Month: June 2023

‘It Would Be Weird To Not Have Maple Leaf Mel In My Barn’: Melanie Giddings Takes Over Training Duties For Namesake

Melanie Giddings, the namesake of undefeated graded stakes winner Maple Leaf Mel, has taken over training duties of the likely favorite for next Saturday's Grade 3, $175,000 Victory Ride for sophomore fillies going 6 1/2 furlongs at Belmont Park.

Maple Leaf Mel has not raced since an effortless victory in the Grade 3 Miss Preakness on May 19 at Pimlico Race Course, which was her first graded effort as well as her first start outside of her native state of New York.

The sophomore bay daughter of Cross Traffic previously defeated her Empire State-bred counterparts in the Seeking the Ante in August at Saratoga Race Course and the East View on March 24 at Aqueduct.

Maple Leaf Mel is owned by retired Super Bowl-winning head coach Bill Parcells' August Dawn Farm, and was previously trained by Jeremiah Englehart.

Giddings previously worked for Hall of Famers Mark Casse and Steve Asmussen as well as Al Stall, Jr. before spending roughly six years as Englehart's assistant. She commenced her training career in January and has now won two races, both on June 21 at Presque Isle Downs with Fight and Ready She Is.

“To me, it would be weird to not have Maple Leaf Mel in my barn. After having looked after her for so long, it would be more strange to not see her rather than to see her every day,” Giddings said. “Usually, when people name horses after people, it doesn't turn out the way it's turned out with her. I just hope we can continue to have success with her through the summer.”

Giddings, a native of Cobourg, Ontario, was based in South Florida when going out on her own, but moved her operation to Saratoga for the summer once business started picking up.

“I started this winter with just a couple horses. I didn't really plan on doing a whole lot, I just wanted a couple of my own,” Giddings said. “Then it turned out, I was getting a couple more, and a couple more and then I thought that I wanted to come up here. It's a little bit nicer up here than South Florida for the summer.”

Giddings spoke high volumes of Parcells.

“He's a good, genuine person and he's always wanting to help people. It's just his nature,” Giddings said. “I don't think anyone ever envisions naming a horse after somebody and it's turning out to really be something. We want every horse to be something, but this just happened to be the one.”

Giddings described Maple Leaf Mel as, “different and quirky in her own little way.”

“She's a nice filly to train, a high-spirited horse. She doesn't go anywhere without the pony,” Giddings said. “She's also highly intelligent. I feel like she's matured a lot turning three. I just hope that she can progressively get better from there.”

Giddings said Maple Leaf Mel breezed a half-mile in 49.40 seconds with Shaun Bridgmohan up on Friday at Saratoga.

“She's just a good feeling horse. She was dragging Shaun to the wire in a nice work. She was bucking on the way back home and that's just her,” Giddings said.

Despite already having her own barn, Giddings was still on hand for Maple Leaf Mel's Miss Preakness conquest and expressed pride in the winning effort.

“I was super proud of her. She had to run against a different group of horses for the first time that day,” Giddings recalled. “She had to ship from Florida to Pimlico. We shipped to New York to run and shipped her right back to Florida to train for her last race. There was a whole lot of excitement that day with walking up to the paddock with all the people cheering and clapping in the stands. It was a high intensity atmosphere and she handled herself well.”

Having worked for a handful of different trainers has given Giddings her own approach in terms of conditioning horses.

“I feel like I just try to learn things all the time from anyone that's around me,” Giddings said. “I've worked for some very good people that are very successful. I try to take little things here and there that have worked for them and maybe they are the kind of things that can work for me.”

Bred by Joe Fafone, Maple Leaf Mel is out of the dual winning City Place mare City Gift, who also produced the stakes-placed Eddie's Gift.

The post ‘It Would Be Weird To Not Have Maple Leaf Mel In My Barn’: Melanie Giddings Takes Over Training Duties For Namesake appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Belmont Runner-Up Forte Records ‘Comfortable And Happy’ Breeze; Tapit Trice ‘Pretty Sharp’

Repole Stable and St. Elias Stable's reigning Champion 2-Year-Old Colt Forte resumed serious business on Friday morning over the Belmont Park training track, working a half-mile in 50.40 for Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher.

With exercise rider Hector Ramos aboard, Forte went to the training track following the 9:30 a.m. renovation break and breezed in company with graded stakes winner Major Dude, who is a probable contestant for next Friday's Grade 3, $250,000 Manila at Belmont. The move was Forte's first since finishing second in the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes on June 10.

“We were just looking for an easy work back and I thought that was accomplished today,” said Pletcher's Belmont-based assistant Byron Hughes. “I thought he was moving well within himself. He looked comfortable and happy. You couldn't ask for anything more than that at this point.”

Forte won Gulfstream's Grade 2 Fountain of Youth on March 4 and Grade 1 Florida Derby on April 1. He entered the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby on May 6 at Churchill Downs as the morning-line favorite, but was scratched the morning of the race with a bruised foot.

Whisper Hill Farm and Gainesway Stable's Tapit Trice breezed a solo half-mile in 48.03 seconds over the training track Friday with exercise rider Fernando Rivera in the irons. The move was the Grade 1-winning millionaire son of Tapit's second work since finishing third in the Belmont Stakes.

“I thought he breezed really well,” Hughes said. “It was a good gallop out for him. He looked pretty sharp today and came out of the Belmont in good shape. He's maybe a little sharper now this time of year than he was last year. But that's what you see in these Tapits. It seems like the older they get, the sharper they get.”

