Three Rules to Stand in Florida at Wesfield

Three Rules (Gone Astray–Joy Rules, by Full Mandate), named the Florida-bred Horse of the Year and champion 2-year-old male in 2016 after sweeping the male division of the FTBOA Florida Sire Stakes that year, has been retired and will stand the 2022 breeding season at Robert Smith's Wesfield Farm in Ocala. His fee has not been announced.

Three Rules, winner of the 2017 GIII Carry Back S. and third-place finisher in the GII Xpressbet Fountain of Youth S., was bred in Florida and raced for Bert Pilcher in the name of his Shade Tree Thoroughbreds in partnership with Geoff Roy and Tom Fitzgerald.

“Robert Smith at Wesfield will stand Three Rules for us,” Pilcher said. “He wants to breed some of his mares to him and some of his clients have inquired about breeding some of their mares. Of course, I will be supporting him and I have clients who are excited to see him at stud and plan to breed their mares to him. I think he will be very popular in Florida and I think he will produce a very nice race horse.

“He was a fabulous 2-year-old who only lost one race that year and that came in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and he beat some nice horses in that race. And then he competed well in the [Kentucky Derby] preps at Gulfstream before becoming a graded stakes-winner later that year.”

Three Rules finished his career with six wins, two seconds and two thirds while earning $972,825.

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Bargain Buy Medina Spirit More Than Paying His Way Thus Far

Medina Spirit could become one of racing's all-time bargains.

Whether he will someday rank with the likes of Carry Back and Seattle Slew in that category, only time will tell, but at this early point, he is moving in the right direction.

For the record, Carry Back, who won the Kentucky Derby in 1961, was obtained for tip money, a $700 investment, $400 of it a stud fee to a nondescript stallion named Saggy, whose solitary moment of racing glory came in an upset of 1948 Triple Crown king Citation in the Chesapeake Trial Stakes that year.

Carry Back raced an incredible 21 times as a two-year-old. A stone closer, the plain brown colt retired with 21 wins, 11 seconds and 11 thirds from 61 starts. He earned $1,241,165 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975.

Seattle Slew was purchased for $17,500, became the first undefeated Triple Crown winner in 1977 when he was Horse of the Year and earned $1,208,726 from a career record of 14 wins and two seconds in 17 starts. Going on half a century later, he remains a gold standard among Thoroughbred greats both as a race horse and a stallion.

Although he has already earned more than three times his purchase price of $35,000, Medina Spirit has miles to run before reaching the lofty pinnacles of Carry Back and Seattle Slew.

His connections are optimistic, however. One is private clocker and bloodstock agent Gary Young, who purchased the Florida-bred son of the Giant's Causeway stallion Protonico for owner Amr Zedan as a two-year-old in training at last year's Ocala Breeders' Sale.

“Mr. Zedan had given me $2 million to spend and I had exceeded the budget,” said Young, 59, a clocker since he was 18 and an agent for more than 30 years. His best buy to date was 1993 Breeders' Cup Juvenile champion Brocco, who raced for the late Albert and Dana Broccoli, producers of the iconic James Bond movies.

“Because of Covid and because it was July, the sale did not have as much depth as usual,” Young said. “At the end of six days with six-hour daily previews I would usually have looked at 50 to 80 horses; I saw 10.

“After the previews, Mr. Zedan called me and asked if I remembered seeing a horse by Protonico and I told him, yes, that horse made my list. He asked me to look at the horse again, and I did. He was OK, but he wasn't going to be the sales topper or anything.

“Protonico raced about 10 years ago when trained by Todd Pletcher, and was owned by Mr. Zedan's friend, Oussama Aboughazale, who has a breeding operation called International Equities Holding in Kentucky where Princess Noor was bred.”

Both men are from a city in Saudi Arabia called Medina, which as a girl's name is of Arabic origin meaning “city of the Prophet,” and is where Muhammad began his campaign to establish Islam.

“Protonico had a very small crop and Medina Spirit was the only one of his progeny at the sale,” Young said. “He had worked three-eighths in 33 flat which was decent time, but he had a nice rhythm and a stride like a route horse. Mr. Zedan asked what I thought and I said, 'Buy him.'

“We did the barn check, did the vet check with my doctor, Pug Hart, everything was in order and we bought him for $35,000, which is 2.5 percent of what we paid for Princess Noor (now retired due to a soft tissue injury after a brief but sensational racing career for Bob Baffert).

