The Week in Review: Beholder’s $4-Million Baby Fires a Bullet

[Wandering Eyes]

While 'TDN Rising Star' Tamara (Bolt d'Oro) will be a main attraction on the Dec. 26 opening-day card at Santa Anita, another highly anticipated foal who is also out of the fan-favorite champion Beholder–this one an unnamed and unraced 2-year-old colt by Curlin–fired a bullet three-furlong morning move Saturday in just his third published workout for trainer Bob Baffert and owner Zedan Racing.

The in-company :36 clocking (1/18) just prior to the Christmas holiday on a non-racing Saturday at Santa Anita might have flown a touch under-the-radar for a juvenile with such a high-profile pedigree. But considering that this is a colt who hammered for $4 million as an Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling 16 months ago, it's unlikely that the chestnut with the Hall-of-Fame parents will be keeping a low profile for future training sessions.

“He is coming around slowly. Beautiful mover,” Baffert told TDN via text message a few hours after the Dec. 21 workout.

Unlike the first four foals out of the four-time Eclipse Award-winner who were all raced by breeder Spendthrift Farm, the Curlin colt was the first of Beholder's babies to sell at public auction.

As TDN's Katie Petrunyak reported almost exactly a year ago, the colt had earned a reputation for being a bit high-strung at that Saratoga yearling sale because he was on his toes in the sales ring and let loose with one hair-raising rear-up.

But when sent to Eddie Woods Stables in Ocala, Florida, Woods told Petrunyak that the colt was just a “good-feeling horse” who was straightforward in his demeanor as he progressed willingly through the early stages of jogging and cantering.

Now fast-forward 12 months to Santa Anita, where the Curlin–Beholder colt began racetrack life with a quarter-mile move Dec. 8 followed by two three-eighths “handily” workouts Dec. 15 and 21.

“He has filled out into a really nice-bodied horse,” Baffert told TDN. “He has a great mind and moves like a good horse.”

Asked if he has a ballpark timetable for the colt's debut, Baffert responded, “Still a ways away from running. Maybe February.”

And is there a name in the pipeline that is awaiting approval from The Jockey Club?

“No name picked out yet,” Baffert texted.

Tamara is the most accomplished of Beholder's foals to date. She won her 2023 juvenile maiden debut, soared home by 6 3/4 lengths in the GI Del Mar Debutante S., then faded to seventh as the 4-5 favorite in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. Following that race, it was found that she had sustained a fractured splint bone in her left leg. After more than a year off, Tamara returned to the races Nov. 15, 2024, and ran a game second, beaten a nose, in an optional $100,000 claimer in which she was not entered to be claimed.

Beholder's other foals to race, all out of trainer Richard Mandella's barn, have been the gelding Q B One (Uncle Mo), an 0-for-4 maiden at Santa Anita in 2021-22; the filly Karin With an I (Curlin), who was seventh in her only two starts at Santa Anita and Del Mar in 2022, and the filly Teena Ella (War Front), whose 2-for-5 record includes winning the GIII Senorita S. on the downhill turf sprint course at Santa Anita in 2023.

One Glad Grad

When a racetrack accident put jockey Skyler Spanabel in the hospital several years ago, she didn't realize the up-close brush with the medical profession would provide a life-changing perspective that would remain with her long after her broken arm healed.

“Of the three days I was there, only one nurse was very empathetic, considerate and gentle,” Spanabel told Tampa's ABC Action News in a 2023 interview. “And I was like, 'We need more like her, and I want to be like her.' And so I wanted to go into the system to make a difference.”

So Spanabel–while continuing to ride in races at Tampa Bay Downs and Gulfstream Park–enrolled in nursing school.

After four years of splitting course work and racetrack work, last Tuesday the 25-year-old jockey received her diploma, earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from the Arizona College of Nursing in Tampa.

She was one of 20 grads from an original class of 56 who started in the demanding, year-round program, in which students receive only a single week off every 16 weeks.

“You have no idea the amount of weight that came off my shoulders,” Spanabel told the Tampa Bay Downs notes team.

“It took a lot. I want to thank everybody at the track for their support, especially the trainers who rode me on their horses while I was in school. They had a lot of patience,” she said.

Spanabel will begin working as a registered nurse in February in a surgical unit at HCA Florida Bayonet Point Hospital. But just as she did during school, she's determined to continue her career as a jockey, aiming to strike a balance between both professions.

“I'll be working at the hospital Monday through Wednesday, so I can ride Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Spanabel said.

Her first mount after graduation on Tuesday was a second-place finish aboard a 15-1 first-time starter in the Wednesday opener at Tampa, just a half-length shy of victory.

“My first love is horses,” Spanabel emphasized. “[Nursing] is my second.”

Not Making the Grade

Coming off consecutive weekends in which points-awarding prep races for the GI Kentucky Derby lured only fields of five in the Dec. 14 GII Los Alamitos Futurity and the Dec. 21 ungraded Gun Runner S. at Fair Grounds, other stakes races on the Derby trail absorbed a hit this past week when three points-awarding qualifiers coming up in just a few weeks were stripped of their graded status for 2025.

The American Graded Stakes Committee of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association downgraded 33 races in total for next year.

Three of them are sophomore stakes clustered together on the calendar, all Grade III races that will now be classified as “listed:” the Feb. 1 Withers S. at Aqueduct, the Feb. 8 Sam F. Davis S. at Tampa, and the Feb. 16 Sunland Derby at Sunland Park.

As recently as 2022, the Withers winner was the eventual GI Preakness S. winner, Early Voting.

Two participants in recent renewals of the Davis, Vino Rosso (2018) and Knicks Go (2019), later won the GI Breeders' Cup Classic.

Stronghold (Ghostzapper), who is entered in Thursday's GI Malibu S. at Santa Anita, parlayed last year's Sunland Derby into a next-out victory in the GI Santa Anita Derby.

Those examples aren't meant as justifications that the races shouldn't have been trimmed, because there are still way too many graded stakes (415) relative to the declining Thoroughbred population. But it's not like those were entirely unproductive Grade III stakes, either.

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