Bolt d’Oro Filly Stays Perfect at Santa Anita

7th-Santa Anita, $72,500, Alw (NW1$X)/Opt. Clm ($100,000), 3-27, 3yo, f, 7f, 1:22.07, ft, 2 lengths.
ANYWHO (f, 3, Bolt d'Oro–Fancy and Flashy {SP}, by Zensational) , making her first start in the Hronis Racing colors, took her record to a perfect two-for-two with a determined victory at Santa Anita Monday. The 9-2 shot prompted the pace of longshot Liberal Lady (Mor Spirit), quickened on the bend to challenge the pacesetter and grabbed the lead into the stretch. She shrugged off favored Coffee in Bed (Curlin) down the lane and sailed under the wire two lengths in front.

Anywho debuted with a victory at the Belmont at Aqueduct meet last October for Rob Masiello and trainer Tom Albertrani before selling for $290,000 to the bid of bloodstock agent David Ingordo at last year's Keeneland November sale. She had originally been purchased by agent Joe Migliore for $300,000 at the 2021 Keeneland September sale.

The bay filly, a half-sister to graded-placed Wipe the Slate (Nyquist, GSP, $122,999), has a 2-year-old half-brother by Catholic Boy–who sold to bloodstock agent Alistair Roden for $55,000 at last year's Keeneland September sale–as well as a yearling half-sister by McKinzie. Stakes-placed Fancy and Flashy was bred to Maxfield last year. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by TVG. Lifetime Record: 2-2-0-0, $95,450.
O-Hronis Racing LLC; B-Brookfield Stud (KY); T-John W. Sadler.

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After McCarthy Spill, Migliore Blames the NY Stewards

When Trevor McCarthy went down in a spill Friday at Aqueduct and broke his collar bone and his pelvis, retired rider Richard Migliore said he was upset but not surprised. Migliore, whose son Joe Migliore is McCarthy's jockey agent, said he had been growing increasingly concerned as New York riders continued to be more and more aggressive while the stewards seem to look the other way. Something like this, he figured, was bound to happen, he said.

“People run into each other now with impunity,” said Migliore, an analyst on NYRA's America's Day at the Races show. “You can watch the races on a daily basis and there are guys who change paths without clearance, and it goes beyond herding. It's like they have a disregard for the horses and riders around them. It's very difficult for me to watch, especially when someone goes down and gets hurt. It's irresponsible on the part of the rider but they are not being held accountable. When that happens, it's human nature. The more you can get away with the rougher it's going to get. The stewards need to really crack down and lay down the law. No more nonsense.”

McCarthy was riding Ever Summer (Summer Front) in the mile-and-three-eighths turf allowance. Nearing the top of the stretch, Jalon Samuel, aboard Rhombique (Ghostzapper), came out, starting a chain reaction in which Ever Summer wound up clipping heels with another horse.

While not letting Samuel off the hook, Migliore said the jockey was no doubt following the lead of some of New York's top riders.

“The reason that accident happened is because riders have been allowed to get away with more and more of that kind of thing,” Migliore said. “Jalon Samuel doesn't get to ride a lot. But if he watches the leading riders do that and get away with it and sometimes even get lauded for it, with people saying how aggressive they are, why wouldn't he do the same thing? You have to start with the top guys. Guys needs to be sat down. Jalon Samuel is fully responsible for what he did it. But I don't want to pile on him. He sees it happen every day.”

To many New York racing observers, Irad Ortiz Jr. is the primary culprit when it comes to overly aggressive tactics and the stewards have handled him with kid gloves. Migliore said that when it comes to Ortiz the stewards have done nothing to discourage that sort of riding.

“He is very aggressive but I don't blame Irad because he's been allowed to get away with it,” Migliore said. “I have pointed it out when I feel like he's gone over a line. I am a fan. The guy brings to the table an intensify and a desire, whether it's a $5,000 claimer or Grade I and you have to applaud that. But if he's not told this is unacceptable there's no motivation to stop it. He's been wildly successful doing it. People say Cordero was the same way. If Angel did back then what Irad does now, he would have spent more time suspended than riding.”

Rhombique crossed the wire second but was disqualified and placed ninth. Samuel received a seven-day suspension. That, too, sent the wrong message, Migliore said.

“Jalon Samuel got seven days for that?” Migliore said. “Seven days for causing an accident like that, that could have easily taken down three or four other horses and caused Trevor McCarthy to be out months with a broken pelvis and a broken collar bone. Come on. That makes it even more of a joke. It's beyond my comprehension that that is the punishment. If you cause an accident you should be suspended for as long as the rider who was injured is out with his injuries. Are we going to wait until someone gets killed? The other day you could have had that scenario. Then a jockey gets busted up and a guy gets a week off. Am I crazy or is that absurd?”

Migliore rode from 1980 through 2010 and rode in 30,102 races, winning 4,450 of them. It was an era, he said, where the stewards wouldn't put up with careless riding.

“You'd go into the stewards' office and your knees would be knocking,” he said. “It was 'yes sir, no sir.' They laid down the law and you knew what was expected of you. If you are riding on a top circuit and if you can't work within the guidelines the stewards laid down then you don't belong there.”

