January, 2022 | Horse Racing Free Tips

Keeneland’s April HORA Sale on Spring Meet’s Final Day

Keeneland will hold the April Horses of Racing Age Sale Friday, Apr. 29, following the last race on the closing day of the Spring Meet. The 10-race card will have an adjusted first post of 12:30 p.m. from the traditional 1 p.m., with the final race of the closing card scheduled for approximately 5:09 p.m. The sale will follow at 6:30 p.m.

“Keeneland is excited for this opportunity to bridge racing and sales and capitalize on the energy of the Spring Meet,” said Keeneland Vice President of Sales Tony Lacy. “By hosting the April Sale on a race day, we will introduce some race fans to the sales arena and hopefully develop new participants over time. We also can showcase the sale before industry focus moves to Louisville and Kentucky Derby Week.”

Like last year, the April Sale will be an integrated event, with live auctioneers at Keeneland and horses presented for sale both physically at Keeneland as well as at off-site locations, depending on the preference of the sellers and consignors. Internet and phone bidding will be available.

“Keeneland is unique in its role as both a racetrack and sales company, and we want to continue to strengthen the synergy between those two operations,” Keeneland Vice President of Racing Gatewood Bell said. “The timing of the April Sale enables trainers to make adjustments to their racing stables as they move to their summer bases.”

Entry deadline for the print version of the April Sale catalogue is Apr. 1, with supplemental entries accepted until the sale. Keeneland's Spring Meet will be held Apr. 8-29.

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Special Reserve Named National HBPA Claiming Horse Of The Year

Special Reserve started last season being claimed for $40,000 and ended 2021 as the National HBPA Claiming Horse of the Year. In between, the 5-year-old gelding won two graded stakes and three stakes overall, finished second by a half-length in Saratoga's Grade 1 Vanderbilt and concluded the season with a very competitive fourth in the $2 million Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1).

“It's been such a great experience, and he's such a great horse,” said David Staudacher, who co-owns the Mike Maker-trained Special Reserve with Peter Proscia's Paradise Farms Corp. “This award means a lot. I've been in the business over 40 years, and I had my first stakes win with Mike four or five years ago. I've been claiming horses a long time – claimed some good ones, claimed some not-so-good ones. Love the sport, love the people involved. It's just so much fun.”

Echoed Proscia: “He's been a great horse to watch. He tries all the time, and Mike did a great job with him. (The award) was a pleasant surprise. This horse has brought us a lot of fun and success. We're looking forward to his 2022 campaign.”

Each year the National HBPA Industry Awards Committee, chaired by Pennsylvania HBPA Executive Director Todd Mostoller, reviews nominated horses to choose the one most exemplifying the spirit of a National HBPA Claiming Horse of the Year.

“Claiming horses are the hard-knocking heroes of this industry, who must prove themselves every day through sweat, muscle and heart,” said National HBPA CEO Eric Hamelback. “Each year our awards committee seeks to reward the best representative. As the heart, soul and brawn of American Thoroughbred racing, they are extremely popular competitors. Their stories, and those of their owners, are often easily identified with and appreciated by all racing's fans.

“This year the committee had several quality horses to decide from, and it was a tough choice. In the end, Special Reserve and his connections proved the quality of horses that are found within the claiming ranks, the horses that make this industry's foundation. We are honored to recognize the connections at our 2022 Conference at Oaklawn and recognize them for the accomplishments of such a great horse.”

The National HBPA Annual Conference will be March 1-4 at the Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs, Ark.

Maker, headquartered in Louisville and with divisions throughout the Midwest and East, has made a career out of claiming horses and turning them into graded-stakes winners.

“He's just phenomenal,” Staudacher said. “His program and his team, they're able to move horses up. He's got a real eye for the ones he claims. Winning a couple of stakes races and finishing fourth in the Breeders' Cup was like a dream come true.”

