Tag: Horse racing news

Hats Off To The Horses: Sale Of Afleet Accompli Chapeau Benefits Old Friends

For the 12th consecutive year, Maggie Mae Designs® and Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement have teamed up for an unparalleled online shopping experience: “Hats off to the Horses: The Road to the Derby”.

This unique fundraiser features one-of-a-kind couture hats created by Maggie Mae Designs®, the sale of which benefits Old Friends.

The first hat up for bid in our auction series, which kicks off Jan. 1, 2021, honors Afleet Accompli, a son of Northern Afleet who came to Old Friends via the sister aftercare organization Caribbean Thoroughbred Aftercare.

Bidding in this online auction will be available through January 11, 5:00 pm (EST). To bid, CLICK HERE.

Afleet Accompli spent most of his career running at Camarero Racecourse in Puerto Rico. The green and yellow racing silks of his Canito Racing racing stable inspired a tropical island palette for the trimmings of this stunning Derby-style hat.

A large hat foundation was created using stunning coral taffeta. Using yards of chocolate organza lined with coral organza, the wavy brim layers were topstitched with coral embroidered strands to reflect the rippling movement of the Thoroughbred athlete at full gallop.

To further showcase the stable's colors, a large rose curl, created in alternating layers of coral shantung and hot pink organza, adorns the front of the hat. This floral centerpiece is framed with leaves created out of lime green organza and taffeta.

A lime green taffeta sash lined with organza was fashioned to encircle the crown of the hat and a small peach button adorns the sash in the back.

As always, a physical remembrance, several strands of Afleet Accompli's tail hair, were braided and woven into the trim of the hat.

Bidding is open now. To bid CLICK HERE.

To see more photos and read more about the stunning new hat CLICK HERE.

The post Hats Off To The Horses: Sale Of Afleet Accompli Chapeau Benefits Old Friends appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Kentucky Sires for 2021: First Juveniles–Part I

And so we come to the group standing on the brink. The group facing the moment of truth, when their most precocious stock enters the gate and offers some initial indication as to their competence for the task for which, ostensibly at least, they were bred.

As such, this should perhaps be the moment we double down. That’s what we would do, at any rate, if we had real faith in the choices we have made for our mares. If we have selected their mates well, then people will be wanting more of the same at the 2023 yearling sales–and we can hope to be rewarded for meeting increased demand with what tends to be diminished supply.

As it is, the imminent exposure of young stallions’ “commercial” credentials to the unsparing examination of the racetrack instead prompts most breeders to flee in terror, sending their mares to those safely unproven rookies who have replaced them on the conveyor belt.

Their logic is perfectly coherent. The whole premise of backing an unproven new stallion is that he will not have been tested by the time you take your yearling to market. And the value of 2021 covers is bound to appear very different, one way or another, in the 2023 sales ring: these sires will by then have a third crop of juveniles on the track, and their slower-maturing, two-turn types will also have shown their hand. As I say, that should actually be an advantage…if, that is, we really believe that we might be catching a wave. But I guess very few breeders can afford the risk of trusting their own opinions to that extent.

Even at the best of times, then, you could expect farms to help this group over the imminent bump in the road. In the prevailing environment, with fee cuts being made across so many rosters, there will surely be particularly good value to be found among stallions whose abrupt loss of commercial traction is every bit as capricious as the hectic subscription of their debut books. After all, those best equipped to sire the type of Thoroughbred we should covet most–namely, one that can run a second turn on the first Saturday in May–will hardly disclose their full potential even now their first crop is being broken and trained.

Nor, as we noted of the weanling market in the previous instalment of this series, can we put too much faith in the reception of these youngsters at the sales. Yes, professional horsemen have at least had the chance to draw some inferences from living, breathing stock presented to their inspection. Moreover, they have been able to assess a much wider sample. Much as with weanling averages, however, those rare occasions when the market challenges the premium implied in stallion fees–whether for better or worse–do not tend to work out very reliably.

As with his weanlings, for instance, the most conspicuous disappointment of the 2018 yearling market, relative to his opening fee, was Constitution. From much the biggest offering of the intake, 98 yearlings, his average sale could not match those of Carpe Diem, Bayern, Tonalist and Lea, to name four whose fees have slipped even as Constitution has meanwhile soared from $25,000 to $85,000.