He said the current crop of NYRA stewards needs to do the same thing, give the riders a clear understanding of what is acceptable and what is not. And they need to be tougher.

“We need stronger stewardship,” Migliore said. “Riders need guidelines that are consistent. This is what you are allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do. It shouldn't matter who it is, what day of the week it is or what kind of race it is. It has to start with the governing body. You have to be strict. Right now, they're not.”

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Trevor McCarthy Returns To New York With Joe Migliore As Agent

Jockey Trevor McCarthy will make his return to New York for the Aqueduct meet next Thursday, reports the Daily Racing Form, having spent the spring and summer in Southern California. Joe Migliore, a bloodstock agent and the son of former jockey Richard Migliore, will represent McCarthy in his return.

“Tremendously excited about how his return has been received, lots of people looking for us in the mornings, and we've been very active in the mornings,” Migliore told DRF. “Excited to build upon the success he had last year before going to California and think that we'll be able to repeat if not expand that success this winter and beyond.”

McCarthy, who left New York partly because of a wagering rule that requires married jockeys to be coupled in the wagering, went 9-for-156 in Southern California, and missed the last 11 weeks due to an ankle surgery. McCarthy now plans to ride year-round in New York, and he and his wife, jockey Katie Davis, are expecting their first child in December.

Read more at the Daily Racing Form.

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Rob Masiello on the Highs and Lows of the Game

Rob Masiello has been coming up to Saratoga since he was in the seventh grade.

It all started when he went to “nerd camp” at Skidmore College one summer. He was miserable there, missing his usual summer vacation spent playing baseball with his friends. One day his parents came to visit and told him they would take him home if it was what he really wanted, but first they wanted to go to the track.

“We had a great time and I ended up staying,” Masiello recalled. “Then it sort of became a tradition for us to come up every year. Now even to this day when I walk into the track, I always think of being a kid here with my parents and I'm sure a lot of people probably have a similar experience. It's certainly a special place.”

Fast forward to 2005, two years after he graduated from Johns Hopkins with a degree in Economics, Masiello got involved as an owner with West Point Thoroughbreds.

“When I started I had the smallest piece of the smallest horse, but I enjoyed it,” he said. “The cool thing about being with West Point, or any partnership I think, is that you buy into a piece of one horse but you learn about an entire stable. So if you're smart about it, you get to see what's going on with 50 or 60 different horses at any given time and it really gives you perspective on what a stable looks like and what the ups and downs can be.”

Over the years, Masiello has been a West Point partner on graded stakes winners Freedom Child (Malibu Moon), Twilight Eclipse (Purim), Ring Weekend (Tapit) and-the one he now thinks of as his all-time favorite–dual Grade II winner and Grade I producer Justwhistledixie (Dixie Union).

“She was my first good horse,” he said. “I knew it at the time, but I also didn't know just how special the run she had was when she won five straight races ending in the GII Davona Dale S. and the GII Bonnie Miss S. To see what she has gone on to do as a broodmare has just been incredible.”

In recent years Masiello, an Equity Trader for Chimera Securities, has had success in developing his own racing stable. While he remains a loyal West Point partner, he said he is enjoying the challenges that going solo has presented.

“It's been a lot of fun and it's a lot harder,” he admitted. “It's a different skill set because with West Point, they're basically buying the horses they want even if they're seven-figure horses. I can't really do that on my own, but it's kind of fun this way too because you really have to think about your budget and what you're trying to achieve. It's a little bit more strategic thinking.”

Earlier this month, he made it to the winner's circle with a five-year-old mare he bred and now races in partnership with trainer Tom Albertrani. Itsakeyper (Brilliant Speed) got her first win against allowance company at Saratoga on Aug. 12.

“Tom and I actually claimed her dam, Finders Key (Discreet Cat),” Masiello explained. “She was a horse that Tommy trained for Godolphin that got claimed away, but he had always wanted to try her on turf. The funny story with her is that we claim her and then go with Twilight Eclipse to Dubai [for the 2014 G1 Dubai Sheema Classic]. Tommy lived in Dubai for several years and trained there so bringing a horse over to Dubai was special for him, but all he wanted to do on that trip was talk to me about Finders Key. At a certain point I was like, 'Tom, what are we talking about right now?' We were there with Twilight Eclipse and all he wanted to talk about was the $25,000 claimer we had.”

Finders Key made her first start on turf for the duo a winning one, but an injury forced her to retire soon after. Masiello and Albertrani sent her to another Albertrani trainee in GISW Brilliant Speed.

That first foal, Itsakeyper, didn't break her maiden until May of her 3-year-old year, but Masiello said their homebred is just now reaching top form.

“She has always trained well, but she's gotten better and better as this year has gone on. Tom was really happy with her coming into the race [on Aug. 12] and it's special because he trained the mare and Brilliant Speed, so it's the whole all-in-the-family thing. Dylan Davis gave her a perfect trip. A lot of times you come up here and nothing works out, but everything that day just worked out perfectly.”

On the flip side, Masiello knows all too well how things in this sport can go from perfect to disastrous in the blink of an eye.

