Secretariat’s Legacy 2024 Calendar Honors Secrettame

The Secretariat calendar series, now in its seventh year, will honor Secretariat's daughter Secrettame for the 2024 edition. The series started in 2018 with the Living Legends theme honoring the last living Secretariat sons and daughters, then transitioned to descendants of Secretariat's important broodmares in 2022. Proceeds from the 2024 calendar will benefit The Secretariat Center and Old Friends. The series has already raised more than $33,000 for equine charities through six editions. This will be the first one with The Secretariat Center as the primary beneficiary.

“I've always wanted to work with The Secretariat Center, the only aftercare organization carrying the Triple Crown winner's name,” said writer and photographer Patricia McQueen. “With this calendar series likely winding down soon, it was important to make the change now. I'm thrilled that the previous calendars raised considerable funds for Bright Futures Farm, Old Friends, LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Society, and Victory Alliance Ranch, all very worthy organizations.”

McQueen published a book, Secretariat's Legacy, earlier this year.

“The Secretariat Center believes all horses deserve care, kindness and a purpose beyond the racetrack, and the Secretariat's Legacy calendar is such a fun way to remember all that Secretariat has done, and continues to do, for the racing industry,” added Shelley Mann, Executive Director of The Secretariat Center. “We look forward to celebrating his legacy with his fans, both old and new. Thank you to Patricia for generously supporting horses, as they transition into loving homes, through proceeds from her beautiful calendars.”

Secrettame, born in 1978, was a stakes winner at five after placing in the G2 Gazelle H. at three. Her first foal was the Mr. Prospector son Gone West, a Grade I winner and influential sire whose sire sons included Elusive Quality and Speightstown. Both of those also have a number of important sire sons standing currently, while Secrettame also produced MGSW and MGISP Lion Cavern, a full-brother to Gone West.

As with previous calendars, the Tony Leonard Collection continues to support the series with a photo of Secretariat and Ron Turcotte taken after the Kentucky Derby. Turcotte also has autographed a limited number of calendars.

The new calendars are available for $22 each, plus shipping, at SecretariatCalendar.com.

The post Secretariat’s Legacy 2024 Calendar Honors Secrettame appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

‘How Lucky are We?’ Mill Ridge and the Breeders’ Cup

Celebrating 40 Years of the Breeders' Cup with Living Legends

It wasn't so long ago that the magnificent sire Gone West held court at Mill Ridge Farm near Lexington. From 22 crops, all while at Mill Ridge, he netted a mouth-watering 9% black-type winners from starters, including Breeders' Cup winners Da Hoss (twice), Johar, and Speightstown, all back in the days when the Breeders' Cup was still a single day and there were far fewer races.

The son of Mr. Prospector passed away in 2009, but his influence on the Breeders' Cup was not done and neither was Mill Ridge's. Among Gone West's sire sons are Speightstown, who has sired two Breeders' Cup winners, and Elusive Quality, who has sired three. His grandsons include Quality Road, sire of four Breeders' Cup winners. And among the major runners out of his daughters is another Breeders' Cup winner in Awesome Feather.

The Mill Ridge team hasn't stopped there. Eight Breeders' Cup winners have been bred, raised, and/or sold by the Central Kentucky farm. Additionally, Mill Ridge's involvement in Horse Country has created an extra ripple effect of the Breeders' Cup's impact on farms big and small, as well as on the fans who visit those farms. And now, the two young sires who are standing at Mill Ridge are both Breeders' Cup winners.

Oscar Performance on a Horse Country tour along with Mill Ridge's tour guide Ryn Harris and managing partner Headley Bell. Earl the Corgi is quite popular on the tours and on social media. | Sarah Andrew

Oscar Performance won the GI Juvenile Turf in 2016, while Aloha West won the GI Sprint in 2021.

“That's like starting two full teams for the University of Kentucky basketball team,” said Price Bell, Jr., general manager of Mill Ridge, with a laugh about the eight Breeders' Cup winners combined with the two additional championship day winners in the stud barn. “That's the beauty of the Breeders' Cup. How lucky are we to have been able to associate with this many horses on Breeders' Cup days?

“We'll often have visitors say, 'Well, don't you have an unfair advantage because you get to watch them in the field and then watch them win?' We know how special it is to get to do this.”

From the start, Oscar Performance had the Bell family's fingerprints all over him. Fittingly, he was raised on the farm and has now returned to the place of his birth to stand. He is also the sire of Sunday's GIII Zuma Beach S. winner Endlessly from his second crop of 2-year-olds. Endlessly is an unbeaten dual graded winner–for the same connections as his sire–who will try to emulate his sire in the Nov. 3 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf.

“We raised Oscar Performance for the Amermans and helped with the mating. Now for a horse for the same connections to go on and keep that dream alive is very special.