“Medina Spirit went to Baffert's assistant Mike Marlow at Los Alamitos, and Mike is brutally honest, and he has to be because he's preparing these horses for Baffert.

“Mike said the horse kept surprising him because he was outworking more expensive and better-bred horses and definitely holding his own.

“They brought him to Santa Anita, Bob worked him out of the gate with Life Is Good a couple of times, and he got beat as expected, but he didn't get disgraced, and I kind of thought to myself, this might make a man out of him. After that, Bob worked him with a couple other horses and he handled them, didn't get discouraged or anything.

“When he ran at Los Alamitos (winning his debut race by three lengths at 5 ½ furlongs last Dec. 11), we thought he'd be even-money and he was 3-1. He won pretty easy, but his second (by three-quarters of a length behind Life Is Good) in the Sham at one mile is what really opened our eyes as to how good he was.

“He was stretching out after one 5 ½ furlong race with one five-eighths work in between at 1:02 to go a mile against Life Is Good, and he ran his butt off. Whether he would have passed him or not is open to debate, but you can't deny he did run unbelievably considering he didn't have a whole lot of preparation for the race.

“We didn't want him in front (in the Lewis). When they hung a 46 and three (46.61 for a half mile), I thought he was finished, because 46 and three on that track was like 45 and change.

“He was about a length in front from the one hole in the Sham with a really easy run to the turn. In the Lewis, he broke half a step slow and Abel (Cedillo) kind of punched him a little and he was gone. He wasn't a runoff, but he definitely had his mind on running.

“When they went 46 and three, I didn't think we had much chance, and when the two horses (late-running Roman Centurian, second by a neck, and Hot Rod Charlie, a nose further back in third) came to him at the eighth pole, I didn't think we had much chance, either.

“But the horse obviously has a lot of fight in him. He showed an amazing amount of heart. He had every right the next day to be lying down in his stall and sleeping the way he ran, but he wasn't.

“Whether we'll go one start or two starts before the Kentucky Derby, we'll figure that out. I'd prefer to have him running at a horse like he did in the Sham as opposed how he ran in the Lewis, but that's how the race came up. Still, they weren't even passing him after the wire, either, and the two horses behind him are OK.

“Roman Centurian can definitely make some noise down the road.”

That might be true, but he won't be any bargain.

He cost $550,000.

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘I Guess I’m One Of Those Dreamers’

From his teenage years mucking stalls at Ascot Park in Ohio to preparing to watch his silks line up in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 23, owner John Sondereker is enjoying the fruits of cultivating a lifelong passion for Thoroughbred racing.

When recent G2 San Antonio winner Kiss Today Goodbye enters that 12-horse starting gate at Gulfstream Park, Sondereker worries his emotions might overwhelm him. The newly-turned 4-year-old son of Cairo Prince is the owner's first graded stakes winner, and Sondereker himself selected the horse as a short yearling at the 2018 Keeneland January sale. 

“It's a big thing for me, of course; I've only been in a couple other Grade 1s, and I think I finished last in both of those,” Sondereker said, laughing genially. “He's just a colt that's really improving, and loves distance. This is a mile and an eighth, and there's a lot of speed in the race, so who knows? You get the right day for the right jockey, anything can happen.”

This sport has proven that adage many times over, launching the biggest dreams of small owners and trainers into the stratosphere.

That racing dream didn't really take hold of Sondereker until 1961. He'd been attending races at Waterford Park (now Mountaineer) with his father and uncle since the 1950's, and when the family moved to Cuyahoga Falls in Ohio, he was able to get a job cleaning stalls at the now-defunct Ascot Park for a dollar an hour.

After a couple years working there, the trainer employing Sondereker took him on a trip to the 1961 running of the Kentucky Derby. There was a horse running with an Ohio connection: Carry Back. His owner and trainer, Katherine and Jack Price, respectively, often ran horses at Ascot Park and Thistledown, so Sondereker had a natural rooting interest.

Carry Back won the Run for the Roses that day with a devastating come-from-behind late kick, and Sondereker has been hooked ever since.

“It was a small stable and they happened to win,” Sondereker said. “Here I was down there standing around with like Bill Hartack, and it was like, 'Wow, look at this.' There were all these impressive people, the kind I'd never been exposed to, and I had no clue it could be like that. 

“It just had a major impact on me. I said then, 'I hope someday I can own a horse like that.' I guess I'm one of those dreamers.”

