“The Toughest Game Played Outdoors”

We are all the products of our environment. Tim Thornton could see as much, when he saw a foal that had been delivered at sea trying to walk on dry land for the first time. “He was, like, six weeks old,” he recalls. “It was so funny to see him get off that ship, rocking everywhere, giving it the sea legs.”

But then that's pretty well how Thornton himself might have felt, as one born and bred for horses, had he ever been torn away to work in some other walk of life.

Even today, seven years after retiring from a long career with Airdrie Stud, he still has around 15 mares–many in partnership with his old buddy Tony Holmes–on a 330-acre farm established by his father in 1946 outside Paris, KY. This was where Thornton first learned about horses, and this is where he continues to find them a daily source of wonder and discovery. In between, for three decades as general manager of Airdrie, he could be entrusted with any and every responsibility, especially while his employer Brereton C. Jones had one or two other claims on his attention. For the Governor of Kentucky knew that here was a man whose innate flair for horses had been honed to a degree uncommon even in the Bluegrass–and never more so, indeed, than in the remarkable 14,000-mile voyage that had induced such a comical stagger in that sea-born foal.

It was Humphrey Finney who had urged Carter Thornton to send his son Tim, on graduating college, to complete his equine education a little further afield.

“Dad wanted me to come here and work right off,” Thornton recalls. “But he said okay, and let me go to England and work at the National Stud there. And then Humphrey got me onto this ship, from Southampton to New Zealand: 170 horses, the most ever gone to sea. It was pretty amazing.”

A couple of years previously, Thornton had taken a rather smaller number through the Panama Canal with Charlie Nuckols.

“That gave me the appetite, that's why I wanted to do it again,” he says. “But I didn't know it was going to be 60 days of sea. Going through Panama was only two weeks, but going around Africa took forever.”

And with so many more horses! They ranged from an 18-hand Clydesdale to miniature ponies.

“There had only been 14 head going through Panama,” Thornton recalls. “But that wasn't even a livestock ship, they were just strapped on the back. The waves would come over, it was just wood crates and a couple times we had to fix the wood back down. That was much more dangerous than the big ship. Those 170 were all below deck and air-conditioned and in steel pipe pens.”

Nonetheless, confinement and rolling seas brought obvious risks to a creature that must colic instead of vomit. Hence a low-energy diet, bran mash and so forth.

“I mean, one would get colicky every once in a while, but luckily nothing bad,” Thornton says. “But because of the disease factor, they wouldn't let us stop anywhere. Our first stop after England was Perth. From Perth we went over to Sydney and unloaded some more. And from there we went another 1,200 miles to New Zealand and unloaded the last. It was a good experience. Wouldn't want to make a living of it, but it was something to see.”

Topping off this unique lesson was the chance to escort a Thoroughbred from the hold to Ra Ora Stud for Sir Woolf Fisher, and then to stay on for six months working at Widden Stud (and becoming fast friends with “Bim” Thompson).

He had seen quite another world, then, by the time he returned to Threave Main–and another world is just how the family farm, in that era, might strike the younger generation today. For it was still possible in the 1960s for a small family operation to maintain a thriving stallion program. At a time when people referred to 20 mares as a full book, even the factory farms couldn't monopolize the mare population. As a result, the Thorntons were routinely able to stand half a dozen stallions including The Doge, sire of Hall of Famer Swoon's Son, and the imported British sprinter Tudor Grey (GB).

Carter Thornton had himself made an equally uncommon start in the game, aged just 19 when invited to succeed his grandfather–who had himself first learned his horsemanship with draft horses–as manager of Fairholme Farm for Robert A. Fairbairn, who had been part of the syndicate that imported Blenheim and Sir Gallahad. What names! One way or another, then, several generations of horse lore were condensed into the energetic young man from Threave Main who caught the attention of Kentucky's new lieutenant governor in 1988.

“Hopefully he would go on to be governor, so knew he wasn't going to be around that much and was looking for a manager,” Thornton explains. “He knew me, from breeding mares over there and so on, and knew I'd been around stallions a lot. Main thing, he knew I was honest; and he knew I was a hard worker. And we just got along real good. Couldn't have been a better relationship. He was a great boss but has become a great friend. I mean, I consider him almost like kin. And we always owned a couple of horses together. He'd do that with you. We had fun.”

