Tag: Kentucky

Apprentice Suspended 30 Days For 2nd Time In Week After Another Spill-Marred Delaware Race

Eighteen-year-old jockey Axel Concepcion, who is currently Maryland's top apprentice and is on the cusp of a planned move to Kentucky that could launch him into contention for a rookie rider Eclipse Award, has again been suspended 30 days by the Delaware Park stewards for “careless riding” that caused a rival horse to crash to the track.

“This is Apprentice Jockey Axel Concepcion's second incident within a week of causing interference that resulted in a horse falling and a rider to be unseated,” stated the Oct. 6  stewards' ruling.

Delaware stewards Joelyn Rigione, Robert Colton and William Troilo cited Concepcion's actions aboard Speargun (Khozan) in the sixth race at Delaware Oct. 4 as the cause of a spill that dropped Golden Gulley (Goldencents) and jockey Jeiron Barbosa as the midpack horses raced in tight formation around the far turn. Both the fallen horse and its jockey appeared to escape serious injury, according to the stewards.

Concepcion's agent in Maryland, Tom Stift, confirmed to TDN that Concepcion plans to lodge an appeal and is in the process of hiring an attorney to contest his most recent 30-day suspension.

Concepcion had elected not to appeal the first 30-day suspension for “extremely careless” riding that stemmed from a Sept. 21 incident at Delaware that  resulted in the euthanization of a horse that had fallen, plus an emergency decision by the stewards to halt the race and declare it a “no contest” for wagering purposes.

“Both of them weren't intentional if you watch them,” Stift said. “The end result was bad in the first one, but it was just something that could have happened to anybody because the horse was lugging in so hard. It wasn't like he was trying to come down on people. I can't really say it was as bad as [the stewards] said, but we took the days without appealing.”

Under Delaware rules, not lodging that appeal cut the suspension from 30 to 21 days.

The ruling for that first Sept. 21 incident stated that Concepcion failed “to control and guide his mount, Backwoods Boogie (Red Rocks [IRE]), leaving the starting gate, impeding several horses, and causing the horse Trumpence (Eskendereya) to fall, which resulted in a fatal injury to Trumpence.

The Sept. 21 report for race seven submitted by the Delaware stewards stated that Trumpence, ridden by Kevin Gomez, “clipped heels past the finish the first time” and that “horse and rider were down and not moving.”

The warning lights and siren were activated, and “The gate crew was out on the track also, diverting the field to the outside. Horse was euthanized on the track when he couldn't get up, Jockey Kevin Gomez after some time was able to stand and be escorted to the ambulance,” the report stated. (Gomez resumed riding the next afternoon at Delaware, winning with his first mount.)

Concepcion's suspension for the Sept. 21 incident didn't go into effect until Oct. 7.

In the interim, he was involved in another spill-marred race Oct. 4 in which the stewards alleged he was again at fault.

“The second one, it's mitigating circumstances,” Stift said. “It could have been caused by somebody on the inside, so that's why we're appealing that one.”

The Delaware stewards described the sixth race Oct. 4 like this in their daily report:

“Golden Gulley (Barbosa) clipped heels around the 3/8 pole and fell. Stewards reviewed the incident and determined that #5 Speargun (Concepcion) ran into a tight spot as #8 It's Sizzling Time (Gomez) was running by appearing to come in slightly as #7 was pushed out slightly causing him to clip heels. #7 Golden Gulley was captured by the Outrider, no report on his condition but appeared not injured. Jockey Barbosa was off the rest of his mounts complaining of soreness.” (Barbosa resumed riding Oct. 6 at Laurel and won three races.)

The ruling suspending Concepcion for a second time stated that, “After reviewing the race, the Stewards found Mr. Concepcion to use poor judgment in riding his horse (Speargun) into a very tight spot in the middle of the far turn causing his horse to push a rival over heels resulting in the rival to fall and unseating the rider.”

Beyond the spill, the sixth race at Delaware Oct. 4 was also fraught with technical difficulties.

According to the Equibase chart, “There was no head on replay so notes are from pan view.”

The stewards' report also stated that, “There was a Tote delay, Stewards board locked up and could not remove the inquiry sign, placing Judge's computer board also locked up.”

Concepcion turned pro Jan. 1 in his native Puerto Rico. He won 21 races there before earning his first mainland U.S. victory Feb. 19 at Fair Grounds. He shifted his tack to Laurel a week later, and has since been among the leaders at the Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course meets while also picking up victories at other mid-Atlantic region tracks.

