Beverly Park Closes Out Year with 15th Win

There are better, faster horses in the sport, but there's not another one like Beverly Park (Munnings). In an era where five or six starts a year is considered a normal campaign for a horse and many trainers look for seven or eight weeks between starts, the 5-year-old made of blood, flesh and iron continued to laugh at conventional wisdom. In his 30th start of the year, he won Saturday's third race at the Fair Grounds by 3 3/4 lengths, paying $3.80. The race was a starter optional claimer and it was his 15th win on the year.

Beverly Park's 15 wins easily led the sport in 2022. Nine other horses are tied for second with eight victories. His 30 starts also led all horses. Pretty Loud (Boisterous) was next with 28. The Fair Grounds was the 14th track Beverly Park has competed at this year.

“He is definitely an iron horse,” said owner-trainer Lynn Cash. “He's probably the horse of a lifetime. He travels well. He's been a fun horse. I just happened to grab onto his coattails while he was going by and he pulled me up.  He's as sound a horse as has ever been. I've never had to do any work on him whatsoever.”

The story of Lynn Cash and Beverly Park began on Aug. 15, 2021 when he claimed the horse from trainer Dane Kobiskie for $12,500 out of a race at Belterra Park. Cash brought him back 13 days later and he won for his new barn. During 2021, he won seven of eight starts for Cash. His overall record for Cash's Build Wright Stables is 22-for-38.

Much of his 2022 campaign was spent in a starter allowances. Throughout the year, he was eligible for races where a horse had started for $5,000 or less in 2021 or 2022. Cash would take him around the country, shipping to wherever he could find a race at that level, traveling countless miles.

“I just love this horse,” he said. “Me and him, from the beginning, we have been the ones together on the road.”

What Cash learned early on was that while Beverly Park may not be a top-level horse when it came to talent, but he more than made up for that with his competitive spirit.

“He's just a competitor,” he said. “He's at the track, slow galloping or jogging and when a horse comes by that is working he wants to take off and go get them. He has so much heart. Every time, he leaves it out there.”

With a new year here, Cash will have a harder time finding races for Beverly Park as he will no longer be eligible for the starter allowance races at some tracks. He said if he can't find enough starter races he will try Beverly Park in allowance races. He also said it's not out of the question that he ventures into stakes company.

“At some point, I may give him his shot in stakes,” he said. “Maybe a Grade III in New York or something like that. They have a lot of small fields in stakes there. I think he deserves that chance.”

He said one goal for 2023 would be to again lead the nation in wins and added that he thought 11 or 12 victories next year was reasonable.

Cash wasn't sure where Beverly Park would run next but said a Jan. 11 race at Parx is a possibility. If not there, a return to the Fair Grounds for a Jan. 19 race could be in the offing. He could, of course, always run in both.

For now, there will be a few days rest and a chance to savor another big win.

“This one was really sweet,” Cash said. “They were very nice to us here at the Fair Grounds. A lot of people came up to us after the race. He's become a fan favorite. Just a special, special horse.”

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Beverly Park Wins His 14th Race of 2022

Beverly Park, the hardest-working horse in horse racing, came through again Monday, winning the fourth race at Mahoning Valley Race Course. Making his 29th start on the year, he won for the 14th time in 2022.

Beverly Park leads all horse in terms of wins on the year. Five horses are tied for second with eight wins each. His 29 starts also lead in that category with the runner-up, Pretty Loud (Boisterous), having started 27 times.

Sent off at 1-5 in the $17,600 starter allowance race for horses which have started for a claiming price of $5,000 or less in 2021-2022, Beverly Park broke sharply before dueling down the backstretch with Diamonds Enjoy (Kitten's Joy). He shook free approaching the turn and opened up on the field. But Flat Fun (Flat Out) closed strongly in the stretch to make the race close.

Beverly Park won by a diminishing neck. He paid $2.40. Apprentice Yan Aviles was aboard for the win. The running time for the six furlongs over a track listed as good was 1:13.

“He ran well,” owner-trainer Lynn Cash said. “The jockey might have gotten a little lackadaisical coming down the stretch. The jockey looked back two or three times. He looked back under each arm. I think the jockey got a little scare. If he had messed around and gotten beat that would have been really bad. But he dug back in and held that other horse off. The time wasn't that fast, but the track was slow. He broke sharper than he has in his last few races.”

There are just 19 days left on the year, but Cash said he will scour his collection of condition books and try to get another start into Beverly Park before 2022 concludes.

“I'll hope to get a race for him to go,” Cash said. “It comes down to that. He probably has one more start in him this year.”