John Sondereker with his purchase ticket for Kiss Today Goodbye at the 2018 Keeneland January sale

Sondereker worked for Wells Fargo in Des Moines, Ia. for 40 years, during which time he owned “a few cheap claimers” at nearby Prairie Meadows Racetrack. Since his retirement in the early 2000s, Sondereker has stepped up his ownership interests. 

He began with a few different partnership groups, learning the basics of what goes on behind the scenes.

“It was fine, but I just wanted more out of the game, more participation,” said Sondereker. “I knew there was more for me, and I found it with (trainer) Eric (Kruljac) and going to the sales. It takes a lot of practice, and even when you know what you're doing, you probably don't! I've got to where I'm confident, I know what I'm trying to do and how I want to do it. I just enjoy the whole process.”

By 2015 Sondereker was ready to try picking out a few horses on his own.

“It's hard buying any horse,” Sondereker admitted. “I'm not good at this, but I love to do it. Going out and doing it on my own, and seeing if I can accomplish something, that's the big thing to me. I thought I could learn, and Eric has really taught me a lot over the last 8 to 10 years.

“I'm having a ball, 78 years old and I'm still learning. That's the real secret to retirement, to be able to do something that you realize you're not the best in the world at. There's something you can always learn about the horse business. Eric probably has taught me 10 percent of what he knows, but that's a lot to me. It's given me a good foundation, and I've picked up a lot along the way. It's great when you're learning. That's the secret.”

Kiss Today Goodbye has easily been Sondereker's most successful purchase thus far, and is named for the opening line in the owner's favorite song, “What I Did For Love,” from the Broadway musical Chorus Line.

He'd considered the colt a turf horse when he bid up to $150,000 at the 2018 January sale. Kiss Today Goodbye is out of the Heatseeker mare Savvy Hester, who won or placed in multiple listed turf stakes at Woodbine.

The colt made his first two starts on the turf, then took three more starts over the dirt to break his maiden. Kiss Today Goodbye ran competitively in the listed Shared Belief Stakes at Del Mar in August of 2020, beaten just 1 ¼ lengths by Thousand Words, then went back to the turf for a pair of graded stakes efforts.

He finished fifth in the G2 Del Mar Derby and fourth in the G2 Twilight Derby at Santa Anita, then in mid-November came back to win a one-mile allowance race over the main track at Del Mar. Sondereker saw the G2 San Antonio coming up in the stakes schedule, and urged his trainer to consider entering Kiss Today Goodbye.

“His dam had accomplished quite a bit on the grass, but he just had trouble grabbing it for some reason,” said Sondereker. “I said to myself, 'His Thoro-graph numbers are competitive with most of the 3-year-olds in the country, so let's just try this Grade 2. He's definitely a distance horse, he has the numbers, there's no reason not to try it.'

Kiss Today Goodbye rallied from last under Mike Smith to win the G2 San Antonio

“Eric is more conservative than I am! I just thought we should go for it, and every once in a while you're right.”

Though he couldn't attend the race in person due to COVID-19 restrictions, the San Antonio victory was deeply satisfying for Sondereker. 

“There's a lot of skill involved, but there's also a lot of luck,” he said. “I probably wouldn't have gone over $200,000 for Kiss Today Goodbye, but that's not a tremendous amount of money at a sale when you have a stakes-winning mare and a good physical. But it was Cairo Prince's first crop, so that's how I ended up with him for sure.”

Whether it was skill, luck, or something in between, Sondereker is thrilled at the prospect of attending his colt's Grade 1 debut in the Pegasus World Cup. He hasn't been able to hang out with the horses on the backside nearly as much this year, of course, so he cherishes every opportunity to see the horses in person just a little bit more.

“There's going to be a lot of changes in the next 2 ½ weeks,” said Sondereker. “My wife is an RN and really involved in the COVID world, but Florida's held out and been pretty flexible, so they may still allow us to go.”

There are other things to look forward to, as well. 

Sondereker purchased an exciting daughter of War Front at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Selected Yearling Showcase, spending his entire yearling budget in one fell swoop when the hammer fell at $625,000.

“When you start out, you wanna buy four or five or six in your budget, and I get why that's good for the industry,” Sondereker said. “You don't want to bid on anything you can't afford, but I'm the opposite. I'm the underbidder on a lot of really nice horses.

“For me, less is more; I currently have 18 Thoroughbreds.”

Additionally, the Breeders' Cup will return to Del Mar in 2021, where Sondereker has a vacation home. 

