two milestones in which Stanley played a gratifying role. “In 2001, Pat Day won his 8,000th race on one of mine that Elliott trained,” he explains. “And his groom was a young Bret Jones [of Airdrie, son of Brereton C. Jones]. And then, last October, Irad Ortiz won his 4,000th race on Good Temper: Will Walden training, and Brereton Jones as breeder. So it's full circle.” Earlier this month that Collected filly, just $40,000 deep in the 2023 September Sale, won an optional allowance on the Fair Grounds turf by over seven lengths. “Will picked her out for me, and I'm keen on seeing her go a little longer,” Stanley says. “It's fun, I knew Will when he was three or four years old. He has fought a lot of things but come out on the good end of it.” Good Temper forms part of what is nowadays a considerably reduced program. “The initial theory was to buy fillies and accomplish enough that you could breed them,” Stanley says. “But then it got to the point where, one Thanksgiving, [his wife] Nancy's father asked me how many horses we had. And I said, 'I don't know, eight I think, counting babies, eight or 10.” And Nancy said, 'You better count them again.' And it turned out to be 19. I realized then that I couldn't afford to tie up so much money, and we sold most of them. Now we've just four on the track, plus Tempers Rising and her yearling.” Quality not quantity, then: a single mare, with a first foal on the track, and he's giving everyone Derby fever. That's a condition Stanley fully understands, having sampled it himself in 1999. Though he made no show on the day, Ecton Park (Forty Niner) later beat Lemon Drop Kid in the GII Jim Dandy and Menifee in the GI Super Derby. “He probably shouldn't have run, but it was my first and only chance so I'm glad we did,” Stanley reflects. “For this year we already have our seats, so we'll be there rooting for Owen, whichever race he ends up going for.” Because ultimately this game has been about enjoying the ride, and in the right company–as exemplified by Ecton Park himself, when he failed to meet his yearling reserve at $190,000. “So I went back to Bill Harrigan, made him an offer, and we shook hands on it,” Stanley recalls. “And I know for a fact that somebody else went in an hour later and offered him $30,000 or $40,000 more. But Bill stuck to our handshake, even though we didn't have anything in writing. I've always admired him for that. That's the straight-up kind of guy you like to do business with.” And experiences of that kind, with families like the Waldens and the Taylors, trainers like McPeek and Dale Romans, have long made Stanley rejoice in that fateful Saratoga excursion, all those years ago. “I probably would have been better off, financially, if that first filly had just tanked and I'd quit,” he says. “But over the years I wouldn't have had anything near the same fun.” The post Keeneland Breeder Spotlight: Owen Puts Stanley In Best Of Tempers appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
A total of 250 two-year-olds have been catalogued for the Tattersalls Ireland Breeze-up Sale, which takes place on Thursday, May 22 and Friday, May 23. The full catalogue is available to view here. Previous graduates of the sale include last year's Irish Oaks third Purple Lily (Ire) (Calyx {GB}) and the G3 Round Tower Stakes winner Letsbefrankaboutit (Ire), while Coto de Caza (Ire) won three times as a juvenile, including the G3 Cornwallis Stakes, after being bought for €270,000 in 2024. The first crop of Tally-Ho Stud's Starman (GB) will be strongly represented at the sale with 20 two-year-olds, while Coolmore's Sioux Nation–the sire of Coto de Caza and Letsbefrankaboutit, as well as last year's top-priced lot at €370,000–is responsible for 18. In total, the progeny of 88 different sires have been catalogued, with lot 27, a half-sister to the aforementioned Purple Lily, featuring among the dozen by Cotai Glory (GB). Other potential highlights include lot 43, a St Mark's Basilica (Fr) half-brother to the dual Group 1 winner Limato (Ire) (Tagula {Ire}); lot 82, a Wootton Bassett (GB) colt out of the Listed scorer Friendly (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), a full-sister to multiple black-type winners, headed by the G2 Superlative Stakes hero and sire Gustav Klimt (Ire); and lot 228, an Alkumait (GB) half-brother to the G1 Caulfield Cup winner Deny Knowledge (Ire) (Pride Of Dubai {Aus}). The breezes will get underway at Fairyhouse Racecourse from 8.30am on Thursday, May 22, before the sale commences at 10.00am on Friday, May 23. Tattersalls Ireland CEO Simon Kerins said, “The Tattersalls Ireland Breeze-up Sale has experienced extraordinary growth year on year and an incredible number of purchasers have attended in recent years from across the globe. The quality throughout the catalogue has continued to grow exponentially, thanks to consignors recognising that the sale attracts agents, owners, and trainers with significant buying power. This catalogue is our strongest yet and there will be a horse for every level of the market. Our graduates continue to excel on the racetrack, the best advertisement for the sale. “We've worked hard to ensure that our clients enjoy a top-tier experience at the sale, with excellent facilities and hospitality on offer. The team at Fairyhouse Racecourse has been incredibly accommodating, and with the track being in close proximity to the sales complex, it makes for an ideal location, with a seamless transition between both venues and offering great convenience for those attending. Irish Thoroughbred Marketing and our own marketing team will continue to work tirelessly to assist existing and new purchasers attend this year's sale. We're really looking forward to it!” The post ‘Strongest Catalogue Yet’ for Tattersalls Ireland Breeze-up Sale appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
