Bulletin’s Glad Tidings To Oklahoma

[Wandering Eyes]

On the face of it, Bulletin was old news. Silks, trainer and sire all straight off the conveyor belt: WinStar and partners; Todd Pletcher; and the Breeders’ Cup legend that is City Zip. Look beyond his breeder’s registration as CresRan LLC (KY), however, and you will discover that the winner of the inaugural Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint nowhere generated more pride, and heartwarming memories, than in Oklahoma.

For the breeder’s trophy was presented to Ran Leonard, who owes both his first name and his passion for the racehorse to his maternal grandfather, Ran Ricks. And while Ricks has now been dead for 22 years, his memory remains dear among Oklahoma horsemen; and likewise, to this day, his venerable widow Carol.

Of the hundreds of texts Leonard received after the race, no code recurred more than (405): Oklahoma City and environs. Proceeding to Keeneland, he was repeatedly stopped and congratulated by people who knew the background to Bulletin–from Everett Dobson of Cheyenne Stable, to veterans who remembered Ricks hiring as his first trainer none other than J.J. Pletcher, Todd’s father.

“Mr. Pletcher and my grandad got hooked up at places like Louisiana Downs and Oaklawn Park,” Leonard explains. “In fact I think he was my grandad’s private trainer for a while. They had a lot of success. My grandad didn’t necessarily have aspirations for a lot of graded racehorses. He just wanted to win races and have fun. And they had a lot of that.

“My grandfather was very instrumental in getting pari-mutuel wagering in Oklahoma. And a lot of the old timer horsemen have been incredible mentors to me. They also share the love for my grandma. I guess a little bit for me, but mostly for my grandma! At Remington Park that night apparently they put the horse’s picture on the board and the announcer made a little spiel about how Oklahoma connections had bred him. So, yes, it’s very neat.”

At the time of his death grandfather Ricks had 40 broodmares on his farm at Crescent, 35 miles north of Oklahoma City. As the oldest grandchild, and named for Ricks, Leonard was already the only member of the family under the spell of horses. His mother, an only child, had no interest; nor his father, albeit of a generation to be suitably envious that Leonard had his picture taken with Bo Derek in the winner’s circle.

“My grandfather and I were extremely close,” Leonard says. “I would go stay at the farm in the summers and, when I was about 15, he decided I needed to come work–in his company in the day, and nights and mornings on the farm. My closest siblings were seven or eight years younger, so I definitely got to have a different relationship with him. In some regards I got treated like a grandson, but then at some point like an adult, and got to learn a lot of things.”

Ricks headed an oil and gas exploration company and profit-and-loss was not an especially critical factor for a stable then dominated by Oklahoma-breds.

“But I was a college kid when he died, 20 years old, and quickly realized I had to find a way to make this thing a little more economically sensible,” he recalls. “It took us about 15 years, but now we have a core band of seven broodmares–five of which I keep in Kentucky.”

These board with Gabriel ‘Spider’ Duignan at Springhouse Farm, while Lexington agent Bradley ‘Mike’ Shannon has also served as a longtime friend and counselor.

It was Shannon who bought Bulletin’s dam Sue’s Good News (Woodman) as a yearling at the 2001 Keeneland September Sale. “It was a few days after 9/11, I had a newborn at home and just didn’t want to leave my kids,” Leonard says. “The whole world was scared at that point. So I stayed home, but Mike was at the sale and Steve Hobby, our trainer, drove down from Chicago. We were looking to buy a filly with some pedigree that hopefully could have some racing success, but that would [regardless] help change over our breeding program from all these Oklahoma ‘nothing’ pedigrees, so to speak, to some Kentucky pedigrees that could be commercial. And Mike knew there was a sibling with Steve Asmussen that might kick things along a bit. I said I wanted to spend about $40,000 and, typical story, the phone’s cutting out and Mike ends up going to $45,000.”

The half-brother with Asmussen proved to be GII Louisiana Derby runner-up Easyfromthegitgo (Dehere). Even as it was, the unraced dam was a half-sister to GI Ballerina S. winner Serape (Fappiano) while the second dam was a Grade I-placed half-sister to Cozzene. Serape, moreover, has since been credited through her daughter Trensa (Giant’s Causeway) as grand-dam of two elite scorers in Hawkbill (Kitten’s Joy) and Free Drop Billy (Union Rags).

Leonard remembers sitting with his grandmother trying to agree a name for the filly when the phone rang. It was her best friend, Sue Vaughn, who had undergone a cancer test.

“I’m all clear,” she said. “Everything’s great.”

“Oh, that’s such good news!” exclaimed Carol.

That was that: Sue’s Good News it was. And, though no racefan herself, Sue came to see the filly win her first three starts; and in time was able to root for her foals too.

Leonard reckons that Sue’s Good News, albeit a Grade III winner, never showed her full ability owing to a habit–more treatable now than then–of tying up. Her first foal broke her pelvis in a gate accident, but that misfortune was amply redressed by the next: Tiz Miz Sue (Tiznow), winner of the GI Ogden Phipps H. For if subsequent foals proved fairly average, pending the advent of Bulletin, in the meantime Tiz Miz Sue certainly vindicated Leonard’s strategy of commercial consolidation. At the 2017 September Sale, her Tapit colt raised $2.5 million from Shadwell.