Admittedly, the yearling market “found” Cairo Prince the year before, elevating animals he had conceived at $10,000 to second place in the averages. But he was sandwiched between two horses whose returns slavishly obeyed the assumptions invited by their fees: Will Take Charge was top, having started out at a class-high $30,000; and Verrazano was third, having similarly started higher than almost all the rest at $22,500. Those two are respectively now down to $5,000 and Brazil.

Once again, then, let’s be wary of drawing too many conclusions, whether positive or negative, from the “performance” at the yearling sales of those stallions who will launch their first runners in 2021.

Sadly, of course, the most expensive recruit of the intake is no longer with us. The tragic loss of Arrogate (Unbridled’s Song) leaves GUN RUNNER (Candy Ride {Arg}–Quiet Giant by Giant’s Causeway) as its outstanding prospect after starting out at Three Chimneys as Horse of the Year at $70,000.

He gets a generous clip to $50,000 to keep the door revolving. Opening books of 171 and 166 struck a balance between numerical opportunity without totally inundating the market, and he maintained numbers last spring at 156. Of 71 yearlings into the ring, he found a new home for 46 at a class-high $246,413.

That has to go down as a very solid start and, while you can’t expect a horse that reached his peak at four to be siring sprint winners at Keeneland in April, nor should we forget how he came to the boil at the Fair Grounds before running third to Nyquist (Uncle Mo) in the GI Kentucky Derby. It spoke well of his substance that he was still on the go in late November, winning the GI Clark H.; and he emerged much stronger than did Arrogate from their clash in the desert the following spring, going on an unbeaten spree of five Grade Is.

The appeal to breeders, aside from his class and constitution, was that it all had such an obvious source: his dam is a Grade II-winning half-sister to another Horse of the Year in Saint Liam (Saint Ballado) with a plenty of supporting quality close up. In broader brushstrokes, his page entwines two branches of the Fappiano dynasty, both away from the Unbridled highway: obviously he extends the line through Candy Ride, but he also brings in Fappiano’s son Quiet American (with his dynamic genetics) as sire of his second dam.

All told, Gun Runner looks abundantly qualified to build on whatever promise he can show in what will, after all, only be his opening skirmishes.

Candy Ride’s growing stature as a sire of sires helped another of his sons emerge as the standout performer of the intake at the yearling sales. Yes, we’ve urged circumspection about the market’s verdict, but Claiborne priced MASTERY (Candy Ride {Arg}–Steady Course by Old Trieste) very fairly at $25,000 and, being no less reliable in the conservative management of his books (139/143/138), they have given their clients a platform for a most rewarding debut at the sales.

Mastery was gold on our “value podium” last year and it feels very hard to dislodge him after he sold as many as 64 of 79 yearlings into the ring at a knockout yield of $129,421–surpassed only by Gun Runner and Arrogate–with mares commensurate with their fees.

There’s no doubting the terrific natural talent exhibited by Mastery in a career that contrasted poignantly with that of the teak Gun Runner, derailed as he was in the very act of announcing himself the horse to beat in the Derby. It plainly serves his cause, commercially, that he was a seven-length Grade I winner at two, but his pedigree underpins his appeal to all breeding agendas, including any that might be disposed to retain a filly.

For his dam is a three-parts sister to the Pennsylvania stalwart Jump Start, and their mother, in turn, is by one broodmare sire legend (Storm Cat) out of a full-sister to another in Miswaki. You couldn’t ask for better seeding of the bottom line, once you get past a dam by one of A.P. Indy’s less fashionable sons: Storm Cat, Mr. Prospector, Buckpasser, Princequillo, Nasrullah. With looks to match, Mastery demands fidelity even among those generally inclined to back off stallions at this precarious stage in their careers. It just feels like the force is with him.

The other stallion to break six figures with his yearling average was PRACTICAL JOKE (Into Mischief–Halo Humor by Distorted Humor), who parlayed a $30,000 opening fee at Ashford into 74 sales (of 92 offered) at $120,243.