And the things that made Jones a great boss, according to Thornton, were exactly the same as those that served him so well as governor.

“Definitely,” he says. “I mean, everybody loved him, from the people running the state to the grooms at Airdrie. Because they knew he's honest and he treated you fair. His word was his bond. And he expected that from everybody else too. That's why he always had good people around him. And that's kind of like my dad was, too.”

That trust became the foundation of Thornton's long tenure at Airdrie. During his employer's terms of public service, he found all manner of responsibilities delegated his way.

“Pretty much I did it all,” he acknowledges. “Recruiting, all that kind of thing. I was hands-on, every part of the farm. But we had a real good stallion manager, Kelly McDaniel, who was there forever. Really good guy. Another unbelievable guy was the broodmare manager Mark Cunningham, an Australian who's been there 40-something years now. He's really down-to-earth and you can't run him off the farm. He's a worker, and a very good horseman. And then we had a real good yearling manager, Richard Royster. Brery's philosophy was that if you did a good job, he didn't bother you. He knew you could do it. And it was the same for me: if my people are doing a good job, I don't bother them. That's a successful way to run a farm.”

All that said, Thornton stresses that it was Jones who always had his hand on the tiller; Jones, even with all his other distractions, whose inspired stallion recruitment and syndication were the foundation of the farm's half century of success.

“He couldn't afford the $15-million horses,” Thornton says. “But he was such a good promoter and even though he had to buy cheaper, he always had the best-looking horses in Central Kentucky. Never had an ugly horse in the barn. And that was something he could promote, because they'd have good-looking foals that would sell. And he did it over and over. So people started getting in line to buy shares. He was really at the cutting edge of syndicating and making the first-year horse popular. And he was an unbelievable salesman.”

Moreover Jones would put his money where his mouth was, building up an unusually large broodmare band of his own to support the stallions. He ran an aggressive program, but the farm has always retained an unchanging bedrock of trust and probity.

“Brery had some battles, but he wouldn't back up, believe me,” Thornton observes. “He's the most genuine, honest person and has really been so good for the horse business. And though he had a few clients, 95% of those horses were his. That's what amazed everybody. He had, like, 150 mares. That was a lot back then. And it was so much more fun just to deal with your own horses, rather than with clients!”

The ultimate vindication of this strategy, of course, was three homebred GI Kentucky Oaks winners in eight years.

Larry Jones, Rosie Napravnik and Brereton Jones after Believe You Can's victory in the GI Kentucky Oaks | Getty Images

“That's probably one of the things I'm proudest of,” Thornton says. “All three RNAs. Unbelievable. That was always one of the good things about him, he wasn't afraid to race. He was pretty much a commercial breeder, but he'd set a value on them and if they didn't bring that, he would race them. And he's been so lucky with smaller fillies. With the smaller ones, it's not as hard on their joints. But you lead one up to the sale ring and see what happens. It's weird. Seems like every good filly Brery's had has been smallish. So he's always upped the ante, on the reserve, if they're small because he figures they can run. Especially after Proud Spell (Proud Citizen). She was a game, sweet girl.”

Thornton's own continued engagement with the marketplace means that he can proudly monitor the legacy he built up with his former employer. Every few pages, in every catalogue, one of the stallions they made will be right there in the second or third generation–notably Harlan's Holiday through Into Mischief, and Indian Charlie through Uncle Mo.

“Probably one of my favorite horses, Indian Charlie,” says Thornton. “I can't get enough Indian Charlie mares. He was such a good sire, and such a nice horse to be around. He always put such a pretty horse on the ground. Stretchy, good-looking horses. And he's even doing it now, through those mares. Half their foals end up big, stretchy horses like him. It's amazing, all that coming from that gene.”

Indian Charlie | Barbara Livingston

Not so amazing, mind you, when you see the parallel genetic heritage handed down from one generation of Thorntons to the next.

