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Vequist To Get Time Off After ‘Spectacular’ Breeders’ Cup Win, Then Aim For 2021 Kentucky Oaks

There were good vibes all around the far end of Barn 66 at Keeneland Saturday morning as the connections of Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Vequist basked in the achievements of the dark bay daughter of Nyquist.

Trainer Butch Reid reported that all was well with his charge in the aftermath of her 2-length triumph over budding rival Dayoutoftheoffice in the Juvenile Fillies, an effort that now puts Vequist in position to take home an Eclipse Award for divisional honors. While horses can sometimes fool their caretakers by flaunting one kind of form in the morning only to give off an entirely different impression in the afternoons, Vequist more than backed up the serious tout she had made for herself this week as one of the best looking horses during training hours.

“When I saw her in the morning jogging and stuff, I thought she looked really good but then when she got over there into the paddock in the afternoon, I thought she looked spectacular,” said Reid, who previously won the 2011 Breeders' Cup Marathon with Afleet Again. “In my mind, I thought she won the paddock show. She looked good, calm, relaxed. We felt pretty good.”

Vequist now has two wins from four career starts with both of her triumphs coming in top-level races. She broke her maiden by a jaw-dropping 9 ½ lengths in the Grade 1 Spinaway Stakes at Saratoga on Sept. 6 but was beaten in the Grade 1 Frizette by Dayoutoftheoffice.

Under heady handling from Joel Rosario Friday, Vequist used an inside trip to turn the tables on her rival and make her sire Nyquist one of now 24 stallions to win a Breeders' Cup race and sire a Breeders' Cup winner.

“We figured she would be laying close and it seemed like the inside was good all day,” Reid said. “And we had Joel in the irons. We had full confidence in the horse and the rider. This is my second Breeders' Cup win but this was really a special one because she's a homebred and I was able to do it for Tom McGrath and Gary Barber and Adam Wachtel. It makes it extra special.”

Vequist was bred by McGrath's Swilcan Stables with McGrath selling an interest in the filly to Barber and Wachtel after she finished second in her career debut at Parx on July 29. To Reid's delight, the new addition to the ownership had no intention of taking the filly out of his care.

“That's something rare in this business that something like that happens. Normally that's it and the horse is gone,” Reid said. “I didn't know them (Barber and Wachtel) until I talked to them on the phone. In fact I met Gary Barber for the first time yesterday.”

Reid added that Vequist will now head to Barry Eisman's farm in Florida for a freshening to prepare for what he hopes is a successful trip down the Kentucky Oaks trail in 2021.

“Four starts as a 2-year-old is plenty for me and we got her stretched around two turns, which is what I wanted,” Reid said. “She'll soak up some sun and pick on some grass.”

Trainer and co-owner Tim Hamm reported all was good with Dayoutoftheoffice the morning after her gutsy runner-up finish in the Juvenile Fillies.

Dayoutoftheoffice set a quick pace in the 1 1/16m Juvenile Fillies, throwing down the first quarter in 23.30 and an opening half mile in 47.12 before being caught by race-winner Vequist in the late stages. That loss marked the first defeat in four starts for Dayoutoftheoffice, but the daughter of Into Mischief figures to be in play for Eclipse Award honors with her prior wins in the Grade 1 Frizette — in which she bested Vequist — and Grade 3 Schuylerville Stakes.

“She'll take a little break and get ready for a 3-year-old campaign,” Hamm said.

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Like His Namesake, Gretzky The Great Taking On Big Challenge In Breeders’ Cup

Mark Casse and his wife had just arrived in Lexington, KY on Tuesday when they got the good news they needed. They'd both tested negative for Covid-19 and would be able to attend the $1 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf presented by Coolmore America at Keeneland.

That allows them to see if Gretzky the Great can continue to win like his namesake.

A name that boomed over the speakers at Woodbine this summer, Gretzky the Great was bred by Anderson Farms in St. Thomas, Ont. Anderson was impressed with the colt and Aron Wellman of Eclipse Thoroughbred paired with L.A. film producer Gary Barber to buy the horse. They handed him off to Casse, the trainer.

“I can remember when we first started training him in Ocala,” Casse said.

“When he started breezing I told Gary Barber and Aron Wellman both, I said, 'I think this horse is pretty good.' He's just done everything right, right from the beginning. I was surprised when he got beat his first time. I didn't think he'd get beat, but of course he got beat by a good horse that had a race over him.”