This was another Grade I winner at two, in both the Champagne and Hopeful. He stretched out for fifth in the GI Kentucky Derby, but reiterated that Into Mischief speed was his trademark when dropping back for his sophomore Grade I in the H. Allen Jerkens S.

No less than Mastery, Practical Joke has conformed to the standard formula of his host farm with no fewer than 220 mares in his first book and 200 in his second. He maintained turnover with another 188 guests last spring, so he certainly has numbers behind him. That brings its customary risks, but these are acknowledged by consecutive cuts to $25,000 last year and $22,500 this time round.

We know that the usual rules don’t apply to Into Mischief, whose promising start as a sire of sires doubtless contributed (along with his own physical allure) to the popularity of Practical Joke at the sales. But it must be acknowledged that the champion sire’s alchemical powers are well demonstrated by his ability to get such a proficient racehorse from a family as plain as this one.

Practical Joke was well held in third when CLASSIC EMPIRE (Pioneerof the Nile–Sambuca Classica by Cat Thief) just denied Not This Time the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. The runner-up has set high standards in their new career and Classic Empire, having joined Practical Joke at Ashford, looks pretty eligible to meet them.

He consolidated his 2-year-old championship in the GI Arkansas Derby, and was only denied the GI Preakness by the head of Cloud Computing (Maclean’s Music). Unfortunately, that proved to be his final appearance, but there’s a beguiling shape to his page: rather like Mastery, his dam is by one of the less glamorous sons of an iconic broodmare sire but the next three dams are by Miswaki, Hoist The Flag and Princequillo–and in this neighborhood it becomes an ancestry shared with Harlan’s Holiday, Boldnesian and Ride the Rails. The second dam was Grade I-placed, so there’s plenty to be working on here.

Nonetheless, Classic Empire has just taken his fourth consecutive cut, now half his opening fee at $17,500. Respite on the fee helped him maintain 122 mares last spring after an opening book of 185 had slipped to 104 in his second year. That big first crop obviously produced plenty of traffic into the ring, with 92 yearlings offered, and he rehoused 66 of them at $89,613. Like all these stallions, he’s at a crossroads now, but recycling his juvenile prowess would certainly keep him in the game.

Starting alongside Practical Joke and Classic Empire at Ashford, CUPID (Tapit–Pretty ‘N Smart by Beau Genius) corralled a staggering 223 mares in his debut book. No less breathtaking, however, was his giddy descent to just 53 mares the following year. I don’t know which of these numbers is more absurd. There’s no way he had done anything like enough to earn a book surpassed nationally only by Into Mischief himself; but nor, when his first foals were barely slithering into the straw, were there any grounds for deserting him with equal haste. What an example of the panicked, neurotic herd instincts of commercial breeders today!

Cupid steadied the ship at 75 mares last spring and, now trading at $5,000 from an opening $12,500, he’s still entitled to show that those who backed him in his first year were right. His yearlings were processed efficiently enough, after all, a very healthy ratio of 68 sold from 82 offered at $46,786.

No surprise, perhaps, in one who himself made $900,000 as a yearling; and his Grade II-placed dam has produced three other stakes/graded stakes winners. After such a dazing start to his stud career, it’ll be fascinating to see which way things go from here. Unraced at two, he won his Grade I around two turns at four, so he’s hardly standardized to the industrial model. But I like a second dam by Vice Regent when Cupid’s damsire is out of a mare by his brother Viceregal, so Cupid could yet land his dart.

Another to join growing competition for the legacy of Gainesway’s champion sire is MOHAYMEN (Tapit–

Justwhistledixie by Dixie Union). Shadwell clients made the most of a very generous price, realizing an average $52,506–seven times his $7,500 fee–for 31 sold of 40 offered.

This is a pretty interesting horse: an unbeaten and accomplished juvenile, including in the GII Nashua S. and GII Remsen S., he went on to Florida and won the GII Holy Bull S. and GII Fountain of Youth S. before running fourth in the Derby. Unfortunately, he lost his way thereafter, but the looks and page that qualified him as a $2.2-million yearling stand undiminished, and his half-brother New Year’s Day (Street Cry {Ire}) obviously has somewhat more resonance than a couple of years ago. Their dam was a dual Grade II winner, also Grade I-placed, and Tapit doesn’t tend to get too many who land running quite like Mohaymen did at two. (And the page has a nice little knot between Tapit’s third dam and her brother Relaunch, whose son Honour and Glory sired Mohaymen’s granddam).