Thornton's father, setting aside wartime service training air pilots, gave him a direct link to another era; to an age when yearlings were walked from Winchester to be loaded onto the train to be sold at Saratoga. You're looking at four generations of hardboot lore stretching to a great-grandfather who'd started out with draft horses and ended up selling Hoop Jr. for Fairbairn. Another Kentucky Derby winner, Canonero II, was subsequently raised here at Threave Main for breeder Edward B. Benjamin.

“But the horse was crooked so Mr. Benjamin got rid of him,” Thornton says with a shrug. “He brought $1,200 as a weanling. Just shows, you never know.”

Yes, well, that's never going to change! But nor will the benefits secured for horses by those who do the job right; who have the patience to do things the way their forefathers did, without cutting corners. That's why this man and this land continue to outpunch their weight. With his old employer, Thornton co-owned 2015 GI Mother Goose S. winner Include Betty (Include); and more recently he raised one of the richest Thoroughbreds in history in G1 Saudi Cup winner Emblem Road (Quality Road).

“A lot of things are done a lot fancier than back in the day,” Thornton reflects, before trying to explain what has been lost in the process. “Just old values. Tried-and-true things that work. Some of the best experiences are right here. Growing up on this farm and learning from dad, and running a bunch of horses, with not very much help, just us doing it all ourselves, hands on.

“In the '50s and '60s we always had five or six studs here. Cheap horses, $2,500 to $3,500 horses. But back then, you could make money breeding a horse like that. It was good living. We raised tobacco, and cows. Still like a cow. And I bale all my own bedding. Saves a lot of money. It's definitely an old-school farm. We're kind of proud of it, because there's not that many left.”

His father was such a thoroughgoing horseman that summertime he would go off and train at places like Delaware and Monmouth, especially fillies that could be bred someday. Some won stakes, like the 18-for-41 sprinter Plumb Gray or another daughter of Tudor Grey, Little Tudor, who won the Debutante S. at Churchill.

“Just hard-knocking horses,” says Thornton. “But the farm and the track, back then, were together. For years it was just the trainer and the owner would go around and buy horses. Now you've got all these agents, scared of their jobs. Every hair's got to be perfect in line, or they won't touch it. And they let so many good horses go by.”

That's a market environment that makes it hard for farms on this scale to remain viable. Though his nephew Eric Buckley ran Threave Main for several years, nowadays it is Thornton's daughter Jessica who channels the family horsemanship into a fifth generation as a reproductive veterinarian.

“There's not many family farms left really,” Thornton says. “We're kind of proud of being one, but it's tough with these big conglomerates taking over. It's getting harder and harder to play ball. The purses are really good, that's what's keeping the yearling market going. But the bottom line is you need quality. We try to upgrade every year, get rid of two or three [mares] and buy one. But it's so expensive. You can't breed your cheap horse anymore and make a living. The labor situation's gotten so tough, and you got put a lot more into the stud fees to compete.”

He has seen things become similarly challenging for trainers who try to maintain the same hardboot standards; and doesn't see many of the same stamp as Larry Jones, who trained all three of those Oaks winners.

“He's just a down-to earth, no-nonsense horseman,” Thornton says. “Kind of like me, hands-on and old school. He trained for me a little bit, too, but he's cutting back. Got a farm down in Henderson, fixed up real nice. But he can flat train a horse.

“You can't get any labor and the cost of operating is just getting out of hand as far as smaller guys to make a living. You can't do it. And it's gotten to be these big conglomerates that are doing it. Can't knock them. But you don't have to like it.”

As a result, though, very few general managers today will handle stallions daily the way Thornton always did. He loved to have just a couple of other people around, letting Mother Nature govern as much of the covering process as could be safely allowed.

So, yes, Thornton might strongly resemble a particular president; and he may have shown Silver Hawk to the late Queen of England, while discussing each other's corgis. But he already has the highest status he could wish for, as a horseman's horseman.