Asked how Concepcion was taking the suspension, Stift said, “He's upset, because he was going to go to Kentucky. So now that's on delay. He's still going, but not right away. He has an opportunity to ride for [trainer] Brad Cox, and Brad's son [Bryson] is going to be his agent. I'm actually in Puerto Rico with his family right now. We're out on a boat. Even though he's leaving me, we're still all really good friends and I hope the best for him.”

Bryson Cox told TDN that Concepcion's starting date for riding in Kentucky after serving his 21-day reduced first suspension was supposed to dovetail with the Oct. 29 opening day of the Churchill Downs meet. Cox said he now must wait and see how the appeal turns out before he can start booking Concepcion on mounts.

“We'll come up with a game plan. I would definitely like to get him into a rotation with some Kentucky-based trainers in November, and the plan is to go on to Turfway from there,” Cox said.

Cox, who has been a jockey agent for one year, also represents Chris Landeros.

Cox said he and Concepcion became acquainted when the rider followed him on Twitter earlier this year. Cox had been perusing the Puerto Rican races and noticed Concepcion was winning races in bunches. A few weeks later, he saw Concepcion win with a 10-pound allowance in New Orleans, and he wished him well on his planned move to Maryland in the spring. They stayed in touch over the summer.

“As time went on, I kept watching him, and obviously his success and stats speak for themselves,” Cox said. “He seems to be a pretty talented rider for an apprentice. I asked him what his plans were this winter, what he wanted to do, and he told me he wanted to branch out from Maryland and Delaware, the mid-Atlantic. And I said, 'I think Turfway would be a great spot for you. You could get in with some Kentucky-based people and see how it goes and roll from there,' And he was all for it.”

Cox continued, touching on specific trainers who might offer opportunities: “I've had my Dad and Joe Sharp watch him some. Chris Hartman. I know Axel is 1-for-1 with Mike Maker; he won a Maryland-bred stakes with Field Pass (Lemon Drop Kid) at Laurel” in the $75,000 Find S. on Aug. 18.

“Here it's one of those circuits where you're going to get on as many horses you work in the morning it seems like,” Cox said. “So it's dependent on how hard he wants to work in the mornings, and I know he's got a great work ethic to build business over time.”

 

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Super Saver’s Two Item Saver Dominates Keeneland Allowance

3rd-Keeneland, $106,700, Alw, 10-6, (NW1X), 3yo/up, f/m, 7f, 1:26.99, ft, 13 1/2 lengths.
TWO ITEM SAVER (f, 3, Super Saver–Two Item Limit {MGSW & MGISP, $1,060,585}, by Twining) debuted in 2022 in the same Churchill Downs maiden which yielded GSW Hoosier Philly (Into Mischief) and SP Baby Got Backspin (Kantharos), finishing fourth for Dallas Stewart before being put on the bench until August of this year. Now in the barn of Ignacio Correas, she graduated from the maiden ranks in the Colonial dash last out at second asking and shipped to Keeneland for this contest, scratch down to a party of four, leaving the blocks as the 3-2 second choice. Never in any hurry as the caboose in the short field, she picked up her stride after splitting runners from the three path and was closing fast passing the five sixteenths marker. Driving clear despite hanging on the wrong lead, she caught her second wind when swapping to the right one and was 13 1/2 lengths ahead of Yes Day (Classic Empire) on the wire. Hailing from a deep and international female family which includes the likes of Arena Elvira (Ghostzapper), MGSW, $497,396, herself dam of SP Americana (Tapit); and the dam of SW Electo Red (Master Command) and an ever-growing list of winners, Two Item Saver is the most recent, and last registered, successful addition to this collective. Lifetime Record: 3-2-0-0, $110,200. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by FanDuel TV.
O/B-Charles E. Fipke (KY); T-Ignacio Correas, IV.

 

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Former KY Gov. And Airdrie Stud Founder Brereton Jones Dies At 84

Former Kentucky Governor and Airdrie Stud founder Brereton Jones died at age 84 on Monday.

His Sept. 18 passing was announced via social media by current Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

No cause of death or details about services were listed, although the current governor's posting said the Jones family would release a statement in the coming days.

Jones was governor from 1991 to 1995, and is best remembered in politics as a reformist who advocated for universal health care in Kentucky. He had previously served as lieutenant governor under Governor Wallace Wilkinson from 1987 to 1991.

