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By Chief Stipe · Posted
She trials again today at Te Awamutu as do a number of up and coming three year olds. https://loveracing.nz/raceinfo/55097/meeting-overview.aspx -
Despite the doom and gloom merchants, hopefully we will see a vintage season for 3-year-olds. Like wine, they come along every so often, 22/23 was our last and probably the best in recent times Legarto - Australian Guineas, Pennyweka - dual Oaks, Prowess - Bonecrusher Stakes, Vinery, Pinarello - Queensland Derby, Sharp 'N' Smart - Derby, Wild Night, Maven Belle, Pier, Devildom, Sacred Satono, Dynastic, Devastate, Desert Lightning, Mark Twain, The Intimidator, Cognito, Waitak, Best Seller, Polygon, Lickety Spilt, Mr Maestro, Cruz Missile, Denby Road. Let's follow this through over the season and see how it plays out as the Spring racing fast approaches I'll add in a couple to start Avantaggia - impressive trial winner at Avondale Quantum Legend - won like a good horse first up at Te Rapa on Saturday -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority is looking into any and all explanations for an uptick in equine fatalities in the second quarter of 2025 when compared with the same three months of 2024.View the full article -
By muzenza365 · Posted
I think most people who have some level of race reading would agree it was a 2 out of 10 ride, but the jockey has said he made a mistake. So i will let it go -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Not too many graded stakes winners are raised in the same paddocks as Arabian horses; even fewer can have done so in East Texas. But if it's the horse that makes the horsemen, then perhaps dealing with more than one breed teaches us that there may also be more than one way to get things done. Besides raising stock of both breeds at Centurion Stud, Eric and Randi Moreau-Sipiere also operate an international export service, principally to the Middle East and Europe. Their charges tend to fly in bays of three, and experience has yielded some unexpected solutions. “We have put Thoroughbred stallions in there with weanling Arabian fillies, one each side,” Eric says. “And when we do, they'll never start any trouble in the plane. These guys, 17 hands, they fall in love with those little fillies. We quarantine them together and they don't see them as a threat; they become their protectors.” The antecedents of recent GII Beverly D. Stakes winner Charlene's Dream might seem similarly unconventional: she's a Texas-bred daughter of Qurbaan, sold as a short yearling for $22,000. But her emergence suggests that we might all have things to learn from this farm. “I feel we've an interesting advantage, just in having so many horses come through here for export,” Randi points out. “We have access to every single bloodline that there is, between weanlings, yearlings, 2-year-olds, broodmares. So we get to see patterns, things we like and things we don't. And then we can focus on those things when we're in the market.” Clara Kelly, dam of Charlene's Dream | Courtesy Moreau-Sipiere Family Sure enough, in expanding their broodmare band at the Keeneland November Sale of 2016, they turned up something special as deep into the catalogue as hip 3656. Clara Kelly (War Front) had cost $350,000 in the same ring as a yearling and won a Belmont maiden the previous summer. She was the only foal of a mare by Unbridled's Song out of a Grade I winner. Yet they landed her for $12,000. “We could just see a lot of versatility, a mare that could go any direction you wanted,” Randi recalls. “Short, long, turf, synthetic, dirt. She came through the ring, a big strong mare by War Front, of course at his peak at that time, so with that physical, that structure, she just had a lot of things going for her if everything played out down the road.” Charlene's Dream is Clara Kelly's fourth foal. As already mentioned, she achieved a modest return at Keeneland in 2022; a marginal gain, at $35,000, back in the same ring that September; and none at all when sold on at two. But that not only shows the kind of bargains available at auction, but also the way Eric and Randi, in taking the longer view, are often prepared to depart from commercial orthodoxies. “At the sales, it's all about which sires are hot at that moment,” Eric says. “And Qurbaan was not hot. To be fair, Charlene's Dream actually had a tremendous amount of shows. Everyone said the same thing: she was beautiful, amazing, but nobody was willing to take a chance on the sire.” “She'd been tall and leggy, kind of gangly, as a youngster,” Randi says. “But she didn't ever go through the kind of ugly stage that some do, and just really matured well. She always had good bone, a lot of balance. Obviously she left us at a fairly young age but we started following her when she showed up at Golden Gate Fields. And then, after she came to the Midwest, it was: 'Wow, something special's going on here.'” When they had first ventured into Thoroughbreds, the cynics all told them to forget about racing. The only way to make the game pay was to feed the pinhook market. But they have come around to the view that more sustainable commercial gains can eventually reward the development of families; especially through the control of the variables available when retaining stock to race. Sure enough, Clara Kelly's juvenile daughter by Echo Town is exciting their trainer Jayde Gelner as she nears a debut at Remington Park and the current plan is also to retain her yearling, a filly by Thousand Words. “Everybody told us that we had to breed to sell,” Eric recalls. “So at first we kind of tiptoed that way. We bred to first-year stallions. In those days, their fees were not so expensive. And then a colt we sold for $35,000 turned around and made $450,000 as a 2-year-old. And a filly we sold for $10,000 won $500,000. So then we decided to sell a few every year, breeding commercially, and to race the rest. We just said, 'Hey, now it's time to do what we actually want to do.'” The model was underpinned by their familiarity with a parallel market in the Middle East; and nor are they squeamish, for certain matings, about persevering with the expense of new sires. “So this year we'll be selling weanlings by horses like Taiba, Gunite, Zandon,” Eric explains. “But for racing, we've bred to stallions, like Midshipman, Kantharos, Dialed In and Frosted, that might not be super-hot in the sale ring but that produce a tremendous amount of winners. It is strange