“I'm very lucky to have been among horses all of my life,” he says. “You'll always learn something every day. I went to Airdrie in '88 and was there 30 years. We had a lot of changes. We had a lot of fun. They say time flies. I mean, Bret [Jones, Brery's son] was raised up when I was over there and now he's running it. That's amazing, to me, but he's a great boy. He's got a lot of his daddy in him. He's doing a good job and I'm so happy for him. He was smart enough to buy into Girvin. Who would have known Girvin was going to do what he has? But he's on fire now. It's a good feather in his hat.

“He can't pay the crazy money, either. But if it was an exact science, nobody would be in the business. If you don't like this game, you don't need to be in it because it's the toughest game played outdoors. Dealing with Mother Nature, and livestock, the lows can be very low. But the highs are very high. I'm lucky to be bred and raised into it, and lucky to be still going seven days a week. I love it.”

The post “The Toughest Game Played Outdoors” appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Making New Memories: Airdrie at 50

A lot of you will know the feeling. Day three of the January Sale, back ring, and your horse is coming back out after a matter of seconds. The digital board had stalled at $2,500, and then cleared. Bret Jones exchanged a grimace with farm manager Ben Henley. Pretty terrible, no getting away from it. But what can you do? It wasn't the first time Airdrie has had to cut its losses on a horse, and nor would it be the last. As his father has always told Bret: “Better to sell and be sorry than to keep and be sorry.” After all, this was the one area they had to tighten up.

“Dad has always said that the thing he's done least well, in this business, is culling mares,” Bret recalls. “Because he's such an optimist. He's always gone back to that belief, that the next foal would justify why he'd loved the family in the first place. So around that time [January 2017] we'd decided to sell several mares that maybe didn't fit the bill, going forwards, and this was one.”

Memories Prevail had just turned three but it was plain that she was never going to make the starting gate. She was from the first crop of Creative Cause; her dam, similarly homebred in support of a resident stallion in Indian Charlie, had raced once; the next dam was unraced. A single start, in other words, across three generations.

“And at the time she catalogued that if you sold from her, you'd have had two blank dams,” Bret says. “We had her selling through our good friend Mike Recio. And I remember distinctly that as soon as the hammer fell Ben and I turned to each other, as you do, and it was, 'Okay, that's it. Disappointing. But move on.' And about a minute later Pop came along from the front of the pavilion with a yellow sheet of paper in his hand.”

Bret reprises the laughter that overtook the pair that day. For Memories Prevail, retained by Airdrie founder Brereton C. Jones, would a year later be covered by Upstart: and the resulting colt, his first three dams all mated in-house, is none other than Zandon.

To many who saw him cruising into the final turn in the GI Kentucky Derby, the way Zandon then flattened into third cannot possibly circumscribe his potential, and he arrives at Saratoga with every shot still to rise to the top of the crop.

“Pop knew,” Bret says. “He's always had an intuition about him that's pretty unnatural.”

With sophomore laurels very much up for grabs, hopes remain high that Zandon can set a perfect seal on the 50th anniversary of Airdrie's foundation. It's absolutely characteristic of this exemplary farm, after all, that his maternal line (though introduced by acquisition of his third dam, in 2001, for just $15,500) should extend to blue hens Your Hostess and Boudoir (GB).

At 83, admittedly, his countless friends and admirers across our community are aware that even Governor Jones—a man still more outstanding in the fundamental human registers, of integrity and decency, than in his many formal distinctions–cannot elude the universal vulnerabilities of age. But they also know that a living legacy has long been secured; that Airdrie represents continuity not just in the type of blood valued here, in mares and stallions, but also in their management.

This, too, is a question of pedigree–albeit the verve and charm that appears such a familiar inheritance in Bret would doubtless be credited by his father to the distaff side. “Brerry” met Libby, so their son has always been given to understand, at a dinner party “when both were on dates with other people!” At that stage, Brerry was visiting town as a young man so enthused by horses that he had literally rolled up his sleeves to give himself the chance to get involved.

“People don't believe me when I tell them this, but Dad actually started as a builder in West Virginia,” Bret says. “As a little boy in Point Pleasant, he'd ridden his pony Trixie around the hills pretending he was Roy Rogers. He started showing but then somebody told him about Lexington, Kentucky, and at that moment he made the decision: 'If that's where the best horses are, that's where I need to be.' So after university he decided that he needed to make some money before he could come out here and live the life he'd set his heart on.”