In the Thoroughbred world, Jones will be remembered for taking a gamble in 1972 along with his wife, Libby, on transforming a farm on Old Frankfort Pike near Midway, Kentucky, into what would eventually become a well-respected, 2,500-acre bloodstock operation that has bred and/or raised 215 stakes winners, including 24 Grade 1 winners.

Jones was also a 2004 co-founder of the Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP), chairing that group's board of directors until 2011.

“Brereton Jones was a true champion for the horse-racing industry at all levels for decades,” said Kentucky Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association president Rick Hiles, who at one time trained horses for Jones.

“Yes, he was an owner and breeder himself, but he also understood how vital the breeding and racing industries are for the economy and tourism throughout the state,” Hiles said. “He was a great horseman, was great for the industry and bred and raced a lot of great horses. It was so fitting that he won the [GI] Kentucky Oaks three times-like a well-deserved lifetime achievement award that kept multiplying. He was just so friendly and respectful of everyone at the racetrack, whether they ran the track or mucked out stalls. He will be sorely missed.”

Brereton Chandler Jones was born June 27, 1939 in Gallipolis, Ohio, but grew up on his family's dairy farm in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. He was one of six children born to E. Bartow Jones II, who served two terms in the West Virginia Senate, and to Nedra Wilhelm Jones.

After graduating from high school as valedictorian, he attended the University of Virginia on a football scholarship. While still in his 20s, Jones had already begun to make his mark in politics, being the youngest delegate at the time ever elected to West Virginia's lower house.

In a July 2022 profile of Airdrie on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, TDN's Chris McGrath captured the spirit of the early years of Brereton Jones's life in an interview with Bret Jones, Brereton's son, who now serves as Airdrie's vice president.

“As a little boy in Point Pleasant, he'd ridden his pony Trixie around the hills pretending he was Roy Rogers,” Bret Jones told TDN. “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 his marriage to Elizabeth “Libby” Lloyd in 1970, the Joneses moved to Airdrie Farm, which was then part of Libby's family's estate in Woodford County, Kentucky.

“Mom's family had a farm,” Bret explained in the fiftieth anniversary profile. “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.”

Bret Jones recalled that, “In the early '70s, this was a tough game to break into if you weren't a central Kentuckian. 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?”

Jones eventually added to the Airdrie land by acquiring the famed Woodburn Stud, home of the famed Lexington during his 16-year tenure as America's leading sire in the 19th century. Woodburn was also the home of five 19th Century Kentucky Derby winners.

“When so many in the industry had their struggles, in the early '90s, Airdrie had them too,” Bret Jones said in the 2022 profile. “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.”

Bret Jones admitted that trial and error played a big part in his father's shaping of Airdrie, too.

“Nothing teaches you a lesson faster than investing your own money,” Bret Jones said. “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.”

Bret Jones said his father had a knack for transforming horses from humble beginnings into top stallions.

“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,” Bret Jones said. “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 us as a tremendously talented horse, so our great hope was that he was a Grade II winner with a Grade I future.”

That same long-shot mindset also helped to shape Jones's political career. When he first threw his hat into the ring for lieutenant governor in 1987, one of the initial polls gave him only a 2% chance of winning.

Mottos like “If you believe you can, you can,” and “No such word as can't,” were mainstays in the Jones household.

Despite growing up in a household where his dad ran the state, Bret Jones recalled that “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 1992, Jones narrowly escaped death when a helicopter in which he and members of his staff were riding crashed in Shelby County after it lost one of its tail-rotor blades.

While hospitalized, Jones issued a statement in which he said he was convinced that God had spared him because He had a plan for him.

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Penn Family Riding High into Book 3 After Seven-Figure Sale

Alex Penn wasn't at Keeneland when his family's Penn Sales sent their first seven-figure yearling through the ring during Book 1 of the September Sale. He was back home in Bourbon County, busy prepping the rest of their consignment's yearlings pointing for the later books.

“They were all drinking champagne and I was grooming horses,” he said as he jokingly nudged his wife Kendra and laughed, because really, he wouldn't have it any other way.

His family's business was founded a century ago as an all-purpose farm–over the years raising tobacco, Thoroughbreds, cattle, hay, even squash a time or two– and each generation to carry the Penn banner has stuck to its roots.

“We're farmers,” Kendra said simply. “If we can make a profit that's obviously the goal, but we're not here chasing seven figures on a regular basis.”