With 121 mares in his first book, Mohaymen could well make his presence felt in the freshmen’s table. Obviously he is not on the most commercial of farms, down to 51 mares in his second year and 59 last spring, but he definitely has potential to renew momentum from here.

This instalment of our ongoing series will be completed in tomorrow’s edition. Part II includes stallions like Klimt, Unified, Connect, Keen Ice, Lord Nelson, American Freedom, Midnight Storm and Gormley, along with our latest value “podium”.

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Training Icon Jonathan Sheppard Announces Retirement From American Racing

Jonathan Sheppard, a Hall of Fame trainer whose horses excelled on the dirt, on turf, and over steeplechase fences, announced today (Jan. 4) that he is retiring from American racing. For now, he will continue to train a small stable in Ireland.

Sheppard, who turned 80 last month, won every race and prize worth winning in American steeplechase racing over a 56-year career. He is the National Steeplechase Association's all-time leading trainer by wins (1,242) and purse earnings ($24,902,442). He has been the champion trainer by wins 26 times, and he has led the sport by purses in 29 years, both records.

He also had the distinction of winning a race at Saratoga Race Course in 47 straight years through 2015.

He has won 15 Eclipse Awards, behind only D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert, and his 11 individual winners have included two Hall of Fame members, Augustin Stables' Cafe Prince and Flatterer, the four-time champion (1983-1986) who was bred by Sheppard and William Pape, a longtime client and partner. Sheppard was inducted into the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1990.

Also among Sheppard's Eclipse winners were Forever Together, the 2008 female turf champion, and Informed Decision, the champion female sprinter the following year. Both were owned by George Strawbridge Jr.'s Augustin Stable. He also trained William T. Young's Storm Cat, a Grade 1 winner who became America's foremost stallion in the 1990s.

Over the years, Sheppard has provided leadership to the steeplechase sport. He served as the NSA's president from 2004 to 2006 and received the sport's highest honor, the F. Ambrose Clark Award, in 2013.

He also has provided leadership in other ways. Throughout his career, he has been the go-to interview for race meets looking to provide media stories that were positive, honest, and easy to understand. With the late Jack Van Berg, he has been an innovator in marshaling large training stables similar to those in his native England.

He also has participated in groundbreaking research projects with the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, not far from his training base in West Grove, Pa., approximately 35 miles west of Philadelphia. Throughout his career, he has strived successfully to bring new owners into Thoroughbred racing.

His impact on the sport has continued to today. His most recent champion, in 2019, was Hudson River Farms' Winston C (Ire), now in training in Ireland, and he won the steeplechase trainer titles by wins and purse earnings in the recently concluded 2020 season.

“People undoubtedly will ask why I am retiring now,” Sheppard said. “There's no one single reason, and the reasons combined to say that now was the time to step back from American racing. I always wanted to go out on top, and the past year's championships checked that box.

“I had a flare-up of my Lyme Disease last year that kept me away from the horses and the races. It's in remission now, but in fairness to my owners, I didn't want to have another Lyme episode interfere with their horses' careers. My staff at Ashwell in Pennsylvania did a marvelous job with the horses last year, but I don't want to repeat that.

“And, I just turned 80, so it seems to be a good time to pass the reins to a younger generation here in the U.S. I'm not ready to retire completely, and that's why I am retaining a small stable in Ireland for now.”

Jonathan E. Sheppard was born Dec. 2, 1940, in the Hertfordshire hamlet of Ashwell, approximately 45 miles north of London. His father, Daniel, was a Jockey Club handicapper, and as a result Sheppard was exposed to racing at an early age. For several reasons, however, a racing career in England was impossible.

Because of his father's position, conflict-of-interest regulations prohibited him from participating under rules in England even though he was an accomplished point-to-point jockey. Beyond that, he had neither the financial resources nor the connections to train in England or France.

