One of the early mileposts for just about any racehorse purchased at a 2-year-olds in training auction is to finish that season with a win in a Breeders' Cup race.
By that standard, Tasso's road from the sale ring to the Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner's circle was an unmitigated success, making him the first 2-year-old sale graduate to win the race in the same year. By the standards of a commercialmarket racing prospect, Tasso was an economic dud whose true value would only be appreciated after his time in the ring.
From the first crop of Grade 1 winner Fappiano, Tasso was bred in Florida by Timothy Sams of Waldemar Farm and his business partner Gerald Robins. The same operation had produced Hall of Famer Foolosh Pleasure a decade earlier. Both men owned five shares in Fappiano, purchased during his racing career, meaning their incentive to get the stallion off to a fast start was high.
The Waldemar Farm consignment had a pair of Fappiano colts on offer for the 1984 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Yearling Sale, with the first selling to $250,000 – the most anyone paid for a foal by the stallion at the marquee auction. Tasso, on the other hand, was brought home after hammering at $50,000, under his reserve.
In the months that followed, Tasso was trained toward the 1985 Fasig-Tipton Florida Selected 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale at Calder Race Course. After being the less-impressive half of the Fappiano tag team among Waldemar's Saratoga consignment a year earlier, the bad luck continued for the colt who was cataloged as Hip 1; a notoriously hard spot for a horse to maximize its value, while buyers are still straggling onto the sales grounds, finding their seats, or saving their bullets for later offerings or sessions.
Sams knew he was going to be up against it in that spot, so called in a favor from prominent owner Bertram Firestone, a Virginia-based horseman who earned the 1980 Eclipse Award for outstanding owner with his wife Diana. That early in the sale's proceedings, Sams knew he'd need someone to prime the pump for him.
“Bert is a good friend of ours, and I saw him in the walking ring before the sale and asked him if he would bid this horse up to $100,000 for us,” Sams said in a 1985 interview with BloodHorse. “He said 'Sure.' Then he came up to me later and asked me if I liked the colt, and I told him that I did. He suggested that we send the horse to Aiken to Marvin Greene and see what Marvin thought about him, and said 'If Marvin likes him maybe we can make a deal.'”
The colt went to South Carolina to begin his formal racetrack training, but an injury kept him on the shelf for much of his time there, Greene decided there wasn't room for him in his barn, and Firestone walked away from the arrangement.
Newspapers reported that Tasso's beleaguered owners spent more time trying to shop the horse out for private sale, but at some point, a juvenile has to prove himself on the racetrack to be worth selling. Tasso was placed in the California barn of Neil Drysdale, and he made his debut in May of his 2-year-old season, three months after his trip through the sale ring at Calder.
Tasso quickly cast aside whatever the buying public failed to see in him, winning five of seven starts during his juvenile year. Showing the ability to win from a deep close or a stalking trip in the preceding starts, Tasso earned his first major win in the G1 Del Mar Futurity. The going was much smoother two starts later when he dusted the G2 Breeders' Futurity at Keeneland by six lengths.
The colt was not nominated to the second-ever Breeders' Cup in 1985, but his purse earnings from his Breeders' Futurity rout were just enough to cover the $120,000 late entry fee, ensuring him a spot in the gate at Aqueduct.
Despite coming into the race off an impressive victory, Tasso left the gate in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile as the field's third choice. Everyone looked up to even-money favorite Mogambo, a homebred for Peter Brant who obliterated the G1 Champagne Stakes by 9 3/4 lengths, and beat several of the field's hopefuls in the process.
The betting public's second choice was Storm Cat, a Grade 1 winner who appeared to have the race in hand after a well-placed stalking trip until the very last jump, when Tasso and jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. completed a wide-running closing move to outkick the future superstar sire by a nose. Mogambo never threatened, and ran sixth.
The Breeders' Cup win later clinched Tasso's case for the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male of 1985.
Tasso wasn't the first graduate of a 2-year-old sale to win a Breeders' Cup race. That honor went to Wild Again, the winner of the inaugural Breeders' Cup Classic, who was an RNA during the 1982 Fasig-Tipton juvenile sale at Calder. However, Tasso's victory was proof of concept that a young horse could go through the ring at a 2-year-olds in training sale and win at the fledgling marquee event just a few months later. The fact that he was essentially unwanted at the sale is just icing on the cake.
Tasso continued to race into his 4-year-old season, but he never won another graded stakes contest after his juvenile season.
He retired to Lane's End in Kentucky for the 1988 breeding season, but he never found significant footing at stud domestically. Tasso finished his stud career in Saudi Arabia at Al Janadriyah Farm, an operation once owned by the late King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz that became a popular stop for visiting U.S. presidents.
The post How Tasso’s Turned-Away Sale Made Breeders’ Cup History appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