Once 2023 begins, it will be harder for Cash to find races for his iron horse. Before he was claimed by Cash, Beverly Park ran in a $5,000 claiming race July 8, 2021. That race made him eligible at all tracks that card starter allowances for horses who have run at the $5,000 level in 2021 and 2022. At many tracks, with the start of the new year the conditions for the same races will be for horses that have started for $5,000 in 2022 and 2023. Cash said some tracks write starter races where horses are eligible if they have run for a certain price within two calendar years. That means he will be eligible for starter races at those tracks up until July of next year.

“When we run out of starter races for him, he's still eligible for two-other than allowances,” Cash said. “We'll probably start running in 'two other thans,' but those are tough races. We'll try to find spots for him.”

Cash said he will not run Beverly Park in claiming races, that the horse means too much to him to risk losing him to another stable.

“He'll probably run for another year and a half or so,” he said. “I don't have many mares, but at the very least I'll stand him at stud at my farm. His durability and his bullet-proofness, that's half the battle. His mother was a graded stakes winner and if he was six feet faster, he'd definitely be a sire. I'll never put him in a claiming race. I love this horse so much. Beverly Park is a part of Built Wright Stables. If I hadn't claimed him, nobody would know who I was.”

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Beverly Park Grinds Out Continent-Topping Win No. 13

Beverly Park (Munnings), scored his 13th win of the year in his 28th seasonal start Monday in the sixth race at Mahoning Valley Race Course.

With a little more than a month left in 2022 and his next closest competitors all five victories behind him, Beverly Park has now assuredly clinched the title of North America's winningest Thoroughbred based on victories for the year.

Beverly Park's number of starts also leads the continent, and given this horse's penchant for performing well under a steady workload, the 5-year-old starter-allowance stalwart might not yet be finished racing before the condition books close on 2022.

In his typical force-the-issue, grind-it-out fashion, the 7-10 favorite hounded the pacemakers from the outside in the six-furlong sprint restricted to horses who have started for a claiming tag of $8,000 or less over the past two calendar years.

Beverly Park took over at the head of the lane under jockey Yan Aviles, got headed in midstretch, then dug in determinedly to power past a stubborn rival to win by a length in 1:12.28.

Beverly Park was claimed for $12,500 Aug. 5, 2021, by current owner/trainer, Norman Lynn Cash, whose horses race under the name Built Wright Stables.

Beverly Park has not started for a tag since being claimed, feasting exclusively on starter-allowances, optional claimers in which he was not entered for a tag, and in the $100,000 Ready's Rocket Express on the Claiming Crown card two weekends ago.

In the span between Cash's claiming him and Monday's win, Beverly Park is now 20-for-36 with $465,628 in purse earnings (roughly 37 times that original claim investment). His lifetime record stands at 23-7-4 from 45 starts.

Beverly Park has been eligible for some lucrative starter-allowance spots. But because improved horses who once ran for low claiming tags generally scare away entrants for those restricted races, Cash has had to hit the road his stable star to extend his winning ways.

So far in '22, Beverly Park has raced at Oaklawn, Charles Town, Turfway, Laurel, Mahoning Valley, Keeneland, Monmouth, Belterra, Churchill, Thistledown, Delaware, Colonial and Timonium.

No North American Thoroughbred had won more than 12 races in an entire calendar year since 2011, when Rapid Redux ran the table with a 19-for-19 record.

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The Week in Review: Small-Circuit State-Breds Spark Underdog BC Appeal

The Breeders' Cup is always a bit more interesting when underdog horses from smaller circuits are in the mix, and both Slammed (Marking) and Tyler's Tribe (Sharp Azteca) have the potential to bring outsized attention to their respective breeding programs in New Mexico and Iowa when they run in the Nov. 4 and 5 championships.

In the entire history of the Breeders' Cup dating to 1984–out of a pool of 4,344 horses–those two states have accounted for just one state-bred starter each.

Slammed will represent New Mexico, and you could say that she arguably has the better chance in her race, the GI Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Sprint. After breaking out at Del Mar this summer, she's more proven at the national level, and she also owns a recent sharp win over the Keeneland surface, having earned a Breeders' Cup berth with an Oct. 8 GII Thoroughbred Club of America S. victory.

But figuratively, Slammed has to outrun the oddball specter that lingers from the only other Land of Enchantment-bred to give the Breeders' Cup a go: Ricks Natural Star, whose start in the GI Turf in 1996 rates as one of the most captivatingly bizarre happenstances in the history of the series.

As Andrew Beyer wrote in his Washington Post preview of that year's championships, “On a morning when the world's best horses were entered for Saturday's Breeders' Cup, the main object of attention at Woodbine Racetrack was a hopeless 7-year-old from New Mexico…. In the view of many at Woodbine, [Ricks Natural Star] is making a mockery of the sport's biggest event. To others, this quixotic venture epitomizes the romance of the game.”