“Del Mar is the best place in the world,” he said. “Hopefully they'll get the vaccine stuff figured out this year, and I'll be able to get my box for the Breeders' Cup.”

Sondereker might even get the chance to wear a purple owners' cap all his own. It's horse racing, and anything is possible.

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Ritvo Takes One-Two Punch Into Saturday’s Carry Back Stakes

Reeves Thoroughbred Racing's Double Crown and Ournationonparade will join forces or Saturday's $75,000 Carry Back at Gulfstream Park, giving trainer Kathy Ritvo a potent 1-2 punch in the seven-furlong sprint for 3-year-olds.

The Carry Back highlights the July 4th program, along with the $75,000 Azalea, a seven-furlong sprint for 3-year-old fillies.

Double Crown is coming off a gutsy half-length victory over graded-stakes winner and Grade 1 stakes-placed Green Light Go in the May 16 Roar Stakes at Gulfstream, in which he rallied from mid-pack to get an edge over the 2019 Champagne (G1) runner-up to Tiz the Law in mid-stretch that he would maintain to the wire.

“He's so professional. What you see in his races is what you get,” Ritvo said. “He's just a nice classy horse.”

The gelded son of Bourbon Courage won at first asking for trainer Lacey Gaudet in a Sept. 8 maiden special weight race at Laurel Park, finishing a head in front of pacesetter Ournationonparade, who was debuting for trainer Bernie Haughton. Impressed by both efforts, Dean and Patti Reeves went ahead and privately purchased both promising Maryland-bred 2-year-olds.

Double Crown was given time off after his debut victory and returned to action for Ritvo at Gulfstream with a second-place finish in an April 26 allowance, in which he ran into traffic before falling a half-length short of victory with a strong late rally. Double Crown, who came back to win the Roar, hasn't raced beyond 6 ½ furlongs in three starts.

“I think he'll go long. He's a nice enough horse that we decided to do everything right by him and give him the best opportunity to have a great career,” Ritvo said. “We're trying to give him time to develop into a good horse.”

Cristian Torres has the return mount.

The Carry Back will mark the fourth meeting between Double Crown and Ournationonparade, who made a wide bid on the far turn in the Roar before running evenly in the stretch to finish fourth, beaten 5 ¾ lengths by his stablemate.

Ournationonparade lost his rider after clipping heels in his previous race, in which Double Crown finished second April 26.

“He hasn't had the best of luck,” Ritvo said. “He's going into this race really well. I'm really happy with him too.”

After being purchased by the Reeves out of his debut, Ournationonparade returned immediate dividends, breaking his maiden in the $100,000 Maryland Million Nursery Oct. 19 for Haughton. Ournationonparade went on to finish third in the Feb. 29 Hutcheson, in which he was beaten a half-length in his first start for Ritvo.

Luca Panici is scheduled to ride Ournationonparade for the first time Saturday.

Eric Worth's With Verve looms as a strong opponent for the Ritvo-trained duo while cutting back to seven furlongs Saturday after finishing fifth behind graded-stakes winner Sole Volante in a mile allowance at Gulfstream June 10. The Larry Bates-trained son of Kantharos previously finished third in the Road, 1 ½ lengths behind Double Crown, and won the Hutcheson, in which he finished two necks ahead of Ournationonparade.

Hall of Famer Edgar Prado has the return mount.

Newtown Anner Stud and KimDon Racing LLC's Prince James is slated to make his 2020 debut in the Carry Back after finishing fifth in the Remsen (G2) at Aqueduct in his juvenile finale. The Kelsey Danner-trained son of Tiznow previously won his debut at Monmouth and finished second in an allowance race at Churchill Downs.

Edgard Zayas has the call on Prince James, who has run around two turns in all three of his career starts.

Shadybrook Farm Inc.'s Cajun Brother will be seeking to rebound from his first career loss while cutting back from a mile to seven furlongs. The Michael Yates-trained son of Cajun Breeze set a hotly contested pace before fading to sixth in a May 16 allowance. Previously, Cajun Brother scored back-to-back wins in a maiden special weight race and an optional claiming allowance, both at six furlongs.

Regular rider Miguel Vasquez has the call.

Arindel's Poe is slated to make his 2020 debut Saturday after winning two of seven starts last year. Emisael Jaramillo has be mount aboard the stakes-placed son of Brethren, who is trained by Juan Alvarado.

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