After their marriage, Libby was initially required to tolerate a migration to West Virginia, where her husband had already made a precocious impression in state politics—still in his mid-20s, in fact, when the youngest delegate ever elected to the lower house in Charleston. In those days, as he was often teased after resuming his political career in Kentucky a couple of decades later, he was still a Republican.

Bret, dismayed by the venomous polarization of politics since, wishes that we could retrieve the dialogue and engagement embodied by that switch of colors. “I think the truth is that Dad couldn't have cared less what party he was associated with,” he remarks. “He would vote for Republicans probably as often as he did Democrats, because it was all simply about who was right for the job; about the heart and soul of the individual.”

Between the novice and mature phases of his political life, however, Brerry and Libby uprooted to her native state to pursue a parallel vocation with the foundation of Airdrie in 1972.

“Mom's family had a farm,” Bret explains. “Not a Thoroughbred farm, an agrarian one. Dad never wanted to be viewed as someone who had just married into this, so he negotiated a 30-year lease with my mother's father and found a way to work 25 hours a day. And as he began to have some success, he was able to purchase more land on the back of investments he'd made. So that was always a great point of pride: that he'd worked for everything he had, and done it by working harder than everyone he competed with.

“By the time Dad bought the Woodburn division, about 20 years ago, it had been over a century since there'd been horses of consequence on there. So here was this land with an incredible history, that had raised five Kentucky Derby winners, but that had at the same time been rested for over 100 years.”

If it remained an intimidating environment for a young outsider, the Bluegrass then being dominated by the established farms, it was also a propitious time to be forcing an entry. The whole commercial landscape was on the point of transformation–an ironic spur to Airdrie's growth, given how scrupulously the farm today adheres to old-school principles, with relatively conservative books and an emphasis on deep blood and soundness.

“In the early '70s, this was a tough game to break into if you weren't a central Kentuckian,” Bret reflects. “And Dad was aggressive. He would go out there, he'd put partnerships together, and he'd compete for stallions that the big farms were also after. And I'm sure there were tensions that came from that. I'm sure plenty of people said, 'Who's this West Virginian upstart that's come in here shaking things up?'”

One early recruit, Bold Ruler's son Key to the Kingdom, was bought at the Belmont paddock auction in 1975 for a record $730,000. The horse didn't particularly pay off, in his own right, but had already served his purpose in terms of profile.

“Dad did that because he was a promoter,” Bret reasons. “He didn't have anywhere close to the money to do it himself, but knew that was how he could get his name out there.”

Terms were negotiated with the sales company and Paul Mellon, allowing a year's grace on payment. But it turned out that his purchase had made precisely the splash intended, and Brerry very quickly assembled the partners required. The sales company and vendor congratulated him on his successful syndication, and suggested that they could now go ahead and clear the debt. Came the reply: “Well, with all due respect, we had an agreement that I have a year to pay for this.”

“And Dad used that capital to fund his operation for the next year, which was a gutsy thing to do,” Bret says. “But he would always invest in himself. He has never played the stock market. Frankly, he never had any real investments outside the Thoroughbred industry because a) it was what he loved; b) it was what he knew; and c) he had total control over it. As much as anyone does, anyway. But if something was going to be a mistake, it would be his mistake.”

Just as Airdrie could harness a following wind in the early 1980s, so it would have to ride out the storms that followed.

“When so many in the industry had their struggles, in the early '90s, Airdrie had them too,” Bret concedes. “But that was when Dad brought Silver Hawk over from Europe, just a Group 3 winner, the absolute antithesis of the modern-day commercial horse: wasn't particularly attractive, wasn't particularly correct, and struggled mightily for mares. But Dad believed in him and bred his own mares to the horse. And Silver Hawk came through for him, really took off and became Dad's first major stallion.”

The program's seedcorn had been boarding, but every time Brerry made a score the proceeds were recycled into the broodmare band to support the stallion roster. Two of the three Airdrie graduates to have won the GI Kentucky Oaks, for instance, were homebred. Yet with no real apprenticeship or mentoring behind him, Brerry was developing his strategy through that most rigorous of instructors: experience.