Of course, the Penn family couldn't help but get their hopes up about the youngster that would go on to sell for $1.35 million to M.V. Magnier. The Uncle Mo colt out of Forever for Now (War Front) looked like a star from the moment he was foaled and the Penns told his breeders Neal and Pam Christopherson going into sale day that he had gotten multiple looks from the right people.

“We had so many of the big folks coming back to look at him,” said Kendra. “He was super nice from the day he was born. He came out as a classic Uncle Mo–big, athletic, good feet, good walk. We had been telling [the Christophersons] that if we could just get him to the sale, that this horse was really nice.”

Spoken like a true farmer, Kendra shared the real 'win' of their momentous day in the spotlight.

“We were all asleep by 8:00 that night,” she said with a grin. “We had to get up at 4:00 to be back out here and do everything we need to do at home. It was definitely an honor to be a part of because the experience is not something that just happens on a regular basis, but life goes on and there are more horses and you just get up and get ready for the next day.”

During the second session of Book 1, Penn Sales offered a colt by Authentic. The half-brother to GISW Arklow (Arch) and MGSW Maraud (Blame) brought $360,000.

Choosing to skip Book 2 in order to keep their manpower within one sales barn at a time, Penn Sales will be back in action for Book 3 on Saturday with six going through the ring.

The Penns are particularly excited about Hip 1241, a Blame colt who is from the same family as the Authentic colt that sold well earlier in the auction.

“He's out of a young mare from a family that has been good to us,” Kendra explained. “His mom is a half to Arklow and Maraud. This colt is everything that family is. He's a really classy colt and he looks a lot like Arklow, so we're really excited about him.”

Their Book 3 lineup features two more colts: a Practical Joke full-brother to Kaling, who ran third in the GI Spinaway S. last year, and a colt from the first crop of Spendthrift's Vekoma.

Equally represented by three fillies, Penn Sales will offer a Classic Empire from the family of GISW Swift Temper (Giant's Causeway), a Maclean's Music out of a half-sister to Tonalist, and a filly from the first crop of Three Chimneys stallion Volatile.

Each of the 20 yearlings in Penn Sales' Keeneland September consignment were foaled and raised at the family's 1,000-acre farm outside of Paris. With oversight from the farm's two leaders in Alex's father John and his uncle Frank (profiled by TDN's Chris McGrath here), Alex and Kendra foal out around 40 mares each year and pride themselves on their hands-on approach.

“I don't think you'll find many farms left that do literally everything themselves,” Kendra noted. “From cleaning stalls to bathing to prepping to breeding, there's not an aspect of it we don't do. I think it makes a difference because we care. It's our livelihood. Everything on the farm is there year-round and so all the horses there have our attention 365 days a year.”

While Alex grew up in the Bluegrass and played a role on the family farm since childhood, Kendra hails from northwestern Pennsylvania. Her family had a small Thoroughbred breeding operation there and like her husband, she was handed equine-related responsibilities from an early age.

Kendra took the horsemanship skills she learned from her childhood and applied them to the yearling prep program at Penn Sales.

“My mom worked for Domino in the eighties when they were a premier sales company and the folks that taught her were pretty special,” she explained. “She handed that down to me. I want our horses to be respectful because a respectful horse is important for every step of their future, racing and beyond.”

Kendra recalled how a few years ago, a first-time employee had asked Kendra if she would be helping with cards during the sales. That newcomer quickly learned that Kendra can be found at the end of the shank for the majority of the sales season while simultaneously keeping a mental log of their consignment's visitors.

While Alex and Kendra said they are happy to continue passing on the spokesperson duties of their business to Frank and John, the younger generation of Penns are grateful for the opportunity to carry on the family legacy. Even their three children, they said, now have a small hand in the operation.

“I'm pretty proud to continue that tradition,” said Alex. “[Frank and John] pride themselves on their reputation and I hope to keep that going.”

“The Penns have done an amazing job raising horses for a long time,” Kendra added. “What John and Frank started has been easy for us to tailor to the sales market. We're here for the long haul, doing right by the horse and hoping that they have a sound and successful career.”

Perhaps equally as gratifying for the Penns as their first million-dollar sale, they also raised the winningest horse of 2022 in Beverly Park (Munnings), who won 15 of his 30 starts last year. The Penns said they believe that the hard-knocking horse's success may be attributed in some part to the way he was raised and the land he was raised on.

“That's something that is very important to us is letting them be horses,” Kendra said. “We raise them as racehorses and hope that the soundness carries them through. We bring them here to let people see that and hopefully they go on and be racehorses.

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