He lost that first race to Ready to Repeat on July 12 at Woodbine, placing second. He shook off the early loss to mount three wins in a row, on Aug. 2, then taking the Soaring Free Stakes on Aug. 23 and the Grade-1 Summer Stakes — a Breeders' Cup Challenge Series race — on Sept. 20.

“Since then, he keeps winning,” Casse said. “He's a beautiful-moving horse…and he's an extremely smart horse.”

While the horse was trained in Canada, the hockey-inspired name actually came from Barber, whose work in the film industry spans the last three decades and coincides with Wayne Gretzky's time as an L.A. King.

“I think Gary Barber named him. Gary is a huge, huge sports fan,” Casse said, pointing out that Gretzky the Great's sire is Nyquist, who is named after Detroit Red Wings forward Gustav Nyquist. His owner, J. Paul Reddam is a big Wings and (obviously) a Nyquist fan. So hockey, or at least hockey fandom, is in the family's blood.

“Nyquist is just turning out to be a phenomenal sire. This is his first crop,” Casse said.

Like Wayne Gretzky, Gretzky the Great is following a similar path in his field: Ontario-bred, success in Canada early in his career and now getting into the spotlight of his sport in the U.S. Of course, just four races into his young career, Gretzky the Great's future is in front of him and even with the promise he's shown to this point, nothing is guaranteed.

“It's tough to know,” Casse said. “He's going where he was a star in a regional area. Now he's going to compete against the world and you just never know how you fit in until you try. We've been fortunate, we've won the Breeders' Cup five times.

“Even at that point, with some of your horses you never know. It's truly hard to gauge. You go in with as much confidence as you can, but knowing that you never know until it's over.”

That's also part of the fun for Casse, who started down a path that his wife has heard him take by his estimation a million times in their years together.

“Training horses is like putting a puzzle together,” he said. “You're always trying different pieces and seeing what works. So far with him, the puzzle pieces have gone in very nicely.”

He looks at Gretzky the Great and wonders just how great he could be. He could see the Canadian-bred horse competing for the Queen's Plate, or maybe even at the Kentucky Derby. For now, it's step-by-step, race-by-race.

On Friday, Gretzky the Great will have some challenges. Casse said he could have gotten a better post, noting how hard it is to win from the 11-hole. He'll also be going from a one-turn mile at Woodbine to a two-turn mile in Lexington.

There are old stories about a young Wayne Gretzky playing above his head when he was young, a scrawny boy playing against kids a few years older than him. He scored his 1,000th minor hockey goal when he was 13; he scored 378 goals in his final season of peewee.

On Friday, a 2-year-old horse that's named after hockey's greatest player will try to make its mark against stiff competition. This is his opportunity.

“I'm hoping that one day he's good enough that maybe Wayne comes to see him,” Casse said. A lot has to happen first but if Gretzky the Great stays in the winner's circle enough, he might get his full circle moment.

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Unknown Commodities: Mark Casse On Bringing Freshman-Sired Runners Into The Breeders’ Cup

Though we can certainly start to form opinions on the talent and preferences of freshman sires by the fall, no stallion's resume is completely written heading into their first crop's Breeders' Cup.

Up to this point, even the most prolific freshman sires only have a small sampling of horses at the distances and class levels seen during the championship races. Though it can help guide a narrative, a strong or poor performance by one or two runners from a debut crop on one day at a single track does not engrave a sire's capability for putting out a precocious foal.

Trainer Mark Casse has two runners by freshman sires entered in this year's Breeders' Cup races for 2-year-olds, meaning he will be part of the real-time focus group learning about their sires' abilities with the rest of the world. Casse will send Gretzky the Great, by Nyquist, to the Juvenile Turf; and Dirty Dangle, by Not This Time, to the Juvenile Turf Sprint.

This is not to say, though, that Casse is going into these races completely blind to how his runners will perform. Aside from the obvious factors of hands-on experience and the horses' own past performance, the trainer prides himself in doing his homework when it comes to pedigree research.

“At the end of every day, I go through and look at the charts at every major racetrack, and I make mental notes of what sires are doing well on different surfaces,” he said. “I pay a lot of attention, too, to damsires. I'm big on buying out of certain damsires.”

Gretzky the Great flies the banner for sire Nyquist, a member of Darley's stallion roster in Lexington, Ky.

Nyquist was himself part of the record-setting freshman crop for sire Uncle Mo. Both Nyquist and Uncle Mo snagged Eclipse Awards as champion 2-year-old male after winning their respective editions of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, giving plenty of evidence that Nyquist's foals would be early types.