that people don't support these proven stallions. Because the first-year stallions are crazy expensive now. Now it's the ones we already know to be good that cost less, which makes absolutely no sense. But it's where the market goes, and people are going to follow the market. So you just do things a little bit different, depending what you're trying to do with each mare. You kind of have to go all over the place, to hit the mark.” Charlene's Dream at Keeneland January | Courtesy Moreau-Sipiere Family Eric benefited from an upbringing of unusual diversity by the standards of the Thoroughbred industry. His parents raised a mixture of half-breds, Arabians and jumpers in France, until he and his family emigrated to near Houston in 1979. One day a horse-mad girl from Missouri, in her first job working with Arabian show horses, brought a mare across town to the Moreau-Sipiere farm. A more significant mating would result and, after spells in California and Iowa, Eric and Randi returned to Texas to establish Centurion in 2003. After five or six years, having developed a rapport with Thoroughbreds through the transport division, they bought a couple of mares and things snowballed from there. Now their 20 Thoroughbred mares double the Arabian herd. But their stock, as noted, are raised side by side. “We usually put the young together and they get along just fine, no problem at all,” Eric says. “To be honest, Arabians are much smarter. They can be a bit hyper, but they're the easier keepers: really tough and sound, much easier to maintain. We used to joke that they're like mountain goats, in their feeding and foaling. They race over the desert at 20/22kph for 10 hours! A Thoroughbred, doing that, would be dead in two hours. They're much more fragile.” In either case, they clearly share a thoughtful and attentive grounding. “We live here on the farm,” Randi emphasizes. “It's all hands-on. It's not like we come in, give a few orders, leave. We live with them every day, and that means you can adjust according to the little things that you learn. Clara Kelly is an easy-enough mare to live with, for instance, but she's got a little bit of attitude and the foals tend to pick up on that. You don't push the wrong button.” “But they've done a very good job with Charlene's Dream,” Eric says with enthusiasm. “After she didn't run so well, at Kentucky Downs last year, they turned her out for seven months. And she has come back as a monster. Most people won't do that. Unfortunately, I think the system forces horsemen to push those 2-year-olds, especially. And when you put young horses under stress, bad things happen. That's why so many horses are retired after only a few races. Sheikh Mohammed never wanted to race his Arabians until they were 4-year-olds. He has always given horses time to mature. But that's because he's a horseman.” Eric and Randi have great faith in the environment where they raise horses; and also in the benefits of cultural exchange, whether between breeds, or through their transport division. So if others might consider Como, Texas, an isolated backwater of the Thoroughbred industry, the other side of the coin is wide horizons and freedom from disease and overcrowding. As for the shipping, around every 45 days they run flights to Saudi Arabia, Dubai or Qatar, and at least monthly to Europe, everything from endurance or equestrian competitors to breeding stock. “We have a quarantine facility that lets us get acquainted with horses and their needs,” Eric explains. “And they also leave here in peak condition. We exercise them, and make sure they'll be ready to roll when they arrive, and won't need a month to recover.” “Knock on wood, we've earned a reputation for being able to handle difficult horses and get them there in one piece,” Randi adds. “I get them ready, and Eric has his crew that he flies with. Again, it just boils down to giving them time: figuring out the personality, so we can buddy them up.” But it's a resident mare that has now put them on the map. “We've made some good deals on mares,” Eric notes. “We bought one a few years ago, Debutante Dreamer (Proud Citizen) for $2,500 [KEENOV 2017]. Her yearling, who'd been sold for $9,000, became a graded stakes winner [Proud Emma (Include)] and was eventually sold for $1 million. “If you know what you're looking for, and sit there long enough, you'll find some very good physicals that don't cost too much. And if they're young, and by good broodmare sires like Bernardini or Speightstown, you have a chance that they will then go on and prove themselves. That's happening with several of ours now, with babies all of a sudden starting to step up to the plate.” Charlene's Dream winning the Beverly D | Charlotte Camp “We had a lot of calls about the mare after the Beverly D.,” Randi admits. “And yes, they make it sound tempting. But we're sitting on a good opportunity for some notoriety, some recognition. She's still young enough [13]. We could get a good price, but when are we going to have another one come around? Maybe there's a mare here that hasn't yet shown us what she can do. But that's part of it, too. You always look ahead–the next foal, the next race–and build from there.” As mares prove themselves, moreover, their covers are upgraded. Clara Kelly is in foal to Nashville, maintaining the Speightstown nick. And who knows what that foal might be worth, should Charlene's Dream happen to emulate the last Beverly D. winner, Moira (Ghostzapper), at the Breeders' Cup. The uncertainty is everything. It's a double-edged sword, of course, but it also gives everyone hope. “How many times do we see a horse sold for small money becoming a star?” Eric asks. “And then you'll see $1 million yearlings running in $10,000 claimers. That's because you cannot breed the heart, or train it. If a horse doesn't want to run, it won't run. Doesn't matter how good-looking it may be. I remember a football coach told me once, 'Not every kid that's six feet tall and 250 pounds can be a linebacker. If he doesn't have the heart, he'll never make it.' And I think it's the same with horses. “If every time you bred a Grade I horse to a Grade I horse, you got a Grade I horse, it would be awfully easy. And awfully boring. But it doesn't work that way. And that means anyone can come in and take a chance.” The post Keeneland Breeder Spotlight: Dream Result Rewards Centurion Versatility appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
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