“Trial and error,” says Bret with a shrug. “Nothing teaches you a lesson faster than investing your own money. I can't imagine how many mistakes he made along the way. But they were his mistakes, and they made him very good at the business he loved. Dad had tremendous trust in his instincts. There were plenty of times where he would invest in something that probably didn't make a lot of sense to other people. And those others may have been exactly right. But he was fearless. He would trust his own gut.”

Necessity is the mother of invention, and time after time stallions reached Airdrie along the margin between lesser resources and greater imagination.

“We all know that top stallions can come from more humble beginnings,” Bret remarks. “So Dad would take a horse like Harlan's Holiday, whose sire Harlan didn't really have time to prove himself as a sire of sires. Indian Charlie was by In Excess, and now you look at Upstart, only a Grade II winner on the track. Some of these perhaps weren't quite shiny enough for a more deep-pocketed farm. But there was always a belief that with the right support, they could make it. Upstart always struck as a tremendously talented horse, so our great hope was that he was a Grade II winner with a Grade I future.”

It has been gratifying for the Jones family to watch the remarkable legacy of Indian Charlie and Harlan's Holiday, in Uncle Mo and Into Mischief respectively. In the meantime, however, Brerry had always nursed a parallel ambition to make a lasting difference in the wider world.

Not that he received much encouragement, when throwing his hat into the ring for Lieutenant Governor in 1987. “One of the initial polls had him at two percent,” says Bret with a smile. “And the margin of error was three percent! So it was quite possible he did not have a single vote to his name. But anyone who knows Dad just knows that he's a worker. One of the most formative things that ever happened to him was his father giving him The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, which made an impression that has lasted his entire life. 'If you believe you can, you can.' 'No such word as can't.' These mantras never left his mind. So while some people, seeing that they were getting two percent of the vote, would just have gone back to the farm and tried to breed a fast horse, he just dug in.”

Even after that dynamism in turn secured the Governorship, in 1991, Bret and his sister Lucy could remain grateful for an upbringing as loving as it was uncommon.

“I just have really great memories of growing up,” Bret says. “Mom and Dad did a pretty incredible job making it not seem as crazy as I'm sure it was. Though it would be hard to be in a busier profession, Dad always made time for us. He never scheduled anything for Sunday, that was always family day. And luckily the Governor's mansion was about 12 minutes from the back gate of Airdrie Stud. I can't imagine the stress that he and Mom were under, balancing it all, but I never got a hint of it because of how positive they always were.”

In those years, naturally, long-serving farm manager Tim Thornton was especially invaluable in Airdrie's day-to-day operation. “Timmy's a guy that takes great pride in the title of hardboot, because that's exactly what he's always been,” Bret says. “A horseman and a tireless worker. He was with us for 30 years and Airdrie would not be what it is today without Tim Thornton.”

Bret was seven at the time his father first ran for office in Kentucky, and remembers handing out “Jones for Lieutenant Governor” buttons in the street—and “having a big smile on my face as I was doing it”. That has remained a familiar sight ever since, as many of us are glad to attest, but the point is that Bret was no more pushed into that juvenile political service than he was, in later years, to enter the horse business.

“Not for half a second,” he stresses. “I fell in love with it just going out in the field with Pop, checking the mares and foals. And watching how excited he'd get before a big race. The first ticket I ever cashed was on Lil E. Tee, because we had At The Threshold at the farm–a forgettable stallion except for the fact that he sired the Kentucky Derby winner. I'm pretty sure, looking back, Dad booked that bet because he thought I'd waste my money!

“You either love it or you don't. Dad knew that and knew that pushing somebody into something as different as the horse business is futile. But it was always what I wanted to do–so the big question instead became: 'Can you do it with your father?' We'd always had an incredible relationship but as we all know, a working relationship is different. So, when I came back after school, and started working for the farm, I'm sure it was a question in his mind as well. But all it did was make us closer. It just worked. There was never a destructive argument. There was education–the greatest education a kid could ever have. There were disagreements, of course, because opinions are what makes horseracing. But we've never had a falling-out, never yelled at each other. At the end of the day, one guy's the boss and one guy's the employee. I knew who I was, and I also knew how lucky I was to be learning from someone like Dad.”