“We feel so lucky and blessed to associate with so many incredible people and breeders and clients and horses,” said Bell. “The Breeders' Cup is what we're all striving for and dreaming about as soon as you do a mating. We feel so blessed to have gotten there and want to keep going.”

Sarah Andrew

Mill Ridge is a popular spot on the Horse Country tours and Oscar Performance has become a showman.

“To connect him with guests is so special,” said Bell. “People have just fallen in love with him. We've really enjoyed sharing him with people and seeing the way he's become a fan favorite. It has been very meaningful as we share that he was the best 2-year-old on the turf in his generation, the best 3-year-old on the turf, and that he set the world record at a mile. One of those three things often sticks with people. To be able to share him with fans is really special.”

As a racehorse, Oscar Performance had a devastating kick.

“What I found so brilliant in his Breeders' Cup is that he had broken from the 13 hole, yet was able to clear the field,” said Bell. “To break from the 13th post to get clear and over at Santa Anita is a big thing. I remember very vividly where I was when he broke his maiden [at Saratoga in August of 2016]. And then his Breeders' Cup, we sat and watched it at the office with my dad because my wife and I had a 15-month-old. It was our son's first Grade I and one we certainly remember as a family. It would be so memorable if Endlessly could do it, too. We're so blessed to have those relationships.”

Aloha West, whose first foals will be born in 2024, took a different route to Mill Ridge.

“He was raised by our friends at Nursery Place by John Mayer,” said Bell. “I think for his Breeders' Cup, what was so telling, is that was the ninth race he had had that year. He'd showed some ability at two, had some shins, hurt himself at three. They were really patient with him. [He debuted at four], broke his maiden in February culminating with a Breeders' Cup win. He danced every dance, had nine starts that year, no real break. He was sort of the clever horse on the backside; people had a lot of chatter about him going into the Breeders' Cup. And then he showed that will to win.”

Halter tag keychains, including one of Breeders' Cup winner Life Is Sweet, in Mill Ridge's Horse Country gift shop | Sarah Andrew

In addition to their two Breeders' Cup-winning stallions, one of whom they had also raised, Mill Ridge has been intimately involved with 2000 Distaff winner Spain, 2003 Turf dead-heater Johar (one of Gone West's winners), 2004 Juvenile Fillies winner Sweet Catomine, 2005 Mile winner Artie Schiller, 2006 Distaff winner Round Pond, 2009 Ladies' Classic winner Life Is Sweet, and 2013 Juvenile Fillies winner Ria Antonia. For those keeping score, that was four consecutive winners from 2003-06 and six in that decade alone.

Winning the Breeders' Cup doesn't get old though. On the contrary, it leaves one hungry for more.

“Once you've been there, you want to experience it again,” said Bell. “You want to do it again and again and again and again.”

Bell has distinct memories of every winner. Some stood out early.

“I often put Sweet Catomine as the one that everyone on the farm thought was very special. For her to culminate as champion and the way she had done it was wonderful. Sometimes you do see something when they're young and it's very gratifying.”

Some stand out because of the relationships with the breeders.

“Artie Schiller was awesome because Leroidesanimaux (Brz) was the overwhelming favorite and he beat him handily, squarely, no excuses. He ran by him like he was standing still. It was a great culmination of the relationship we had with the Moussacs [breeders of Artie Schiller]. A great celebration.”

But one of the Breeders' Cup wins that is most memorable to Bell is for an out-of-the-ordinary reason and ties in to the farm's involvement with Horse Country.

“I remember Spain was a classic [D. Wayne] Lukas move. Lukas put them to sleep. She got a phenomenal ride [from Victor Espinoza]. It was Lukas taking a shot and then he wins at 56-1.

“But what I really remember when I think of her now is on one of our tours there was a gentleman who was about my age. He loved Spain. He was in the hospital at the time she won, in a children's cancer ward, and he'd told all the nurses to bet her.

“Here's a horse that we both had great memories of for very different reasons. It was our first Breeders' Cup winner while he's a kid fighting cancer. It meant a lot to both of us, was an inspiration for both of us. Horses touch people in different ways and sometimes we don't even know it.”

A Horse Country tour sign at Mill Ridge | Sarah Andrew

Perhaps that is why Bell and Mill Ridge are so bullish on the non-profit Horse Country, which Bell was instrumental in co-founding and which also has Breeders' Cup roots. It's his way of giving back to the industry and connecting the wider public to our sport.

“We launched Horse Country tours the same year [2015] as the first Breeders' Cup at Keeneland. It coincided with American Pharoah and that was kind of what got us going. We had set a timeline of the Breeders' Cup date and it gave us a starting gate. We were committed. It has taken a lot of iterations between then and now, but we're big believers in it. We love doing it and sharing what we do.