“I can’t fathom how that happened,” Leonard admits. “We’re just small breeders and if we sell for $50,000 to $100,000, that’s typically a pretty good day. So many things have to happen for one to sell like that. But he was certainly the best-looking horse I’ve ever raised. He’s with Kiaran McLaughlin, they called him Tatweej, and they say he’s training pretty good.”

At the same sale, Bulletin himself achieved an excellent dividend for a Hip 1865, at $250,000 (docket signed by Maverick Racing & China Horse Club). Like many in the family, he had made dramatic progress through his second summer.

Leonard remembers inspecting him at three months or so.

“Kinda gangly, isn’t he?” he said.

“Just let him grow up a little bit,” replied Shannon.

If he had improved somewhat by January, Leonard still thought they were in trouble. But by the deadline for the sale, when all eyes were on Tiz Miz Sue’s Tapit colt, the gawky City Zip was finally beginning to force himself on their attention. So they entered him, too. They could always scratch if he didn’t come through in time.

“Instead he kept getting better and better,” Leonard says. “At the sale, the pinhookers were very interested. We weren’t sure that would be the right thing for him. We thought he needed to go to some steady hands. So when he ended up with a racing farm, especially one that does as great a job as WinStar, we were thrilled.

“And one thing he always had was a pretty good mind. He was always well mannered, so the fact he’s taken to the training so well doesn’t surprise me. I just wish I knew how they got him out the gate so fast! I’d like to pass that on to every horse I had.”

After such a lucrative sale last year, this time around Leonard reversed the normal policy and sold a filly and kept a colt–both by Uncle Mo–out of his two star mares. Tiz Miz Sue’s filly, sold as usual through Paramount, raised $500,000; while the colt out of Sue’s Good News (now in foal to Violence) is being broken in Florida prior to joining Hobby.

“I think he’s athletic and that he’ll be fast,” Leonard said. “I just didn’t think he was necessarily a sale horse, and that for what he’d probably get it was worth giving him a shot. Obviously, with the success of Bulletin since, I’m very glad I made that choice. Especially because Steve [Hobby] has done so much work to make the family, only for me to go and sell all these babies. I wanted to give him something to have some fun with.”

Hobby had been the farm trainer until stepping up when Ricks and J.J. Pletcher parted company. His route into the game had been similar to his predecessor’s.

“Like a lot of these guys, Steve’s an old quarterhorse jockey from Colorado, New Mexico, round that way,” Leonard said. “He really is part of the family. His daughter’s my best friend; he’s my son’s godfather. He’s like a son to my grandma, really, when you get right down to it.”

One way or another, then, Bulletin’s rise has gladdened many who have brought Great Plains horse-lore into the mainstream of the American Turf.

Leonard has clearly done a sterling job in making his Oklahoma legacy viable in Kentucky. Nowadays he retains but one last vestige of his grandfather’s herd, a granddaughter of a state champion 2-year-old in his boyhood named Polly’s Rumor. The spirit of Oklahoma, however, still animates all Leonard does; indeed, he recently completed a six-year stint on the state racing commission.

“I’m very proud of our state,” he said. “We have one of the few tracks actually on the up, in terms of field size and purse and handle. It’s still obviously a pretty significant step down from Churchill or anything like that, but it’s an improving program and some very prominent national trainers have strings there, while for our big racedays everybody ships in: Todd, Bob [Baffert], whoever.”

But this story’s heartbeat has always been more intimate: a call to Sue from Belmont after the Tiz Miz Sue’s Grade I, and hearing her hollering with joy back in Oklahoma; or the arrival of Carol, still in great form approaching her 90th birthday, at the September Sale to see off the latest babies from the dynasty honoring her friend; or Todd Pletcher telling his wife and Elliott Walden and the rest of the gang, as Bulletin came back in, how the whole thing had just come full circle.

It’s all there in the registration of CresRan: Crescent/Ran Ricks. “And now all these different people are stopping me to say how happy they are about this horse,” Leonard says proudly. “That he just makes them think about grandad and what a great guy he was and how much he would enjoy this. He was just so philanthropic, kind-hearted, always with a smile, just the most generous, giving man there ever was.

“Every line of work is hard, and every line of work has its disappointments. But I think there’s something about these living and breathing animals that we raise and care so much about. You think of all the disappointments, all the frustrations. And then you have something like this happen.

“It was really the first time I’ve ever just got to be there as a breeder. I will tell you one thing, it’s a lot less pressure. My stomach didn’t get in knots and I didn’t start having trouble breathing until they were loading the gate. Up until then, I was just having a bourbon and water and enjoying my day with everybody else.

“I had five foals that year and in the three I sold, one made $2.5 million and another then becomes a Breeders’ Cup champion. And I get to keep two slow ones. But, hey, I’ll take it! I’ll take it.”

 

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