jake delhomme | Horse Racing Free Tips

He's best known as a former NFL quarterback who nearly beat Tom Brady in Super Bowl XXXVIII. But Jake Delhomme, who starred for the Carolina Panthers, is also a passionate horse owner who, along with his father Jerry and his brother Jeff, operates Set-Hut Stable LLC. The Delhomme clan focuses on Louisiana-breds and this year they have come up with one of the best ever. Touchuponastar (Star Guitar) is 11-for-14 lifetime and will run this weekend at Fair Grounds, either against open company in Saturday's $500,000 GII New Orleans Classic or against state-breds the next day in the Star Guitar S.

To talk about Touchuponastar, his love affair with racing and even a bit about his NFL career, Delhomme joined this week's TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland. He was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

The Delhommes bought Touchuponastar for $15,000 at the Texas Thoroughbred Association Yearling sale, which has turned out to be quite the bargain as the horse has earned $708,100.

Jake Delhomme Joins the TDN Writers' Room from Thoroughbred Daily News on Vimeo.

“He's been a dream come true, to be quite honest,” Delhomme said. “I was lucky enough to purchase him at the Texas yearling sale. He was one that I followed, along with the breeders, Coteau Grove Farms. They have done a marvelous job of bringing along some fine animals. Andrew Cary is their bloodstock advisor, and I've been involved with Andrew since 2007. The first time I went to Keeneland and bought my first mare there, off of Hill 'n' Dale Farms, he was the director of sales then. We developed a friendship over the years. We'll go to Coteau Grove and see the horses. There was something about this horse I always liked and I watched him grow up. He looks very much like his sire, Star Guitar, who was a great regional racehorse here in Louisiana. So this was one that I had my eye on. I try to buy a couple of yearlings every year, try to breed a couple. We're a fairly small stable, eight to 10 horses. So we went to the Texas sale and I bid just one time. I was watching the action and I was prepared to go a lot higher. It was just one of those good deals and we were lucky enough to get him.”

While his brother Jeff is listed as the trainer, Jake is very hands-on and works right alongside his brother and father.

“I do pretty much anything and everything,” Delhomme said. “I'd like to think we're a selfless stable, to be quite honest. Set-Hut is the owner and Dad and Jeff both train. But I'll be honest, it's all of us. We're there every day. It's a family affair. Had I not played sports, I have a pretty good inclination that I would have gone into racing right away.”

Like many retired athletes that have gone into racing after their careers are over, Delhomme said that the sport fills a need in his life and keeps his competitive juices flowing.

“Racing helps fill that competitive void,” Delhomme said. “I mean I retired when I was, what, 37 or 38 years old? But I retired from football, not from real life. At that age, you're just kind of getting started, so to speak. Racing has given me that avenue. I've never looked for anything else to do once I finished playing. You need something to do because you're used to just this lifestyle of work, work, work, work. I think anyone can attest that being in the horse racing business is just that, work, work, work. It's all the time.”

In our breeding spotlight section we took a look at the Coolmore stallion Jack Christopher and the WinStar stallion Global Campaign.

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, Coolmore, 1/ST Racing, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar and XBTV.com, the team of Randy Moss, Bill Finley and Zoe Cadman discussed the news that Nysos (Nyquist) has been sidelined and will probably miss all of the Triple Crown races and the latest developments in Maryland, where 1/ST Racing is donating Pimlico to the state. And they previewed the big weekend cards coming up at Fair Grounds and at Turfway Park, where 3-year-olds will vie for Derby points in the GII Louisiana Derby and the GIII Jeff Ruby Steaks S.

To watch the podcast, click here. To listen to an audio of the podcast, click here.

The post Jake Delhomme Joins TDN Writers’ Room Podcast appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Last Saturday, No Parole became just the eighth horse bred in Louisiana to win a Grade 1 race when he dominated the Woody Stephens at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. That the colt did it in particularly impressive style was just the icing on the cake for first-time Grade 1-winning breeders Keith and Ginger Myers.

The proprietors of Coteau Grove Farm in Sunset, La., may not have watched the race live, but they were beyond thrilled to see their years of patience and faith in good people rewarded at the sport's top levels.

One of those good people is bloodstock agent Andrew Cary, employed by the Myers' since 2014. In fact, No Parole's dam, Plus One, was only the second mare Cary purchased for the couple, plucking her out of the 2014 Keeneland November sale for $67,000.