“The tours have welcomed 200,000 people since then, 25,000 of those at Mill Ridge. We're the number two thing to do on Trip Advisor in Lexington. It feels like it's our part in trying to connect people to racing.

“We're all inspired by the horses and tours are people's best opportunity to meet a horse. Farms create a great opportunity for that. It's meaningful for people to share that, just like the gentleman who had a relationship with Spain from his hospital bed.”

One guest at a time, Mill Ridge and Horse Country are changing the wider public's perception of racing. If meeting a Breeders' Cup-winning stallion brings one more person over to the beauty of our sport, it's a win. If it shows another person how well we take care of our horses and how much they mean to us, it's a win. And if it gets one more person to watch the Breeders' Cup, feeling they have a connection because they've feed a carrot to the sire of one of the runners or have walked over the same land where one was raised, it's a win.

“The better we can show guests what we do, the better we all are,” said Bell. “It feels like the right thing to do. We get so much from the guests and the experience. It's a great reminder of how lucky we are.

“Mill Ridge is just one small piece in it, but we've jumped all the way in. It's very doable. And it's beautiful. At the end of the day, we get so much out of committing to it.

“I feel like we get more out of it than we give.”

The post ‘How Lucky are We?’ Mill Ridge and the Breeders’ Cup appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Book Review: Secretariat’s Offspring Agonistes

A stroll down the 500 block of East Maxwell Street in Lexington, Kentucky brings you to the awninged door of Black Swan Books. If your pursuits are less catholic, then Mike Courtney's seemingly endless maze of heaving shelves can accommodate even the most scrupulous bibliophile of rare Kentuckiana and equine sport culture.

Say, you're looking for a past volume on the two-time Horse of the Year Secretariat, then copious choices await. More recent works like William Nack's Secretariat: The Making of a Champion (2002) and Lawrence Scanlan's The Horse That God Built (2007) are ubiquitous.

But across the canon, you might find that there is something sorely lacking when it comes to  'Big Red' hagiography. No author has quite delved deep enough into the offspring of this champion who has continued to top Thoroughbred history by an unsurmountable 31 lengths.

That is, until now.

As the 50th anniversary of Secretariat's historic Triple Crown run is almost here, author Patricia McQueen has done all of us a massive service by rolling out her magisterial study, Secretariat's Legacy: The Sons, Daughters and Descendants Who Keep His Legend Alive, published this Mar. by SL Publications.

Despite its girth, this is decidedly not a traditional coffee table-style book with pretty pictures. Rather, this is a seriously sourced monograph, replete with revisionist perspective. Namely, that some of the bloodline critics got it wrong in memoriam, Secretariat's progeny were not agonistes. Instead, when we step back, they have on the whole made a sizable contribution to the future of this sport. Some did not 'stamp his get,' as the equine phrase goes, but there were those that certainly begat his running ability and passed it on. With an expert photographic portfolio as proof, McQueen effectively argues that the much-debated sire's influence deserves another look.

It all began for the author while she was in college. Curiosity in the Triple Crown winner took her on a pilgrimage to Kentucky in 1982 to see the fellow himself. The sire's subsequent death in 1989 propelled her down a path to locate and snap pictures of Secretariat's remaining band that would carry forth his legacy. One picture led to one story, and then the dominoes fell, as she documented as many offspring as she could.

McQueen's highly-readable style takes us along Secretariat's pedigreed shedrow where we meet Dactylographer–the sire's first stakes winner, sales toppers like Miss Secretariat and Grey Legion make an appearance, as does popular Old Friends social media darling Tinners Way. A bevy of international success stories inform us about the sire's reach that stretched from France to Japan.

We also hear some wonderful anecdotes, like the one the author tells about the unusual in-utero journey of Fanfreluche, one of Secretariat's most productive mares. Thieves absconded with her in June 1977 from Claiborne Farm, and after five months, an FBI sweep of the Bluegrass uncovered her location when she was discovered on an innocent farm after she was found wandering along a country road.

More evidence piles up, curated and culled expertly by McQueen. The chapter entitled 'The Lukas Touch' is especially rich with stories of how 'The Coach' believed Secretariat should be crossed with fast, precocious mares. Crimson Saint produced a number of these types, including Lukas runners like Terlingua, Pancho Villa, Navajo Pass and one of the last three of his progeny still alive, Border Run. From Lady's Secret and Risen Star to the influence of Storm Cat, Gone West and A.P. Indy and all the way to Bricks and Mortar, Authentic and Knicks Go, 'Big Red' is still with us.

With a foreword by Kate Tweedy and Leanne Ladin, plus an excellent appendix listing all 62 stakes winners, Secretariat's Legacy has closed the canonical 31-length gap in the scholarship. Patricia McQueen ensures that this 'Super Horse's' offspring are agonistes no longer.

Clearly, it's time to reserve a spot on the shelf at Black Swan Books.