In this anniversary year, anyone with the interests of the Thoroughbred at heart will raise a glass to a farm that has become such a wholesome model for our industry. For Airdrie stands as a brand and a beacon for that elusive balance, between a sustainable breed and a sustainable business.

That has only happened so seamlessly because the genes that replicate excellence have not just been confined to the horses.

“I was very lucky that the message–'believe you can, and you can'–resonated with me as well,” Bret reflects. “We still probably do things a little differently than some other farms. But nobody on the Airdrie team is afraid to make a mistake. There's still that mentality on the farm that Pop always had. And that great relationship he had with Tim, I'm so lucky to have also with Ben Henley.”

Ultimately, however, it is another bond that has sustained farm and family alike: the one between Bret's own sire and dam.

“Mom and Dad have had one of the all-time great partnerships,”    Bret says. “I don't know that Mom ever imagined for half a second that she would be involved in politics. She was always the lover of the land, the agrarian, never that comfortable in the public eye. But she knew that Dad felt an obligation of public service, with the ability he had, and she was totally supportive through everything they've done. So Dad has been really lucky, between his marriage, the business he loves, and trying to give something back. He has literally lived his dream.”

Do memories truly prevail, as Brerry suggested in naming the mother of Zandon? Well, if they do, it's not as mere reminiscence, but as a type of moral instinct. Recollection is like the flaky, porous bark of a tree, fallible in one and all. In the best, however, the grain will run ever true. The rest of us, meanwhile, can be grateful for 50 years of pattern and precedent; of communal memories become communal standards.

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Ghostzapper Gelding Shows No Fear in Harlan’s Holiday

Repole Stable's Fearless (Ghostzapper) ran to the money as the 3-5 chalk in Saturday's GIII Harlan's Holiday S., the local prep for the upcoming $3-million GI Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream Jan. 29.

Drawn widest of all in post six, he tracked a pair of dueling leaders in a dream spot in third as they made their way up the backstretch. This term's GII WinStar Gulfstream Park Mile S. Feb. 27 winner revved up three wide rounding the far turn, kicked for home as the one to catch and took care of business from there to score by a facile four lengths over South Bend (Algorithms). The pacesetting dual Canadian Classic winner Mighty Heart (Dramedy) was third.

Trained throughout his career by Todd Pletcher, Mike Repole purchased Fearless, previously a $725,000 KEESEP yearling, for $205,000 at this summer's Fasig-Tipton July Selected Horses of Racing Age Sale following a second-place finish behind next out GI Hill 'N' Dale Metropolitan H. winner Silver State (Hard Spun) in the GII Oaklawn H. Apr. 17 and a third-place finish as the favorite in the GIII Pimlico Special Match Series S. May 14. He resurfaced with a second-place finish as the chalk once again in his first start for Repole in a local $60,000 handicap Nov. 21. Fearless previously carried the colors of CHC Inc. and WinStar Farm.

Will we see Fearless next in the Pegasus?

“That's all up to Todd,” Pletcher's assistant trainer Anthony Sciametta said. “The horse is moving forward. He's run two good races and come back good from his vacation. That's all we can ask for.”

Pletcher was not present at Gulfstream Saturday due to family obligations.

Pedigree Notes:

Fearless is one of 89 stakes/48 graded winners for Hall of Famer Ghostzapper. He is also one of 102 stakes/53 graded winners for the late Street Cry as a broodmare sire.

Fearless's dam And Why Not, who hit the board over seven furlongs as a juvenile in the 2011 GI Spinaway S. and over 10 panels in the 2013 GI Delaware H., hails from one of the deepest families in the stud book.

Second dam is GSP Alchemist, in turn the dam of GSW Far From Over (Blame), and GISW third dam Aldiza produced one graded winner and the dams of two others. Fearless's fifth dam is none other than 1983 Broodmare of the Year Courtly Dee (Never Bend).

