Patrick O'Keefe's on-ramp for the Road to the Kentucky Derby with Grade 3 Sam F. Davis Stakes winner Classic Causeway began more than 20 years ago at an OTB in Wyoming.
O'Keefe was showing off his ranch in Bear Lake, Idaho, to Wayne Call, a longtime friend who had moved east and was visiting family back in his childhood home.
Call, who did bloodstock work and trained a few horses, told O'Keefe the ranch near the southeast border of Idaho and Utah would be a perfect place to raise Thoroughbreds.
“I said, 'It gets too cold here,' but Wayne said the cold gets rid of parasites and disease,” O'Keefe recalled. “We have good water and several hundred acres, so I said I'd give it a try.”
O'Keefe, a native of Utah, had built a golf and country club in Bear Lake and sold a thousand residential lots around it. He then played golf for several years on what he called the “money tour,” a loose collection of players who apparently try to out-hustle each other on the links for cash.
O'Keefe said he had more money to invest than knowledge when it came to the horse business.
“I was dumb as a post,” he admitted. “I had no background in racing whatsoever.”
Call suggested the two men drive to a nearby OTB in Wyoming, where they hatched out a plan for what would become Kentucky West Farms and Kentucky West Racing, part of a bigger project that would include estate-sized residential lots overlooking Bear Lake.
“Wayne said, 'Let's look through the Racing Form and see if we can find a mare who's made some money on the track and try to buy her,'” O'Keefe said. “I saw this horse named Rita Rucker who'd run in more than 70 races and had a lot of wins, including a couple of stakes.”
An Arkansas-bred by Dimitri out of a Temperence Hill mare, Rita Rucker compiled a record of 21 wins from 72 starts while racing in the Midwest and West Virginia. Her racing career ended at nine years old after a last-place finish in a $16,000 claiming race at Beulah Park in October 2000.
“I told Wayne I have about $100,000 to put in the business and that's it,” O'Keefe remembers. “He said, 'They want 75 for her,' and I said that's going to wipe out almost all of my investment.”
Call shook his head and told O'Keefe, “No, they want 75 hundred.”
A private deal was done and Rita Rucker was bred to Kentucky Derby winner Thunder Gulch. O'Keefe's plan was to have the mare foal in Kentucky and then ship mare and foal to his Idaho ranch a few months later. The Thunder Gulch foal, a 2003 filly named Private World, followed that path, roaming the spacious paddocks at Kentucky West Farms before being sent to Southern California trainer Bob Hess.
Even though she was a June foal, Private World turned out to be a precocious filly who won her first three starts as a 2-year-old, including the Anoakia Stakes during the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita and the Moccasin Stakes at Hollywood Park. After a couple of subpar performances, Hess had her turned out and she wound up getting injured in a paddock mishap, never to race again.
A few years later, Rita Rucker produced a Point Given colt named Point Encounter that won first out as a 2-year-old for trainer Carla Gaines, going 6 ½ furlongs in a quick 1:14.81 under Mike Smith.
“Mike said the horse nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets when the gates opened,” O'Keefe said. “The boys that had Big Brown wanted to buy him off that race and offered $2.5 million. But when they had him vetted he found a tear in his tendon.”
Point Encounter never raced again.
“It's been a lot of heartaches and the business cost me a couple million dollars,” said O'Keefe. “I should have been gone 15 years ago, but I stuck with it.”
He's glad he did.
Along the way, O'Keefe became friends with the well-known Southern California horseplayer, Jimmy “The Hat” Allard, who introduced O'Keefe to Clarke Cooper, who would become partners in several horses, including Classic Causeway.
Private World, that first foal from Rita Rucker, had previously joined O'Keefe's small broodmare band, but didn't produce much until she was sent to Giant's Causeway in 2016. The resulting foal, a California-bred filly named Rockie Causeway, was bred by Cooper and Kentucky West Racing and had a promising career cut short when she was injured from a bumping incident in an allowance race on turf at Santa Anita.
Bred to Giant's Causeway again in his final year at stud in 2018, Private World produced Classic Causeway, who O'Keefe said was raised in Ashford rather than going west to Idaho. On the advice of Allard, the colt was sent to trainer Brian Lynch, a former assistant to Allard's close friend, the late Hall of Famer, Robert Frankel.
One day last summer, O'Keefe got a phone call from Lynch, asking if it would be OK to take Classic Causeway with his string to Saratoga.
“I said to go ahead and see what you can do with him,” O'Keefe said. “A few weeks later I get another call and Brian says he's got some good news and maybe not so good news. He said the horse will be running in a maiden special race but the bad news is we're running against the top trainers in the nation. I said I didn't want the horse to get an inferiority complex.”
Sent off at 13-1 under Jose Ortiz in a race that included juveniles from the barns of Todd Pletcher, Steve Asmussen, Bill Mott, Barclay Tagg, Al Stall Jr., Dallas Stewart and George Weaver, Classic Causeway went straight to the front, led throughout, then drew out by 6 ½ lengths, going seven furlongs in 1:22.67. He's seen nothing but stakes competition since, finishing third to Rattle N Roll in Keeneland's Grade 1 Claiborne Breeders' Futurity and second to Smile Happy in the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes in late November.
The Feb. 12 Sam F. Davis marked his 3-year-old debut after originally being pointed to the Grade 3 Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Park a week earlier.
“Brian's a smart guy,” said O'Keefe. “He wanted to put the horse in the best possible place he could to win. He wanted to give him a little more time and that race looked really good to him.”
Ridden this time by Irad Ortiz Jr., Classic Causeway was the 8-5 favorite in the Sam F. Davis, set a contested pace for the first six furlongs, then pulled away to win by 3 3/4 lengths, the 1 1/16 miles in 1:42.80 on a fast track.
Offers have been coming it to buy Classic Causeway, with O'Keefe saying Allard “put a $5-million offer on the table” from a suitor looking for a potential Derby horse.
The offers have been rejected.
“When you get to be my age, it ain't about the money any more,” said O'Keefe, 80. “I've had millions and lost millions. I'd probably blow the money any how. Money, with me, has wings. I can make it but I can't keep it.
“I'd like to let the horse dictate what's going to happen,” he added. “I just really want to take this trip with the horse. I think Cooper does, too. He's up there with me (in age). I'll never get another chance.”
In the next breath, O'Keefe is talking about Classic Causeway's younger siblings.
After producing a Lookin At Lucky filly in 2020, Private World was bred to Triple Crown winner Justify. “He's a gorgeous colt,” O'Keefe said of the resulting foal. “He's a yearling and will be ready to go next year. I bred Private World back to Justify and we've got a baby coming in May. This one's going to be a filly.”
It's a long road from Bear Lake, Idaho, and a Wyoming OTB to the Twin Spires at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, but O'Keefe seems to be enjoying a look back at the twists and turns the horse industry has produced for him along the way.
“Who in the hell would believe this story anyhow?” he asked.
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