A week after we saluted the impact of his daughters on the GI Kentucky Derby trail, suddenly Tapit might also have found a colt to redress the one glaring omission on his resume. At the same time, the emergence of Sandman also contributes to a remarkable reciprocation by a still more venerable distaff influence. Tapit mares having produced American Promise, Tiztastic and Final Gambit across consecutive weekends, Distorted Humor is plainly not to be outdone. Both the big winners last Saturday were out of daughters of the WinStar legend; moreover another son of a Distorted Humor mare, Citizen Bull, has the opportunity this weekend to respond to the breakouts of Sandman and Tappan Street. Like Tappan Street, the champion juvenile is by Into Mischief. The same Distorted Humor cross has already produced that sire's two most expensive sons, Practical Joke and Life Is Good. The one that gave us Sandman, meanwhile, is represented by Constitution–the horse that has best filled the vacancy left at WinStar by the retirement, in 2021, of the farm's senior pro. Distorted Humor both started and finished his stud career unusually late, active from six to 28. But he retained sufficient vigor that final season to cover 29 mares, albeit his final crop ultimately numbered only 13. These precious few, now sophomores, are plainly unlikely to include a son competent to extend his male line, which appears largely to hang on the single thread of Jimmy Creed. Distorted Humor's Derby winner Funny Cide was gelded, while the one sired by his son Flower Alley, I'll Have Another, couldn't find an adequate heir. The game is by no means up, with Jimmy Creed's son Casa Creed now recycling durability and speed at Mill Ridge. As things stand, however, Distorted Humor's legacy remains primarily about his daughters. Distorted Humor | Louise Reinagel. Besides the three stallions already noted, these have given us Arrogate and now Arabian Lion. Vaunting Distorted Humor as damsire (now up to 147 stakes winners) was a major positive, then, when both Sandman and Tappan Street made seven figures at auction. Sandman's $1.2 million purchase at OBS a year ago has already been cleared in racetrack earnings and, while his GI Arkansas Derby was co-authored by witless riding up front, his deeper family could underpin a still more lucrative future at stud. For his fourth dam is the five-time Grade I winner/co-champion juvenile filly It's in the Air (Mr. Prospector). She was sold to the Maktoums early in her breeding career for $4.6 million and, among others, produced the dam of triple Grade I scorer Storming Home (GB) (Machiavellian) plus the granddam of globetrotting State Of Rest (Ire) (Starspangledbanner {Aus}), winner of elite prizes at Royal Ascot, Saratoga, Longchamp and Moonee Valley. But her most important daughter never even made the track. From only six foals, Note Musicale (Sadler's Wells) produced two female stars: Music Note (A.P. Indy) not only emulated her dam with five Grade I's but then produced G1 Dubai World Cup winner Mystic Guide (Ghostzapper); while Musical Chimes (In Excess {Ire}) won a Classic in France. In that context, their half-sister Music Room (Unbridled's Song) appeared a major disappointment, culled by Darley after failing to make the starting gate. Even the single black-type performer she produced, Zinzay (Smart Strike), regressed after finishing second in the GII Jessamine Stakes. Having spent a few years in the WinStar paddocks, Music Room was eventually discarded at age 17 for just $9,000. Yet something of her aristocratic blood has meanwhile begun to percolate: Zinzay produced another good turf runner in the Grade I-placed stakes winner Moon Over Miami (Malibu Moon), while two daughters by Distorted Music have really stoked up the embers. One produced Whiskey Decision (Into Mischief) to win a stakes, again on grass, at Delaware last year. The other is Distorted Music, dam of Sandman. Bought as a yearling by Lothenbach Stables for $190,000, Distorted Music won three of eight starts. Her first foal She Can't Sing (Bernardini) won the GIII Chilukki Stakes, and made $1.1 million from Hill 'n' Dale at Bob Lothenbach's dispersal at Fasig-Tipton in February last year. At the same poignant session, Distorted Music's short yearling by Into Mischief made $650,000 from North Ocean Equine, before elevating his value to $1 million at Saratoga barely six months later. In between those two transactions, Sandman had made his headlines at OBS only to disappoint on debut in June. Two days after the Saratoga auction, however, he broke his maiden over the street–and his blossoming since makes Distorted Music (as a 14-year-old, allowed to go for $375,000) appear a characteristically alert Springhouse Farm pick at the dispersal. The Distorted Humor-Unbridled's Song cross behind Distorted Music is actually matched by