After completing his education at Eton, he proved conclusively to himself and everyone else that he was not cut out to be a stockbroker during a stint at a brokerage firm bearing the family name.

In the early 1960s, he turned his eyes westward to the United States. He landed in the Pennsylvania operation of W. Burling Cocks, himself a future Hall of Fame member. Sheppard absorbed a knowledge of American flat and steeplechase racing, and—after a return to England and a brief period working in France's racing center in Chantilly—came back to the U.S.

He took out his trainer's license in 1965 and won one start on the flat that year, according to Equibase statistics. His first steeplechase winner was Redmond Stewart's Haffaday in the 1966 John Rush Street maiden timber race at My Lady's Manor in Maryland. Two years later, Haffaday won the Maryland Hunt Cup for him.

Sheppard concluded 1966 with seven jumps victories and tied for seventh in the steeplechase trainer standings. The prior winter, Sheppard had met Strawbridge at an Aiken, S.C., dinner, and they immediately developed a rapport. It was misfortune, rather than success, that cemented a relationship that would endure for five decades.

George Strawbridge, Jr.

When one of Strawbridge's early horses sustained a career-ending injury, Sheppard volunteered that his actions—bandages applied too tightly and improper jumping boots—had led to the breakdown. Strawbridge said in a 1970s interview that he was impressed with Sheppard's honesty and decided to continue their relationship. They notched their first victory together with Brandon Hill at Aqueduct in September 1966.

It was a partnership that blossomed over the following decades and took off at a turning point of American steeplechase racing. The arrival of New York off-track betting in the early 1970s led to the virtual banishment of jump racing from the metropolitan tracks. Steeplechase racing pivoted to its roots, the race meets that grew out of fox hunting and became increasingly popular as upscale community activities.

Strawbridge, a descendant of Campbell Soup Company's founder and a history professor, was a highly talented amateur jockey, and many of his Sheppard-trained horses were suited to the hunt meets. Augustin would become the NSA's all-time leading owner with more than $9 million in purses and 23 annual championships from 1974 through 2005.

Sheppard won his first steeplechase title by wins in 1970 and, as racing moved away from Aqueduct and Belmont Park, his first earnings title in 1973.

The best member of the Augustin-Sheppard steeplechase team was Cafe Prince, who was bred in California by Verne Winchell and won four times over fences at three in 1973. He achieved his best form in 1977 and 1978, when he was voted Eclipse Awards as North America's champion steeplechase horse.

Cafe Prince won the International Gold Cup at the Rolling Rock Races in Ligonier, Pa., in his championship years, and he twice won the Colonial Cup in Camden, S.C., in 1975 and 1977. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1985.

Sheppard collected his first Eclipse Award in 1973 with Athenian Idol, a $2,200 purchase who had started in Sheppard's name in 1971. Athenian Idol missed the following season, and Sheppard offered a half-interest in him to Pape, a Long Island auto dealer who was beginning to expand his involvement in jump racing.

Athenian Idol won six times in 1973, including victories in the International Gold Cup and the Temple Gwathmey, to sew up his Eclipse Award and launch a partnership that included four more champions: Martie's Anger in 1979, Flatterer from 1983 through 1986, Mixed Up in 2009, and Divine Fortune in 2013.

None shone brighter than Flatterer. Always frugal, Sheppard bred him with a free season to Mo Bay, a multiple stakes winner he had trained for Augustin. Sheppard and Pape also owned the mare, Horizontal, by Nade, who was a modest winner.

Flatterer was good from the start.

“He was exceptional. You know you were a part of something special while it was happening,” Sheppard told The BloodHorse's Esther Marr shortly after Flatterer's death at age 35 in 2014.

At four in 1983, Flatterer sealed his first Eclipse Award by winning the steeplechase triple crown — the Grand National, Temple Gwathmey, and Colonial Cup. He would win the Colonial Cup, then a championship year-end race, three more times. He became so dominant that in 1986 he carried a record 176 pounds to victory in the National Hunt Cup in Malvern, Pa.

In all, he started 52 times, won 24 of those starts, and had eight second-place finishes and five third-place finishes. Two of his best races were second-place finishes.

