Hoist the Gold's victory at 9-1 odds in the Cigar Mile (G2) may have been a bit of a surprise on the tote board (he went off as the sixth choice in a field of 12), but Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez never had a doubt in his mind.
Jim Culver, president of owner/breeder Dream Team One Racing Stable, explained that it was Velazquez who picked out the Cigar Mile after Hoist the Gold finished sixth in the G1 Breeders' Cup Sprint.
“Johnny rode him when he won the Phoenix (G2 at Keeneland), and in the Breeders' Cup, too, and when he came back from that race he said, 'Let me pick the next race,'” Culver said.
“The next day, Johnny called and said, 'We're going to go to the Cigar Mile, and he'll win for fun!' Well, he was right. Johnny said, 'He gallops out tremendously, but he does not like the kickback in his face. When the horse changes leads, you think he's about done, but he just takes off again.' I was a little surprised when he got that five-length lead at the top of the stretch – wow. It was just a tremendous performance.”
Hoist the Gold, a 4-year-old son of Mineshaft trained by Dallas Stewart, is a real throwback kind of horse. He's run almost every month since July of his 2-year-old season, compiling a record of five wins, six seconds, and three thirds from 26 starts for earnings of $1,119,547.
“He's been incredibly healthy,” said Culver. “We basically have to race him; he's not happy to sit around the barn for six weeks! We even have to breeze him, just to try to take the edge off him a little bit, so we've been really blessed in that sense.”
The Phoenix was Hoist the Gold's first graded stakes victory, and the first for the seven-partner Dream Team One Racing Stable since the days of Mucho Macho Man in the early 2010s. Culver personally purchased Mucho Macho Man from a farm in Ocala, paying just $30,000 for a colt who would go on to earn $5.6 million on the racetrack.
“They told me I should take a look at this guy who was galloping on the track,” Culver recalled. “I honestly didn't really like him! He was very thin from the front, tall and lanky. His conformation wasn't awful, but he had a long stride, which was the only thing I liked at the time, so I took a chance, and got lucky.”
Dream Team One owned 100 percent of Mucho Macho Man for his first race, after which Dean Reeves purchased a majority interest in the colt. Mucho Macho Man went on to win the G2 Risen Star, run third in the Kentucky Derby, and won the G2 Gulfstream Park Handicap for the partnership.
“We raced another 18 months together from that point, through the Triple Crown and several other major stakes, until eventually Dean bought us out on the remainder,” said Culver. “He was just a thrilling horse, and it was a thrill to be a part of it.”
Mucho Macho Man is still playing a role in Culver's life, albeit from the periphery.
Hoist the Gold's half-sister, Mucho Macho Girl (a 2020 filly sired by Mucho Macho Man), has won two of her three lifetime starts for the Dream Team One partnership, including an allowance race at Fair Grounds by 7 ½ lengths just 24 hours after Hoist the Gold won the Cigar Mile.
“Dallas loves that filly, too,” Culver said. “We're excited about her, for sure.”
The two horses' dam, Tacit Approval, is the only broodmare owned by Dream Team One. Culver purchased the two-time winning daughter of Tapit in 2015 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky February Mixed sale, paying $62,000 for her.
“We honestly hoped to race her again,” he said. “A few of the partners who had been in on her with West Point didn't believe she was ready to retire, so they came on board with us and we were able to buy her. Unfortunately, after four or five months of training, Graham Motion suggested we just retire her. We knew it was a possibility, so we decided to breed her instead.”
The plan was to breed one horse to race, then one horse to sell, but plans are not always so easily followed in the racehorse industry.
Tacit Approval's first foal was a filly by Mucho Macho Man named Mucho Macho Momma. She broke her maiden in her sixth start, but had to be retired after earning $117,332 on the track.
The next foal was Hoist the Gold. Culver entered him in the Keeneland September Yearling sale, per the business plan he'd put in place, but the colt did not achieve his reserve when bidding stopped at $47,000.
“We thought he was a nicer horse than that, so we decided to race him,” Culver said. “We knew he was pretty talented once he started training: when he was a 2-year-old, he breezed on Saratoga's Oklahoma training track, five furlongs in 58.1 seconds. It was the fastest five-furlong breeze on Oklahoma that entire summer.
“Now, we made some mistakes along the way. We thought with his pedigree that he would go long, but he faded at the end in two-turn races. We went to the Met Mile, and he faded in that, so we thought, maybe he just likes to sprint.
“Now, having seen him in the Cigar Mile, we'll be looking for more one-turn mile or so races in 2024. The first place we're talking about taking him is the G1 Saudi Cup in February.”
It's been a wild journey for the 62-year-old retired property tax consultant, whose introduction to racing featured an accidental trip to the wrong Saratoga in the late 1990's.
“I moved from Buffalo, N.Y., where I was born, to Albany for a new job, and the first weekend I was there, I asked my coworkers what was fun to do in the area,” Culver recalled. “They told me to go up to Saratoga and go to the races! So I did over the weekend, and when I got back on Monday, they asked me how it went.
“I said, 'I went, but it was at night, and I got back kind of late.' They laughed and told me, 'No, that was the harness track! You've got to go to the Thoroughbred racetrack!'
“Well, the very next weekend, I made it up to the Thoroughbred Saratoga. I remember thinking to myself, 'These horses are gorgeous, what athletes they are.' I knew that any time I had some money to waste, I would have to figure out how to get involved in this.”
By the early 2000's, Culver had invested with Sovereign Stable, and by 2007 he'd learned enough to launch his own syndicate. He took Dream Team One partnership private when the pandemic hit in 2020, but Culver is still loving his involvement in the game.
“I actually hurt my back just before the Cigar Mile, so I didn't go to the race because I couldn't stomach traveling,” he said. “But man, when I saw Hoist the Gold at the front at the top of the stretch, I forgot all about my back. By the time he hit the wire, I'd been jumping up and down and screaming so loud that my whole family came to check on me! It's still so much fun.”
The post Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Jim Culver Has Been Mucho Macho ‘Lucky’ With Hoist The Gold appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