Proscia and Staudacher both utilize handicapping “sheets” and liked what they saw in Special Reserve, with Maker in agreement that they try to claim the horse. Proscia, of Garden City, N.Y., said the gelding fit other parameters they use for identifying horses to claim. That Special Reserve was the longest shot (and the only horse in for the claiming price) in the tough second-level allowance/optional claiming race Feb. 6 at Oaklawn didn't bother them. Their faith was rewarded when the gelding won by a neck at 22-1 odds.

“I thought he could move forward,” Proscia said. “Did I know he was going to be in the Breeders' Cup? No, not a chance. But he started to develop. We gave him the time he needed, spaced the races out and he rewarded us.”

Five weeks after the claim, Maker ran Special Reserve right back for the second-level allowance condition at Oaklawn, resulting in another victory. The gelding subsequently was second in Keeneland's Grade 3 Commonwealth, won Pimlico's Grade 3 Maryland Sprint Match Series Stakes and the $100,000 Iowa Sprint before his narrow defeat in Saratoga's Alfred G. Vanderbilt.

Special Reserve earned his spot in the Breeders' Cup by taking Keeneland's Grade 2 Stoll Keenon Ogden Phoenix, a “Win and You're In” qualifying race for the $2 million Qatar Racing Sprint (G1). That day he defeated eventual Sprint winner Aloha West by a neck. A month later at Del Mar, Special Warrior pressed the very fast favorite Jackie's Warrior, fighting gamely in the stretch before getting passed late to lose the Sprint by a total of 2 1/4 lengths.

The 2021 Claiming Horse of the Year is getting a break after a hard campaign that saw the gelding go 5-2-0 in eight starts, earning $617,100. A son of 2008 juvenile champion Midshipman, Special Reserve has a career record of 8-2-7 in 23 starts while accruing $738,647.

Maker said he is particularly happy to see Proscia and Staudacher recognized.

“They love the game, whether it's claiming, buying, betting,” he said. “Just great guys. It's a very big deal. They get satisfaction at any level of race and any track. If it was up to Peter, he'd have a horse in every race at every track in America.”

Proscia in turn said Special Reserve's award is a credit to Maker's entire staff.

“I want to give them a shout out,” he said. “The people who should really get the kudos are the ones who work in the barn area. They work all kinds of hours. The people Mike employs are excellent. I've been owning horses since 1989. I have to say, they're exceptional, between the exercise riders, the grooms and the assistants, they do a great job.”

Maker said Special Reserve's 6-year-old campaign could resemble last year's path. A definite goal is trying to repeat in Keeneland's Phoenix, especially with the Breeders' Cup being at the Lexington track.

“Hopefully we can duplicate the success,” he said.

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Ty Scheumann Passes Away

Theiline “Ty” Scheumann, a Washington-based owner and breeder who founded Grousemont Farm and achieved success on the national level, died Dec. 30, 2021, in Bellevue. She was 90.

An avid outdoorswoman, Scheumann was a horsewoman, bird hunter, fisherman, floatplane pilot, and sailor. In the Thoroughbred arena, she was a strong supporter of the Washington industry and was honored as a Washington Racing Hall of Fame breeder in 2011. Her Grousemont Farm was one of the contributors to the building of the WTBOA Sales Pavilion and offices at Emerald Downs in 1996.

Scheumann's Grousemont bred 1992 GI Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Thirty Slews (Slewpy) and MGISW Noble Nashua (Nashua). Among the big splashes she made in the sales ring in recent years were the $1.6-million sale of GSW Mrs McDougal (Medaglia d'Oro) at the 2018 Keeneland January sale, as well as the purchase of $1.5-million GISW Downthedustyroad (Storm and a Half) and $1.125-million SW J Z Warrior (Harlan's Holiday) for racing.

Scheumann is survived by five children: Lee (Stuart) Rolfe, Howard S. (Kate Janeway) Wright III, Jeff (Korynne) Wright, Taylor (Erin) Wright, and David (Sally) Wright; as well as 13 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren; plus sisters, Ann Wyckoff and Mary Ellen Hughes; and brothers, Charles and Jim, and their families.

A memorial and celebration of life are planned for the spring. Donations in Scheumann's honor may be directed to YWCA of Seattle or the Seattle Art Museum.