Tapit Trice won the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby on March 11 at Tampa Bay Downs and the Grade 1 Blue Grass on April 8 at Keeneland en route to a seventh-place finish in the Kentucky Derby.

Following Forte's breeze, last year's Champion 3-Year-Old Filly Nest took another step towards her 2023 debut, going five furlongs in 1:01.22 in company with Too Boss over the training track. Owned by Repole Stable, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Michael House, Nest has consistently breezed over the training track since mid-May.

“I think she's progressed well with each breeze,” Hughes said. “She seems to be getting fitter and fitter and responds well to the breeze. With each breeze you can tell that she gets a little sharper every week.”

The post Belmont Runner-Up Forte Records ‘Comfortable And Happy’ Breeze; Tapit Trice ‘Pretty Sharp’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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This Side Up: No Proxy For The One And Only

Unfortunately, they only have one Two Phil's (Hard Spun). If they had another, presumably making Four Phils in all, then they might yet have the consolation of a proxy in the big races through the second half of the season. As it is, we can only offer our sympathy to the heartbroken team around a horse that brought us such precious cheer during what is proving a challenging year for our sport.

Because that's the whole point, really. The big programs would be able to temper their disappointment, on losing the services even of a horse as accomplished as Two Phil's, with the likelihood that an equivalent talent will eventually come along. And it was precisely because the circle of friends who launched Two Phil's towards the top of his crop did so by such accessible investment–he's out of the only Thoroughbred ever purchased by the Sagan family, a $40,000 daughter of a failed stallion–that so many of us identified with their cause. They made us feel we all had a chance.

Two Phil's, moreover, had been progressing from a somewhat sentimental, blue-collar rooting interest to a perfectly credible candidate for what feels an open sophomore championship. He was the only contributor to the GI Kentucky Derby pace that managed to hang tough, and looked better than ever on his first start since in the GIII Ohio Derby last weekend. How maddeningly typical of this game, then, that even in opening up new horizons his owners should suddenly reach a dead end.

They must now regroup, clear their heads and find Two Phil's his best chance at stud. His maternal family contains its challenges, but that is true of a lot of good stallions and something, after all, is demonstrably functioning in his genetic make-up. There is an increasing burden on sons of War Front and Hard Spun to maintain the shortest available connection to their breed-shaping sire Danzig, and Two Phil's certainly bears an auspicious resemblance to his excellent sire. Both proved their adaptability by winning the same Derby trial on a synthetic surface, before proceeding to finish second at Churchill. On the right farm, I'm sure that Two Phil's has every chance of writing a new chapter in the fairytale; and his connections have played their cards too faultlessly to need any help in determining which farm might be the right one.

In the meantime, we must just thank them for introducing this authentic ray of sunshine into our present darkness. As I've noted before, that rogue apostrophe actually became part of what the horse stood for: a symbol of his quirky, aberrational advent among those who set expensive standards at the top of the market. He arrived as a defiant Chicago gesture, many in his entourage having been deprived of their natural habitat–and one of the jewels of the racing planet–by the closure of Arlington Park by the very people who host the Derby.

One of those cast adrift from Arlington was trainer Larry Rivelli, whose prospects of replacing the irreplaceable should at least be enhanced by having drawn national attention to gifts already well familiar on his home circuits. In this bittersweet week, indeed, Rivelli has saddled six winners from nine starters; and these included two “Derby” winners in one weekend, with Act A Fool (Oscar Performance) making it four off the reel in the Hawthorne Derby last Sunday. Hopefully Jareth Loveberry, also integral to the horse's development, will now be able to consolidate, as well, having earned his stripes all the way through from Great Lakes Downs.

Proxy (outside) wins the GII Oaklawn Handicap | Coady Photography

But if some of these guys end up never quite retrieving the same heights, at least they all seized their opportunity when it came. And they would surely choose the shorter ride they took with Two Phil's over the “better” luck experienced by many others, in being able to restore a horse to training after being derailed before the Classics?

It's not as though there's a piece of paper anyone gets to sign, but how would you choose between Two Phil's or a horse like, say, Proxy (Tapit)? Having disappeared for 10 months after trying to get to his own crop's Derby via the Fair Grounds trials, Proxy lines up for the GI Stephen Foster S. on Saturday as a mature horse, with every prospect of building on what for now remains a fairly marginal prizemoney edge over Two Phil's. Since his comeback, he has also availed himself of a Grade I (in the Clark last fall). He's an admirable creature, in a field replete with similar types. But if you were in a crew that might very well only ever have one shot at the big time, would you not be swung by the fact that every Thoroughbred foal, from the moment it slithers into the straw, has one chance–and one chance only–to take you on the walk over for the Derby?

In the winter of 2021-22, certainly, the McPeek barn wasn't dreaming of the 2023 Stephen Foster for Smile Happy (Runhappy) and Rattle N Roll (Connect). The former at least made it to the Derby before his disappearance, but I'm delighted to see him back thriving now. He was bred by the charming Xavier Moreau, from a $57,000 daughter of Pleasant Tap. That was about as much as Xavier had ever spent on a mare, and tragically he lost her almost as soon as Smile Happy had emerged.

That's the thing about this game. Yes, absolutely, your little guys can beat the billionaires by breeding a Smile Happy, or a Two Phil's. But nor will they get any special treatment from Lady Luck, just because all their eggs might be in a single basket.

The only answer is an old one: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” If that can be in May, and get you anywhere near that blanket of roses, so much the better.

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