“I actually spotted her in the back ring, and it was just kind of one of those things when you see a horse and they blow you away with how they look,” Cary explained. “She had a lot of presence, and I love fast, hard-knocking stakes mares. I also liked Bluegrass Cat as kind of an under-the-radar broodmare sire, and she was out of a good family of just good, hard-knocking race mares.”

The stakes-winning Plus One was in foal to Violence at the sale, and her colt born the following spring brought $85,000 as a weanling back at Keeneland. Subsequently named Violent Ways, the colt won a trio of allowance races in Louisiana.

Plus One was bred back to Songandaprayer in the Louisiana program the following spring, but Cary and the Myers' had liked her first Violence colt so much that they bred her back to him for 2017.

Maggi Moss, a long-time supporter of the Louisiana racing program, purchased the yearling No Parole for $75,000 at the 2018 Keeneland September sale.

“We were thrilled Maggi bought him, because we knew she understands the Louisiana program and he'd be given every chance to succeed,” Cary said.

No Parole as a weanling

His first few starts were particularly impressive, winning by double-digit lengths in Louisiana-bred company at the Fair Grounds in December and January.

No Parole stepped up to win the Louisiana-Bred Premier Night Prince Stakes at Delta Downs in his third start, but struggled in the step up in distance when tried in the G2 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn, finishing eighth. Trainer Tom Amoss immediately took the colt back to sprint distances, and he won an allowance race at Churchill before winning the G1 Woody Stephens by 3 3/4 lengths.

“It's pretty special for me personally,” Cary said. “It's the first Grade 1 winner I've had where I purchased the mare and picked the mating, so it's very gratifying to see her go on and produce a horse like this. I would go see him in Louisiana every five to six weeks, and my best friend Jay Goodwin prepped him for the sale in Lexington, so I really got to see him grow up.

“After Maggi bought him, he was started by my friends the Gladwells before he went to Amoss, so there have been a lot of really good people associated with this horse all the way through.”

As for Plus One, she foaled a filly by Connect that will head to the Keeneland September sale this year, and she is currently pregnant to the cover of Curlin. Cary and the Myers are definitely looking forward to what she can do next.

“It's just so cool to see her become a big-time producer,” Cary said.

The Myers had previously enjoyed good success in the state of Louisiana since launching their racing and breeding program in 2008. Their homebred Little Ms Protocol is one of the top 20 Louisiana-bred earners in history, racking up $731,290 over her 30-start career, and another homebred, Harlie's Dreams, earned just shy of $400,000 in their colors.

But it was another home-grown project that changed the trajectory of the Myers' racing interests. Their LHC Group, which Ginger Myers launched in the couple's Louisiana kitchen in 1997, was growing exponentially, and they found themselves with less time to enjoy making it to the races to watch their horses run.

Enter Louisiana legend Jake Delhomme. The Louisiana-born NFL quarterback is a friend of the Myers family and a fellow horse racing enthusiast. Cary ran into Delhomme at the sales about 12 years ago and developed a friendship as well, so when Keith Myers was looking for an agent to help transition his program in 2014, Delhomme made the connection to Cary.

“Mr. Myers called and we hit it off,” said Cary. “They'd had a lot of fun with racing, but they were getting to a point with their business that they were just getting busy and couldn't go to the track as much. He wanted to get more involved with breeding; they really enjoyed seeing the babies born on the farm and wanted to do more of that.

“We talked about where his program was, where he wanted to go, and how to get him there. I flew down and looked at the 15 horses in training and 10 mares, evaluated them. We started by selling off some racing stock and adding better mares, and now we're up to 30 mares and had 25 foals this year.”

Primarily, the Myers breed commercially, though they'll keep and race a promising filly or two if they own the female family to be able to take advantage of multiple updates.

“They really want to do everything the right way, and they put a lot of time and money into the business so it's good to see that rewarded,” Cary said.

Cary had also seen Grade 1 success prior to No Parole, but it wasn't quite as personal. As a founding partner in Select Sales, Cary was involved with horses like Tepin, Sharp Azteca, and Promises Fulfilled, but the now-solo bloodstock agent's association with No Parole is just a little bit sweeter.

“He's such a talented horse,” Cary said. “It's so awesome to watch how fast he can go, and he makes it look pretty easy. I'm excited to see what he'll do next.”

The post Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Andrew Cary Quarterbacking For Breeders Of No Parole appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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