And Why Not has an unraced 2-year-old filly named Marzipan (Candy Ride {Arg}) and a yearling filly by Blame ($500,000 KEESEP purchase by Juddmonte). She was bred to Gun Runner for 2022.

Saturday, Gulfstream
HARLAN'S HOLIDAY S.-GIII, $150,000, Gulfstream, 12-18, 3yo/up, 1 1/16m, 1:42.19, ft.
1–FEARLESS, 123, g, 5, by Ghostzapper
               1st Dam: And Why Not (MGISP, $262,965), by Street Cry (Ire)
                2nd Dam: Alchemist, by A.P. Indy
                3rd Dam: Aldiza, by Storm Cat
($725,000 Ylg '17 KEESEP; $120,000 RNA 4yo '20 FTKHRA;
$205,000 5yo '21 FTKHRA). O-Repole Stable; B-Helen K.
Groves Revocable Trust (KY); T-Todd A. Pletcher; J-Luis Saez.
$92,070. Lifetime Record: 11-5-3-1, $576,550. Werk Nick
Rating: A+. Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree.
*1/2 to Just Whistle (Pioneerof the Nile), SW & MGSP,
$260,865.
2–South Bend, 121, c, 4, Algorithms–Sandra's Rose, by Old
Trieste. ($47,000 RNA Ylg '18 FTKJUL; $70,000 2yo '19
OBSMAR). O-Gary Barber, Wachtel Stable, Peter Deutsch,
& Pantofel Stable, LLC; B-Highclere Inc. (KY); T-William I.
Mott. $29,700.
3–Mighty Heart, 126, c, 4, Dramedy–Emma's Bullseye, by
City Place. O/B-Lawrence Cordes (ON); T-Josie Carroll.
$14,850.
Margins: 4, 1 1/4, 7 1/4. Odds: 0.60, 6.20, 2.30.
Also Ran: Blue Steel, Twenty Twice, Eye of a Jedi.
Click for the Equibase.com chart, the TJCIS.com PPs, or the free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree. VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.

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‘Scrappy Little Horse’ Mighty Heart Up For The Challenge In Saturday’s Harlan’s Holiday

Lawrence Cordes' Mighty Heart will keep an eye on the prize – literally – after the 4-year-old son of Dramedy leaves the starting gate in Saturday's $150,000 Harlan's Holiday (G3) at Gulfstream Park.

Although he has the use of only one eye, the over-achieving colt has persevered to become a multiple graded-stakes winner with purse earnings over $1 million. The homebred colt, whose left eye had to be removed following a paddock accident when he was only two-weeks old, reached the pinnacle of Canadian racing when he won the 2020 Queen's Plate, the first leg of the Triple Crown for Ontario-bred 3-year-olds. The homebred colt also won the Prince of Wales at Fort Erie on his way to being honored as the 2020 Canadian Horse of the Year.

“He has been a lot of fun for us. He was the underdog in the Queen's Plate and he ran the race of his life,” trainer Jose Carroll said. “He always shows up. I call him a scrappy little horse. He loves to go head-and-head. He's a trying little horse.”

Mighty Heart will carry highweight of 126 pounds in the Harlan's Holiday, a 1 1/16-mile prep for the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational [(G1), Jan. 29], on Saturday's 11-race program with five stakes, four graded, including the $200,000 Fort Lauderdale, a 1 1/8-mile prep for the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational (G1).

The ultra-consistent Mighty Heart, who is coming off a victory in the Autumn Stakes (G2) on Woodbine's Tapeta surface over which he won the Queen's Plate. The resilient colt captured the Prince of Wales, the second leg of the Canadian Triple Crown on dirt but failed to pull off a series sweep, finishing far back in the Breeders' Stakes over Woodbine's turf.

“I don't think the turf was the reason. He broke sharply and was headed by a longshot, and he never came off the bridle. He galloped right along early and got tired,” Carroll said.

Mighty Heart is rated second in the morning-line at 9-5 behind Todd Pletcher-trained Fearless, the 8-5 favorite who captured the Gulfstream Park Mile (G2) last season.

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