DuPont Still Serving up Aces

[Wandering Eyes]

Bill duPont's program today is much smaller than it was back in the 1980s, when he stood 15 stallions across three continents. Nonetheless all his experience keeps telling in a fashion very hard to emulate for anyone now trying to fill that kind of space.

Under the banner of Pillar Properties Services Inc., duPont bred GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies runner-up Vodka With a Twist (Thousand Words) from a $6,000 mare. Then there's Irish Maxima (Maximus Mischief), whose recent graded stakes breakout at Aqueduct was her eighth win in 11. She's out of a mare duPont bought for $8,500. And after Iscreamuscream (Twirling Candy) won the GI Del Mar Oaks last summer, guess who turned out to have bought her dam for $12,000?

DuPont says with a shrug that he isn't crazy about insurance premiums, and duly confines himself these days to mares that let him sleep at night. But the fact is that anyone newer to the game, whatever their resources, cannot hope to match the lore he has honed between his own experience and that of a sporting family as colorful as it was accomplished.

Very often duPont will go back to blood that can mean little to most, but that he knows to trust. Take the dam of Vodka With a Twist.

“Unplaced in one start is not my usual M.O.,” duPont acknowledges. “But sometimes you make exceptions, and I will occasionally indulge in a mare that goes back to one of my old families. This particular mare, Bourbon and a Kiss (Sky Mesa), traces to Istria (GB), who was a champion 2-year-old filly in Germany [in 1979]. The family has been very successful: Vodka's third dam Mayo On the Side (Silver Deputy) was a Grade I winner, and another branch has Jackie's Warrior.”

Not that Vodka With a Twist can yield more than the odd breeder's prize. As a yearling, a couple of veterinary issues enabled McCutchen Training Center to pick her up for just $2,500 at Fasig October. Far worse, duPont then lost the mare to a twisted gut.

Nor, actually, has there yet been due reward for finding Silver Screamer (Cozzene), whose weanling at the time turned out to be Iscreamuscream, at the 2021 Keeneland November Sale. The Global Campaign colt she was carrying there was another to hit vet trouble (admittedly resurfaced winning by 11 lengths in Mexico) and sadly Silver Screamer has since lost consecutive foals.

“It's a cruel business at times,” duPont concedes. “The lows can be very low. But the highs are very high, too. And obviously Vodka showed up and ran nearly every month from April through to December.”

In the circumstances, he might regret not having retained her to race himself. But that's something he seldom does anymore—though, again, there are exceptions. One is a filly out of a mare culled by Calumet a couple of years ago: a champion 2-year-old in Brazil, also graded stakes-placed in California, for just $3,500.

“Since younger mares are out of my 'good night's sleep' range, I look for middle-aged ones that haven't yet had their good horse,” duPont explains. “I do prefer mares that could run, over pedigree or conformation. Triers make broodmares. So when I was bigger in the business, and could buy them younger, I followed the Joe Estes theory. Most of mine were stakes mares. And we did fine. It's many years since anyone counted them up, but we were on 75 stakes winners then so must be closer to 100 now.”

The duPont dynasty obviously resonates across our sport: while he has only a remote kinship with the owner of Kelso, his aunt had 1938 Grand National winner Battleship. His most direct influence, however, was his mother Margaret Osborne duPont: an all-time tennis great.

“She had to take a little vacation to have me, in 1952, but won 37 major titles [across singles/doubles/mixed doubles],” her son explains. “Of those 25 were at the U.S. Open equivalent [pre-Open era], still a record. And my father would never let her go to Australia, so potentially she missed out on many more. He went to California in the winters, for his asthma, and didn't want her going away on his vacation. Different times, right? She was a very quiet, withdrawn personality, very competitive but always known for her sportsmanship.”