Secretariat's Legacy: The Sons, Daughters and Decedents Who Keep His Legend Alive by SL Publications, 298 pages, photos, appendix, glossary, March 2023.

 

The post Book Review: Secretariat’s Offspring Agonistes appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Gone West Legacy Renewed at Mill Ridge with New Addition

After a short hiatus from the stallion business, Mill Ridge welcomed GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf winner Oscar Performance to their farm in 2019. Four years later, they now add a second stallion to their roster in Aloha West (Hard Spun – Island Bound, by Speightstown), who claimed the 2021 GI Qatar Racing Breeders' Cup Sprint for Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Wayne Catalano.

With breeding shed doors opening soon, what has this newcomer's initial reception been like with breeders?

“A lot more positive than the Oscar Performance reception was,” said Price Bell with a laugh.

These days, Mill Ridge Farm's general manager is happy to joke about the challenge of launching an American turf horse's stud career if it means talking about Oscar Performance, who just received a fee bump from $12,500 to $20,000 after he wrapped up 2022 as the leading sire of all 2-year-olds on the turf by progeny earnings with his first crop.

As for Aloha West, the champion has drawn a steady stream of visitors at Mill Ridge after he retired to stud following this year's Breeders' Cup.

A son of Hard Spun, Aloha West is out of the Speightstown mare Island Bound, who won the 2012 GIII Winning Colors S. Bell said the new stallion has a physical that reflects both sides of his pedigree and will fit a variety of mares.

“Physically, he's a beautiful horse. Hard Spun is a son of Danzig, who is as influential of a sire line as there exists. Aloha West it from the family of Fappiano and then within that, you've got Speightstown, who is a son of Gone West out of a Storm Cat mare. I think the Speightstown side has really balanced him and polished him up. ”

Aloha West fulfills an important roll at Mill Ridge in carrying out the legacy of breed shaper Gone West, who joined Mill Ridge's first stallion Diesis at the farm in 1988 and went on to produce 98 stakes winners.

After the remarkable success of Gone West, whose sons and grandsons are influential on a global scale today, the farm added several more stallions that failed to follow in their predecessors' achievements.

“We were more active in the stallion business through the 1990s and the 2000s,” Bell explained. “We took on a strategy–and not a unique one–that we needed to retire a stallion every year. We stood Bien Bien, Valiant Nature, Binalong, and really a series of stallions that didn't work. I think at times we might have gotten over our skis in feeling like we had to stand a stallion and we got away from believing in a stallion. As the dust settled, our strategy changed because we couldn't afford to make mistakes. So we never felt like we were out of the stallion business, but rather that we were waiting for the right opportunity.”

That first opportunity came with Oscar Performance, who is the product of a Nicoma Bloodstock mating suggestion and was foaled and raised at Mill Ridge. Next came Gone West's descendant Aloha West.

“Our belief in him was the fundamental driver,” Bell said. “I think if we were to have learned anything after Gone West with the other stallions that we tried, it is that we have to get back to believing in the horse, his ability, his ability to become a stallion and the team around that horse.”

One chapter of Aloha West's story that Bell said they aim to impress upon breeders is that while the Maryland-bred did not race until he was four due to an injury that required surgery, he did have all the potential to be a top-class juvenile.

“Although he didn't race at two, you can look back at his works and see that he was putting in bullets at San Luis Rey and Santa Anita. So it would be easy to bypass that, but when you understand that he was a very good 2-year-old, and then he breaks his maiden at Oaklawn Park by making this big move passing horses around the turn, you think, 'Wow, that's a serious racehorse.'”

Purchased by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners shortly after that debut win, Aloha West won five of his nine starts in 2021. He was the runner-up in the GII Phoenix S. at Keeneland and then got his signature win in the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint, where he defeated the likes of champion Jackie's Warrior (Maclean's Music) and MGISW Dr. Schivel (Violence). He furthered his success at five with a win in the Kelly's Landing S.

“He had a tremendous desire to win,” Bell said. “He was tough and fast and wanted to get to the finish line first. He ran speed figures comparable to Munnings and other great stallions, so that gives us the belief that he can pass that on to his offspring.”

Aloha West will stand for a fee of $10,000 in 2023. Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners has stayed in on the stallion and recently signed tickets on several mares at the Keeneland January Sale.

“Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners are our friends and clients that we hold in the highest regard,” Bell said. “Their motto is to believe big and he certainly achieved the highest results for their partners. For me, he is as exciting a sire at this price point that has come out in the last few years and we've had a positive reception not only from previous clients, but also from new clients. We feel so blessed because this is a game of hopes and dreams and we want to share it with as many people as possible. We're all in this together and we hope that we can launch a successful stallion career.”

The post Gone West Legacy Renewed at Mill Ridge with New Addition appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Verified by MonsterInsights