With a campaign that saw him not afraid to travel or test deep waters, multiple stakes winner Beren finished last year as the leading earner of Pennsylvania incentive awards for his connections.
The now-4-year-old son of Weigelia generated a combined $288,815 in Pennsylvania-bred stakes purses, breeder awards, stallion awards, and owner bonuses, beating out 2020's leading incentive earner Wait For It, who finished second with $288,815.
Running as a homebred for Susan Quick's St. Omer's Farm and Christopher J. Feifarek, Beren won seven of 12 starts in 2021, and earned $483,970 on the racetrack. A portion of those earnings came from his efforts in Pennsylvania-bred stakes races, where he picked up $118,200 last year.
Beren made his first Pennsylvania stakes start in the summer after spending the spring in New York. He won both of his stakes races restricted to Pennsylvania-breds, both against 3-year-old rivals, handling the Crowd Pleaser Stakes at Parx Racing by 9 1/2 lengths, and later winning the Danzig Stakes at Penn National by two lengths.
The colt also generated six figures in breeder awards in 2021, bringing in $119,276 to Quick and Feifarek.
As a runner bred and sired in Pennsylvania, Beren was eligible for a 50 percent bonus on the purse for a maiden race run in the state, which he ticked off in his second start of the season, a 6 1/4-length drubbing of a Parx maiden special weight field. He then qualified for a 40 percent breeder bonus for in-state races, which included the two aforementioned state-bred stakes victories, along with a 6 1/2-length wire-to-wire route against open 3-year-old foes in the Parx Summer Sprint Stakes.
Quick and Feifarek also picked up $22,640 in owner bonuses with Beren. The colt qualified for multiple levels of this incentive, which includes a 40 percent purse bonus for races at Parx and a 20 percent boost at Penn National, both paid by the tracks.
Finally, Beren accounted for $28,669 in stallion awards for Wyn Oaks Farm, owner of sire Weigelia. Pennsylvania stallion owners receive a 10 percent bonus of the purse share for a registered Pennsylvania-bred and -sired horse that finishes first, second, or third at one of the state's tracks.
Weigelia was Pennsylvania's second-leading sire by stallion awards in 2021, with $149,591. He was bested only by the late perennial leading sire Jump Start, who generated $206,579 in stallion awards last year.
After leading Pennsylvania's incentive earners with $191,540 in 2020, Wait For It generated even more incentive money in 2021, combining for $263,217.
The bulk of that money came from Pennsylvania stakes earnings, earning $157,380 from four stakes races. He notched victories in the Page McKenney Handicap at Parx and the Hard Spun Stakes at Presque Isle Downs, a second in the Alphabet Soup Stakes at Parx, and he ran fifth in the Storm Cat Stakes at the same track.
Wait For It, a 7-year-old son of Uptowncharlybrown, was bred in Pennsylvania by Fantasy Lane Stable. In addition to his stakes earnings, he also generated $81,790 in breeder awards, $20,447 in stallion awards, and $3,600 in owner bonuses.
This story originally appeared in the OBS March issue of The Back Ring, our mobile bloodstock newsletter. To view the full issue, click here.
The post Pennsylvania Leaderboard Presented By Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association: Beren Tops State Incentive Earners In 2021 appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