When the gelding's offbeat owner and trainer, William Livingston, took out a loan and submitted a surprise $40,000 entry to enter his one and only racehorse against the planet's top turfers, Breeders' Cup officials were both appalled and perplexed. This was the era prior to the current stricter qualifying standards and more enlightened veterinary oversight, and to say the entry was off their radar would have been an understatement: Ricks Natural Star hadn't raced in over a year and hadn't won a race in three years, since besting $3,500 claimers on the dirt at Sunland Park.

Livingston, a veterinarian from New Mexico who claimed to treat everything from “parakeets to elephants,” had only gotten his training license just prior to the Breeders' Cup, and he told the media that he had conditioned Ricks Natural Star by driving alongside him on a ranch in a pickup truck.

Livingston then drove the gelding to Canada in a one-horse trailer, keeping his Turf entrant in a makeshift pen in the parking lots of motels when he stopped for the night. Informed by Breeders' Cup officials along the way that Ricks Natural Star lacked a required published workout that would preclude him from starting, Livingston made a side trip to Remington Park in Oklahoma so the gelding could stretch his legs in a leisurely six furlongs in 1:21.46.

There were border-crossing difficulties getting into Canada and Livingston arrived without proper tack and equipment, yet he delighted in showing off Ricks Natural Star, even allowing onlookers to climb atop the gelding's back for photo opportunities. This was the Breeders' Cup that would feature the mighty Cigar's final race (he'd finish third in the GI Classic), but all of the pre-event attention was riveted on Ricks Natural Star, with Livingston insisting he would win the Turf.

Local jockey Lisa McFarland was recruited (or perhaps drew the short straw) from the local riding colony to pilot Ricks Natural Star, and if her strategy was just to let him run freely then get out of the way of everyone else, she executed it with precision. Far underlaid in the betting at 56-1, the popular gelding forced the pace for a half-mile then was eased back through the field, distanced well behind winner Pilsudski (Ire).

Ricks Natural Star made one more start a couple months later in New Mexico for a $7,500 tag (sixth, with the chart caller's comment “showed nothing”), but was claimed out of that race by new connections solely for the purpose of retiring him.

Conversely, the unbeaten 2-year-old Iowa-bred Tyler's Tribe, who has never been headed while winning five dirt races by an aggregate 59 3/4 lengths, is on target for the GI Juvenile Turf Sprint.

Tyler's Tribe will bring a little more “undefeated appeal” into his Breeders' Cup appearance (his connections are opting for first-time turf rather than stretching out to two turns against what looms as a deep GI Juvenile field on dirt). But his Iowa roots don't come with any oddball back story like his New Mexico counterpart. The only previous Iowa-bred in the Breeders' Cup was Topper T (Bellamy Road), who ran eighth in the 2018 GI Juvenile.

End Zone Athletics Hits 200 Wins

With a pair of victories at Remington on Saturday night, End Zone Athletics, the stable name for horses owned by trainer Karl Broberg, quietly hit the 200-victory mark for the year–again.

End Zone, which operates at numerous tracks throughout the South and Midwest, is well on its way to leading the continent for wins as an owner, as it has every year since 2016.

Save for the pandemic-altered 2020, when Broberg's outfit won “only” 165 races, End Zone has now cracked the 200-win mark every season since 2017.

Even more impressively, consider for perspective that during that entire time frame, only one other owner has reached 200 victories in a single season (Loooch Racing Stables in 2018).

In the North American trainer standings, Broberg is currently second on the year for victories. He was the continent's winningest trainer by that metric between 2014-19, and was second in wins in 2013, 2020 and 2021.

No Walk in the Park for 'Beverly'

Beverly Park (Munnings) came a neck shy of winning his 12th race of the year on Saturday at Keeneland. But the third-place effort might have been gutsier than any of the 11 victories racked up so far this year by North America's winningest horse for 2022.

Facing $20,000 starter-allowance company for the second straight time after feasting primarily on $5,000 starter-allowance foes during the earlier part of the season, the 5-year-old forced the issue under jockey Rafael Bejarano while widest in a four-way speed duel, put away those three rivals by the quarter pole, led until the eighth pole, then couldn't withstand a pick-up-the-pieces late rally from a fresh closer.

Beverly Park, who races for owner/trainer Norman Lynn Cash (Built Wright Stables), still has a three-victory cushion over his next closest competitor, Exit Right (Effinex), who ran sixth and last in a $5,000 starter/optional claimer at Delaware Park on Friday.

No North American Thoroughbred has won more than 12 races in an entire calendar year since 2011.

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