On July 31, Fiya (Friesan Fire), a $400,000 purchase for Masiello that had gone on to win four of his next five starts for his new owner, was training at Saratoga in preparation for the GIII Troy S. when he suffered a catastrophic injury and was subsequently euthanized.

Reflecting on the loss, Masiello said he thinks of Fiya as the horse that got his racing stable off the ground.

“I remember the morning of his first race, I was walking around Battery Park City where I live and I had really not been doing well as an owner on my own,” Masiello recalled. “I looked on the NYRA website and was winning at two or three percent and I didn't know if I could handle another horse that didn't work out.”

Fiya takes the 2020 Claiming Crown Canterbury S. | Lauren King

But Fiya did win that first race for his new owner by over three lengths and would go on to claim the Maryland Million Turf Sprint H. and the Claiming Crown Canterbury S. later that year. Trained by Tom Albertrani, he was 11th this spring in the GII Twin Spires Turf Sprint S., but came back with a victory in his last start in an allowance at Belmont.

“He was a very talented horse,” Masiello said. “Every race he ran in was a special experience for me. Even the one race he lost was awesome, too, because I took my dad and my uncle out to the Kentucky Derby when he ran in the Turf Sprint on Oaks Day. I'm incredibly grateful for that.”

Masiello said this was the first horse he and Albertrani have had suffer a catastrophic injury together and spoke on the struggles he has worked through since the accident.

“It was very difficult. He was a very special horse for me. There's no question in my mind that my stable before I owned him and after I owned him are two different stables. Everything started clicking after I bought him. From an ownership side of it, yeah it's tough losing him, but having to put him down is really what's been the struggle over the last couple of weeks.”

Masiello is using this tragedy to throw his efforts into his position as a New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association board member.

“One of the things I've tried to do as a NYTHA board member is look at the bigger picture and how we do as an industry to focus on getting those numbers lower over time,” he noted. “I think it's important as an industry that we keep going with what are the best practices we can do to make sure these sort of things are really just freak accidents and not something that's systemic.”

Masiello said he has taken several lessons away from his experiences, both good and bad, with Fiya.

“He changed where I was at as an owner,” he explained. “People think that just because you spend 'x' amount of dollars, you're going to get a good horse. That's not how it works at all; I can verify that quite substantially. I think the one thing I learned from him is that I'm not afraid to fail. When you're spending a lot of money on a turf sprinter, you're a little exposed. If that horse doesn't work out people are going to mock you a little bit, but that's part of the game and it's part of sports. I think as an owner, you have to say, 'I accept that I'm going to fail sometimes and I'm not afraid to come back and do it again.'”

Masiello is an outspoken advocate for an owner's responsibility in improving the sport by making the game cleaner.

“I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know exactly every single medication that every single horse I own gets,” he explained. “It's not my expertise and it would be taking me away from things I really am productive at for me to have a million questions. But what I can do as an owner is say to my trainers, 'I'm with you and I'm not going to pull horses if we're winning at less that 10%, but on the flip side I want to run a clean, honest stable.'”

Rob Masiello and Joe Migliore celebrate a new purchase at the Fasig-Tipton Sale. | Fasig-Tipton

He continued, “I'm up here to have fun. I want to win and be competitive, but there's a right way to win and a wrong way to win and I don't want to be caught up in any of this stuff that unfortunately a lot of people in the industry are in. I think it's as simple as telling my trainers that I'm there for them through the good times and the bad times and that we're in this together for the long term. That has always been my perspective as an owner and I think it's important to get that message out.”

One key relationship that has already fostered many trips to the winner's circle for Masiello is his friendship with Joe Migliore. The up-and-coming young bloodstock agent had a hand in the purchase of Fiya last year and has since picked out several promising horses for Masiello.

Masiello compared his friendship with Migliore to that of one of his mentors, Terry Finley, with trainers Dale Romans and Dallas Stewart.

“They all came up together and built something together and to this day, Terry sends a lot of horses to both Dale and Dallas. Terry has so many good relationships in the industry, but the relationship he has with those two is special. I feel like Joe and I kind of have the same thing now where we've been through it together-the highs and lows, the horse that didn't work out and the horse that did work out. It's so much more fun when you're doing it with people you love and respect and I think that's what we have together.”

As Masiello continues to up his game in the sport, he already has an image in mind of the owner he hopes to be seen as based on a few industry members he has looked up to over the years.

“I happen to have a box right next to [LRE Racing's] Lee Einsidler,” he said. “You see him floating around the boxes up here and he's just so happy and supportive of people. He was the first person to text me last week when I won. I also see that a lot from Tom Bellhouse, who works for West Point. He's always a guy that comes off to me as someone that is always so happy to see other people do well. We're all a big family in this industry and I hope people know that I like seeing good people do well. I think that's something I've learned a bit from Lee and Tommy.”

“The biggest thing I think I want to be thought of as an owner is that I'm just happy to be here,” he explained. “I'm competitive. I want to win. But I also know the struggle we're all going through as owners because it's a tough game. I just like being up here and I like being happy for people.”

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