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Bloodlines Presented By Caracaro: When A Stallion’s Road To Success Takes A Detour

Races in California and in Florida on Jan. 15 highlighted the high stakes that farms and breeders contend for in breeding each crop of racers. The highest stakes are played for the top stallion prospects each year, and the keystone of each new breeding season is the acquisition of these premium stallion prospects, who are the objects of intense competition from the leading farms in Kentucky.

The best-organized and -financed farms bid as much as the market will bear to bring in those highly attractive sire prospects and the consequent large books of mares and attendant prestige from working with leading breeders and marketers.

The result is that the top prospects for each crop are priced as high as the marketplace can accommodate, and the expectations for these highflyers are as high as their stud fees.

This isn't an evaluation of whether this is the most effective way to select stallions; it's just a description of the way the marketplace, especially in America and Europe, works in response to the stallion acquisition model currently in use.

Once the farms and their annual stallion prospects are into this process, there isn't much they can do except to provide the best opportunity, management, and promotion available to maximize their new sire prospects. And hang on for the ride.

Because there is a considerable amount of unpredictability in the stallion market on the performance side of the equation. First, there is the unpredictability of genetic transmission, and second, there is the unpredictability of training and racing Thoroughbreds.

The genetic transmission of athleticism and excellence is difficult to evaluate, but study of the results of stallion prospects' offspring on the racetrack shows us that fewer than half of the annual stallion prospects transmit their own genotype and phenotype effectively enough to become successful stallions; perhaps 15 to 20 percent do this well enough to be consistently good stallions.

Breeders, owners, buyers, sales companies, and advisers to all attempt to do this ahead of the curve, and inevitably, they are more wrong than right because most stallion prospects are going to fail.

The looming sense of failure is inevitable because most entities in racing score success by stakes victories and black type earned. With only about 3 percent of horses winning stakes annually, that means 97 percent do not. That's a statistical hump that is hard to get around, and the sire who does so with some finesse, in the manner of Mr. Prospector, Storm Cat, or Into Mischief, is a paragon of many virtues.

Faults be damned.

Any competent horseman could have looked at the progeny of the sires above and said he didn't like this, that, or the other. But those same sires didn't just tickle the brass ring, didn't just catch the ring. No, they hit that sucker so hard, they turned it into a dinner plate.

That's what a breed-changing sire can do and does. But this column is about the great majority of stallions and stallion prospects: those who don't get the ball out of the park, or at least not immediately.

The result of the intense competition among stallions, owners, farms, and trainers is that most stallions are surplus to needs after only a few years at stud. As a result, they are frequently sold on to racing jurisdictions that have room for a stallion with potential to work in their racing and breeding community.

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Among the most consistent buyers of American stallions over the past years are breeding organizations like the Korean Racing Authority, the Japan Bloodstock Breeders Association, and the Jockey Club of Turkey.

In the last weekend's racing, the results were littered with the names and the domestic descendants of stallions who have gone to stud in Kentucky, then been sold to stand elsewhere.

For instance, the Pasco Stakes at Tampa Bay went to Markhamian (by Social Inclusion), and his broodmare sire, Colonel John (Tiznow), is in South Korea. Leggs Galore won the Sunshine Millions Filly & Mare Turf Sprint, and her sire Bayern (Offlee Wild) is now at stud in South Korea after purchase last summer by Sangil Choi. Gatsby won the Sunshine Sprint at Gulfstream Park; his sire Brethren (Distorted Humor) is still evading 'gators in Florida, but his broodmare sire, Aldebaran (Mr. Prospector), was sold to stand in Japan, beginning with the 2009 breeding season. And at Santa Anita, Aligato (Kitten's Joy) won the Unusual Heat Turf Classic. The sire still enjoys considerable popularity in Kentucky, but the broodmare sire, Rock Hard Ten (Kris S.), was sold to the KRA in November 2012, and stood at their Jeju stallion station until his death on Nov. 17 last year.

Short of a change in the economics of stallion acquisition and management, this is the pattern of the present and the future.

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