In 1986, Sheppard and Pape dispatched Flatterer to France for the French Champion Hurdle. The heavily-watered Auteuil course was a bog, but Flatterer ran bravely to finish second, beaten five lengths. Accompanying Flatterer on that trip was assistant trainer Graham Motion, a fellow Englishman who would go on to a distinguished training career of his own.

Flatterer recovered from that grueling test to win his fourth Colonial Cup that fall. Sheppard brought him back in early spring for a shot at England's Champion Hurdle at the 1987 Cheltenham Festival. He again finished a valiant second, beaten less than two lengths by the champion hurdler See You Then.

He came home to win the Iroquois Steeplechase in May before bowing a tendon in the Breeders' Cup Steeplechase that fall and retiring to Pape's Pennsylvania farm. Flatterer joined Sheppard in the Hall of Fame in 1994.

The late Storm Cat at Overbrook Farm

By then, it was clear that Sheppard could train any type of horse, and Kentucky businessman William Young entrusted him in 1985 with Storm Cat, a two-year-old by the Northern Dancer stallion Storm Bird and out of the stakes-winning Secretariat mare Terlingua. The colt was foaled at Derry Meeting Farm in Pennsylvania so that Terlingua could be transported easily to Windfields Farm in Maryland to be bred to Northern Dancer.

Despite offset knees, the powerfully built Storm Cat showed he was something special by winning the Meadowlands' Young America Stakes (G1), then one of the top juvenile stakes races, and he went off as the second favorite in the second Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1) at Aqueduct. He led by 2½ lengths in the stretch but could not resist Tasso, who won by a nose and claimed the 1985 Eclipse Award.

Storm Cat underwent surgery for knee chips over the winter, won at a moderate level at four, and did not race at five. Young wanted to sell him as a stallion prospect, but Sheppard's wife, former jockey Cathy Montgomery Sheppard, counseled Young to stand him at the owner's Overbrook Farm in Lexington. She had frequently galloped the headstrong Storm Cat and believed he would prosper at stud.

Young changed his mind and prospered. Storm Cat became the dominant sire of his generation as well as a sire of sires, among them the prominent stallion Giant's Causeway. Storm Cat passed along his precocity and was the leading North American sire of juveniles a record seven times.

By then, Sheppard was maintaining a schedule that would break a less committed or less competitive person. He had horses stabled at the Pennsylvania farm and horses in Camden for the winter months; he had horses at Philadelphia Park and, during its fall season, at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.

He also was an inveterate multitasker who was pulled over on occasion for reading the Daily Racing Form while driving between racetracks and the farm. His formidable intellect gathered information, processed all the data, and applied the acquired knowledge when appropriate.

No horse illustrated Sheppard's process better than Forever Together, who was a Grade 2 winner at three but had a condition—a compromised ability to sweat, or anhidrosis—that limited her prospects. Sheppard remembered an old Irish remedy, Guinness Stout, and began mixing it into her feed. She began to sweat, and Sheppard moved her onto the turf, where she won three Grade 1 races and an Eclipse Award in 2008.

The following year, Sheppard accounted for two champions, Augustin's Informed Decision as the year's leading female sprinter and Mixed Up as the steeplechase champion. He closed out the most recent decade with two more champions, Divine Fortune and Winston C, both over fences.

Divine Fortune, in particular, provided ample evidence that, if correctly handled, a horse's career need not end at three or four. Bred by Pape and Sheppard, Divine Fortune won his Eclipse Award at age 10, capped by a dominant victory in the Grand National (G1) in New Jersey.

On the flat, Strawbridge's homebred With Anticipation had his best seasons at age six and seven, earning more than $2.3-million over those two years.

Between the jumps and the racetrack, Sheppard has accounted for almost 21,000 starts, and he has won 3,426 races. His career earnings total $88.7 million. It has been a marvelous career, the sum total of intelligence, experience, instinct, horse knowledge, and horse sense.

Charles Fenwick Jr., a retired steeplechase jockey and trainer, summarized the marvel that is Jonathan Sheppard in a 1980 interview with Sports Illustrated's Douglas S. Looney. “You can't explain brilliance,” he said. After 56 brilliant years, Jonathan Sheppard has closed the book on his history-making American training experience.

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