His father, also William, raced serial champions from Foxcatcher Farm; indeed duPont admits an ancestral resentment that neither Fairy Chant (1940/41) nor Parlo (1954/5), champion fillies at both three and four, have made the Hall of Fame. (Parlo's daughter All Beautiful was bought by Paul Mellon at his father's dispersal, carrying a future Horse of the Year in Arts and Letters.)

DuPont's father also joined the syndicate that imported Blenheim, but is perhaps best remembered for Rosemont, who not only interrupted the Triple Crown spree of Omaha in the 1935 Withers (then between Preakness and Belmont) but also beat Seabiscuit in the 1937 Big 'Cap.

“I loved the Seabiscuit movie, it was great public relations for the sport, but they took a lot of artistic license,” DuPont says. “They made a big deal out of Pollard's eye, and not seeing Rosemont coming. But Rosemont was the betting favorite, giving Seabiscuit 14lbs, and ran him down through a lot of traffic from the 17 post.”

(DuPont adds that anyone who actually reviews Seabiscuit's celebrated win in the same race, three years later, will notice his owner's other entry finishing second under a strikingly indulgent ride!)

After his parents' divorce, duPont's mother joined her great friend Margaret Varner Bloss—who uniquely represented the U.S. in tennis, squash and badminton—in El Paso, Texas, where her son was raised.

“And it was Margaret Bloss that got my mother into racehorses,” duPont says. “She married a trainer in New Mexico, Gerald Bloss, who did the early training of Gallant Man. They got into breeding and racing down there, Margaret Bloss raising them all herself, by hand.”

DuPont was himself getting plenty of hands-on experience, including a summer with Ruidoso trainer Joe Welch – and the two Margarets even urged the college boy to get a trainer's license himself. “So I did,” duPont says. “And I was the official trainer of two of their horses. I had one winner, a horse we took up to Santa Fe.”

But the real dividend of that precocious experience was exposure to a couple of interesting neighbors on the backside.

“I had two stalls at the end of the barn, and a pony outside, and it was very hard to get an exercise rider,” duPont recalls. “So I was ponying the horses for exercise in the morning. But directly across was this beautiful shedrow, totally out of place at Ruidoso Downs: flowers, grass, beautiful signage. Oh boy: D. Wayne Lukas! And the rest of my shedrow? J.J. Pletcher.”

DuPont duly had a couple of horses with Pletcher's son Todd when he started training; and others, over the years, with Lukas.

“Wayne suffered much professional jealousy,” duPont says. “But I'm a big fan. Absolutely changed the game, and a very upstanding guy. I didn't know him that well until later, really. But he was amazing. One time we ran a horse in the Hollywood Gold Cup and he's walking through the grandstand with Elizabeth Taylor. Wayne and J.J. both came from Quarter Horses, of course. American racing obviously has a lot of sprinting and a large part of the Quarter Horse angle is training 2-year-olds and keeping them sound.”

After graduating, duPont quickly emerged as a dynamic young presence in the Bluegrass. Pillar Stud's first stallion in 1979 was Silver Series, who soon sired Churchill turf specialist Mrs. Revere. As a student of Turf history, however, duPont had been especially inspired by a tour of Europe—and his other start-up was the 1976 St Leger winner, Crow (GB), soon followed by Sassafras (Fr) and the brilliant British juvenile Tromos (GB).

“I think horses are more versatile than we give them credit for,” duPont says. “I've always had European mares, and European stallions when I was in that game. I didn't bring them over to be turf sires. I thought they'd be good additions to the gene pool and could adapt to dirt. Some did, some didn't; same with the broodmares.”

Unfortunately duPont lost both Silver Series and Tromos, within months of each other, as soon as 1982.

“Tromos was my all-time favorite,” DuPont says. “A champion 2-year-old by Busted (GB), of all horses, out of Stilvi (GB) who was a very good sprinter and a top, top broodmare. When I lost him, it just took the wind out of my sails. I've had the most outrageously bad and good stallion personalities. Poker was just flat dangerous; Tromos the total opposite, kind as a lady's hunter. He loved attention, and I have a great picture of him just hanging his head over my shoulder.”