That has proven out thus far, with Nyquist siring a pair of Grade 1 winners heading into Novemver, making him the only North American freshman sire with more than one graded stakes winner. Nyquist's other Grade 1 winner this season was Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies contender Vequist, who took the G1 Spinaway Stakes earlier this year.

Gretzky the Great added himself to that list when he won the Grade 1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine on Sept. 20, clinching a “Win and You're In” berth to the Juvenile Turf in the process. The Ontario-bred has raced exclusively at Woodbine, breaking his maiden in his second start, then taking the listed Soaring Free Stakes before moving on to the Summer.

“We had high hopes on him from the beginning, but I think he's just gotten bigger, and better, and he's thriving,” Casse said. “He looks tremendous. He moves over the ground great. I believe if you can go a mile at Woodbine with that long stretch, you can pretty well go a mile anywhere. I think the two turns will actually be a benefit for him. He's got enough speed, he's going to be fairly close as long as he breaks well, and I think he'll really like this turf course.”

Nyquist raced exclusively on dirt during his own on-track career, and while Gretzky the Great's dam Pearl Turn started her career in Ireland, all of her wins came over the dirt after returning to the U.S.

Casse said the decision to start Gretzky the Great on the turf was part of his overarching program with his Ontario-based 2-year-olds.

“The pedigree obviously is extremely important, but that's what we do as trainers; we try different things,” he said. “With Gretzky the Great, our Grade 1 race for 2-year-olds is the Summer, so I try to get my horses to at least give them a chance on the grass. It turns out the Nyquists can do anything.”

Nyquist leads a tight race as the leading freshman sire by progeny earnings, with $1,108,381. Tracking closely behind him in second is Taylor Made Stallions' Not This Time, with $1,053,867.

Not This Time will be represented in Casse's barn by Juvenile Turf Sprint contender Dirty Dangle, who is unbeaten in two starts, both at Woodbine.

The filly enters the Juvenile Turf Sprint off a 1 1/4-length closing score in the Woodbine Cares Stakes on Sept. 19. She won on debut over Woodbine's all-weather main track in her debut.

“We purchased her after her last race, so I didn't have the privilege of training her before, but her race on turf at Woodbine was extremely good,” Casse said. “That's what made us purchase her.”

Dirty Dangle now races for Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Gary Barber, the same connections that campaign Gretzky the Great.

Not This Time's freshman runners are led by probable Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies favorite Princess Noor, who brought $1.35 million at auction earlier this year, and has gone undefeated in three starts, including a 6 1/2-length score in the G1 Del Mar Debutante Stakes and an 8 1/4-length drubbing of the Chandelier Stakes.

Like Nyquist, Not This Time was a fast-starting 2-year-old during his own time on the racetrack, winning the G3 Iroquois Stakes leading into a runner-up finish in the 2016 Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

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‘Breeze Really Woke Her Up’: Juvenile Fillies Contender Vequist Full Of Herself Monday

Exercise rider Teresa Hagemeier had to work to keep Vequist on the ground Monday morning as the Grade 1-winning filly was more than happy to go back to the track two days after completing her last serious breeze in advance of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies.

With trainer Butch Reid overseeing his string at Parx, his wife and assistant Ginny got an eyeful as Vequist was full of herself while galloping about 1 5/8 miles over the Keeneland main track.

“She was ready to do this today,” Ginny Reid said. “The breeze really woke her up. Every time you do something strong with her, she gets that much better. I'm really pleased with the way she went and how nice and relaxed she is after the gallop. She's doing very well.”

Owned by Gary Barber, Wachtel Stable and Swilcan Stable, Vequist most recently finished second to fellow Juvenile Fillies contender Dayoutoftheoffice in the Frizette Oct. 10. Prior to that outing, the dark bay filly broke her maiden and became the first Grade 1 winner for her sire Nyquist when she blitzed the field by 9 ½ lengths in the seven-furlong Spinaway on Sept. 6.

The decision to go in the Spinaway off a runner-up outing in her career debut at Parx on July 29 was spurred in part by new additions to her ownership, but also by Reid's faith that the filly would get better as the distances got longer.

“Early on, there was a deal made where Gary Barber and Adam Wachtel bought into her and it was kind of their push to go ahead and get her in a Grade 1,” said Butch Reid, who won the 2011 Breeders' Cup Marathon with Afleet Again. “And we knew the further distances were what she was looking for. We ran her 4 ½ furlongs first time out and she wanted no part of that. At seven-eighths, she's just starting to get warmed up. I think it was more the distance than a lot of other things.”

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