the dam of Citizen Bull. But that is only the start of Sandman's Mr. Prospector branding. Aptly so, too, as It's in the Air was one of the first clues that her freshman sire would be something special. In fact, three of Sandman's first four dams represent Mr Prospector: through Distorted Humor (via Forty Niner), Unbridled's Song (via Fappiano) and Mr. P. himself. And Tapit, as mate, just doubled that down: his dam is by Unbridled, while his own sire Pulpit is out of Mr Prospector's daughter Preach. On the other hand, the shiniest fruit on this family tree did not require one ounce of Mr. Prospector. That was European champion Balanchine (Storm Bird), whose granddam was a half-sister to It's in the Air. Hardly the first reference to chlorophyll in this pedigree, and someday far-sighted European breeders may wish to tap into Sandman as best of both worlds. Tappan Street | Coglianese Heaven Finding New Horizons Newfoundland was once one of the most glamorous Thoroughbreds on the planet. As a Storm Cat colt whose first three dams were all Grade I winners, he cost Coolmore $3.3 million at the 2001 Keeneland September Sale. Unfortunately he proved unable to build on a debut success for Ballydoyle, and was transferred to Todd Pletcher. After winning a couple of Grade III's, he was given a chance at stud in Kentucky. By the time he departed for Chile, however, he left behind nothing of greater distinction than Our Khrysty, who once changed hands for $3,500 but inherited enough talent (maybe from her dam, who also produced GI Whitney Handicap winner Bullsbay (Tiznow)) to win the GIII Turnback the Alarm Handicap by a nose. Blue Heaven Farm certainly believed in the mare, however, recruiting her for $600,000 at the 2011 Fasig-Tipton November Sale and then giving her some purposeful covers. She has rewarded that faith most handsomely. Her 2019 daughter by Curlin made $700,000 as a yearling and proceeded, as Grace Adler, to win the GI Del Mar Debutante Stakes. Her next foal is Pyrenees (Into Mischief), who last year won the GIII Pimlico Special before emulating Newfoundland as GI Jockey Club Gold Cup runner-up. And now a couple of Our Khrysty's earlier foals are themselves making a mark. Bay Harbor (Speightstown) never won but her first foal Miuccia (Mitole) won a sprint stakes at Gulfstream last year before making the GIII Prioress podium. And her second, Briland (McKinzie), made $675,000 at OBS last spring before winning her sole start at Saratoga. Then there is Our Khrysty's daughter by Distorted Humor, Virginia Key, retained for $90,000 at the 2016 September Sale. That has proved an unbelievably smart decision. Though restricted to four starts, Virginia Key won twice and ran a close third in the GII Gazelle Stakes. Then her second foal not only made seven figures as a Saratoga yearling, but has now upgraded the page as none other than GI Florida Derby winner Tappan Street. Moroever he had not even made his debut when Virginia Key's next foal, a Curlin colt, achieved an even better yield ($1.4 million) at Keeneland last September. Blue Heaven's choice of Gun Runner for Our Khrysty meanwhile paid off with a $975,000 docket at the same sale. After all these years, we are long accustomed to Distorted Humor's range: he's the horse that broke the seven-furlong track record at Churchill yet came up with GI Belmont winner Drosselmeyer. Even so it still feels remarkable that one of his daughters could give Into Mischief a Derby colt, when her own first two dams are respectively by Newfoundland and Lord Carson. What a marvelous legacy Distorted Humor is leaving us! Clever Again | Coady Media How Very Clever It seemed incredible, last spring, that a debutant bred like Clever Again (American Pharoah) could eyeball a Wesley Ward dasher (who romped in a stakes next time) over 4.5 furlongs of dirt and lose out only by a head. Clever Again resurfaced at Oaklawn in February to make all over an extended mile, but a four-length rout of a Grade I winner in the Hot Springs Stakes confirms him a horse with no ceiling. His dam Flattering (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) won her maiden in Ireland by 10 lengths over 10 furlongs of heavy going, before registering her Group success over a mile-and-a-half. Her full sister had to travel farther yet for hers, over 14 furlongs. With American Pharoah's stock having fared so well on turf, you would have prescribed Clever Again an absolute prairie. But there are streaks in her page that explain how her connections have indeed been Clever Again. Another of Flattering's siblings, by the relative speed influence Lucky Story, is the speedy and precocious Lucky Kristale, who won two Group sprints in her juvenile summer. And their dam was half-sister to Arabian Gleam (GB) (Kyllachy {GB}), who won three Group 2s over 7f. The next dam, meanwhile, is out of a half-sister to Classic miler Don't Forget Me (Ire) (Ahonoora {GB}). For these strands to get past a Triple Crown winner and Galileo is not something most of us would care to predict. But Clever Again has horsemen of genius in every corner, always a help in a difficult world. The post Breeding Digest: Humor’s Daughters Giving Him The Last Laugh appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Dollars and Sense with Frank AngstView the full article
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