Inside the Winner’s Circle: Wet Your Whistle

[Wandering Eyes]

“Inside the Winner’s Circle, Presented by Keeneland” is a series showcasing graduates of the Keeneland September sale who have gone on to achieve success on racing’s biggest stages.

For the last 10 years or so, David Palmer has showed up every year at the Keeneland September sale. He arrives with a limited budget and modest expectations. Of course, he would like to purchase a horse that will go on to win the GI Kentucky Derby or the GI Breeders’ Cup Classic, but he’s only willing to buy one horse each year and prefers not to spend more than $25,000. He knows that by buying so few horses and spending so little money, the odds that he leaves Lexington with a future superstar are not with him.

He’s fine with that.

“With our budget, my wife and I are just trying to have fun,” he said. “Of course, we want to at least break even, but the goal is to get our kids into the winner’s circle and just have a good time. We have a great time going to the racetrack as a family, watching our horses compete and run and, hopefully, win.”

For the most part, Palmer, who lives and works in Maryland, was meeting his goals. He had had a few winners along the way and he and his family had enjoyed every moment they had spent at the track watching their horses campaign.

So, when he purchased a son of Stroll for $17,000 at the 2016 Keeneland September sale he would have been perfectly happy if the horse turned out to merely be a solid campaigner, who had an injury-free career and raced 25 or 30 times with the Palmer family there at the track to cheer him on.

Wet Your Whistle Wins the GI Highlander | Michael Burns photo

Never did he think this particular horse would wildly exceed his expectations and take him to places he never expected to go as an owner. That $17,000 purchase is now a Grade I winner named Wet Your Whistle (Stroll). He added the Grade I victory to his record when capturing the June 29 GI Highlander S., a six-furlong turf race at Woodbine. The victory raised his career earnings to $221,574. This came some two months after he gave Palmer his first stakes win as an owner in the Get Serious S. at Monmouth.

“We’re not sure what his limits are anymore,” trainer Mike Trombetta said, adding that the GI Woodbine Mile is a possibility for Wet Your Whistle. “I am looking at one-turn races up to seven eighths. I’m not sure if he can go a mile or not, but I think at this point, with as well as he is doing, we have to consider the Woodbine Mile. Hopefully, he’s on his way to finding his picture on the cover of Keeneland’s sales catalogue some day.”

Palmer picks out the horses he buys himself and says that whenever he goes to Keeneland, his first stop is at the barn of breeder and consignor Beau Lane.

“I always stop by Beau Lane’s barn,” he said. “Beau and his whole family do a tremendous job with their foals, so I always make it a point to look at everything in their barn. I had them pull all their horses out and I saw this guy. He was a solid individual with a nice shoulder, a big hip, a nice walk and had good scope to him. He fit perfectly in our barn.”

Lane thought highly of Wet Your Whistle, but was pretty sure he was not going to sell for much. At that point, his sire, Stroll, had not produced a Grade I winner and the dam, Winlocs Glory Days, had yet to produce a horse who had placed in any stakes races.

“He was back in the sale and his dam had no black type on her page and neither did her dam,” Lane. “When you have no black type for the two dams on the catalogue page, that’s usually the kiss of death.”

Lane said the dam was far more inbred that one normally sees in this era, and that had always been a turnoff to prospective buyers. Winlocs Glory Days is out of Winloc’s Millie, a mare by Mr. Prospector out of Mr. Prospector mare named Our Millie.

“A long time ago, when more people were breeding to race, you’d see something like that more often,” Lane said. “Now, so many people are looking to sell horses at the sales and the goal is to make a profit. You have an inbred horse like that and people don’t know what to expect, so they’re not going to want to buy it.”

Because of the inbreeding, the fact she had a modest racing record and a knee problem that halted her career on the racetrack, Winlocs Glory Days’ prior owners had given her to Lane for free. He said that, prior to Wet Your Whistle, he had lost money with every horse Winloc’s Glory had produced.

So, on paper, Wet Your Whistle looked like a horse that didn’t have a very good chance of making it on the racetrack. But plenty of horses outrun their pedigree and their sales price, and this one is a perfect example.

Wet Your Whistle made his debut as a 3-year-old, winning a $40,000 maiden claimer at Laurel. That told Trombetta and Palmer right away that this one was better than just a normal horse, but they struggled to get the very best out of him. He lost his next six races.

“Mentally, he was very immature,” Palmer said. “We had quite a few issues steering him. He was very erratic, very headstrong. We tried different bridles, bits, blinkers to get him to relax and keep his mind on his game.”

Despite the fact that Wet Your Whistle broke his maiden on the dirt, Trombetta was convinced he had a grass horse on his hands, but had trouble finding suitable turf races because of a rainy stretch throughout the summer and fall last year. Finally, he was able to get the horse into a seven-furlong race over the synthetic Tapeta surface last December at Woodbine and Wet Your Whistle responded with an 8 1/4-length win. Seven-and-half months and four races later, he has not lost since. The streak, Trombetta says, has been a combination of the gelding having matured and no longer racing on the dirt.

“You’ve got to give David and Michael a lot of credit,” Lane said. “They were very patient and gave this horse the time he needed to mature. They stuck by him and turned him into the horse he is today. You wish more people would do that. They’ve done a great job.”

Palmer said Wet Your Whistle will likely start next in the Aug. 3 GIII Troy S. at Saratoga, a 5 1/2-furlong race on the grass. Should his horse perform well there, a return trip to Woodbine for the Woodbine Mile is a distinct possibility. That’s a “Win and You’re In” race for the GI Breeders’ Cup Mile.

Can the $14,000 yearling purchase wind up in the Breeders’ Cup Mile? He’s got more to prove before that becomes a real possibility, but he’s already won a Grade I race and made a tidy profit for his owner. At the sale, Palmer was simply looking for a horse that he could enjoy and share the experience with his family. He got that and so, so much more.

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