DuPont did much business with John Gaines and, having narrowly failed to land Blushing Groom in a partnership, settled for four of 40 shares when he came to Gainesway. And, having surrendered a contract for Riverman when CEM hit, he instead ended up taking one-third of Lyphard. Nor did duPont disdain stallions off the dirt: he repatriated Cure the Blues and General Assembly, and stood (having co-raced) Star de Naskra. And there was a tantalizing moment when he was poised to bring Mr. Prospector to Kentucky, had Claiborne's deal fallen through.

But his stable was certainly an unusually cosmopolitan one, with links to Haras de Victot in Normandy and Blue Gum Farm in Victoria. Perhaps his quirkiest success was Noalcoholic, bred from Italian Classic winner Alea (GB). (She was also champion 2-year-old filly in her homeland: hunting those down, even in relative backwaters, has worked repeatedly for duPont, as already noted with Istria.) Noalcoholic had done enough in France to be sent to Blue Gum, but while undergoing quarantine in Newmarket began thriving so insistently that he was allowed to resume racing, and won such races as the G1 Sussex Stakes on his way to becoming champion miler of Europe.

Evocative names, for many of us! But the world has changed, as has duPont's firepower. Based in Florida for the last 40 years, he talks wryly of real estate misfortunes that “turned me from a large breeder into a small one.” There were domestic commitments, too: children to raise, a remarriage. Even last November, however, he couldn't resist adding to his residual band of a dozen mares—expertly managed by Collier Mathes of Chesapeake Farm—when a stakes winner by New Approach (Ire) surfaced at Keeneland. She was out of a graded stakes-placed daughter of Test winner Storm and Sunshine, whose own sire was none other than Star de Naskra. Because what the catalogue didn't show was that she's also fourth dam of Group 1-winning sisters Mama Cocha (Jpn) and (the pure white) Sodashi (Jpn) (both by Kurofune). While admittedly now 15, this mare has twice changed hands for half a million—and duPont got her for $5,000!

She's gone to The Factor, the kind of stallion that reciprocates the value in those “middle-aged” mares. “Farms are having trouble getting mares once their shiny new stallions become less shiny,” duPont reflects. “So I've been using sires like The Factor, Cross Traffic, Goldencents, while these first-year horses have been going through the roof. But I guess I'm old-fashioned. Isn't the goal ultimately to breed a racehorse? If I can do that, I should get more for the foals down the line.”

Playing the long game reflects the perspective of a man familiar with some of the most memorable Turf protagonists of his time. There's even a Kentucky Derby breeder's trophy on the sideboard. In 1987, the year they married, duPont bought his wife Pam a Stage Door Johnny mare named Never Knock—and seven years later Pamela Darmstadt duPont was duly honored as official breeder of Go for Gin.

Never Knock having meanwhile also produced Pleasant Tap, one of duPont's great coups was selling a full brother for $2.2 million at the 1998 July Sale.

“The first person to congratulate us was 'Brere' Jones,” DuPont recalls. “He was someone I thought very highly of. We had similar thought processes, regarding stallions, and often wound up bidding on the same mares too. Just one of the most respectable, honest, upright people I've ever met.”

And that, for duPont, is the real reward of his journey with horses: the relationships, characters, stories. Those who influenced him most included Lee Eaton, Ben Walden, Bob Courtney, Henry White and above all, for his early mentoring, Dan Scott. “My father would send his mares from Virginia to Dan in Kentucky,” he explains. “Dan had Geisha for Alfred Vanderbilt and she wouldn't load the van. So the only horse she could be bred to was the one across the street: Polynesian. If you look at her breeding record, you'll see one Polynesian after another, none any good apart from… Native Dancer!”

But then that's what horses do: they amplify the general truth that the more we know, the less we know. As duPont says himself: “I think that anybody you talk to, that has it all figured out, is… inexperienced!”

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