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Letruska the Star of Terrazas Thoroughbreds

Five-time Grade I winner and 2021 Eclipse Champion Older Dirt Female Letruska (Super Saver) produced her first foal, a filly by Curlin, on Feb. 4 at Terrazas Thoroughbreds in Lexington, KY.

Farm owner Eduardo Terrazas reported that the foaling was normal and that as the leggy filly has flourished in her first few weeks of life, she seems to have adopted her sire's physical and her dam's personality.

“Her mama is a very secure type of mare, very sure of herself, and the baby definitely shows that,” he said. “Ever since day one, she'll come straight to you. She's very independent and curious. She's a little bit of a handful. I think my night crew spends a little too much time with her, but my daughter is the night watchman and she likes to play with all her kids, so it makes sense.”

It's fair to say that everyone at Terrazas Thoroughbreds gives just a little bit of extra attention to the talented Letruska and now her young daughter.

While Terrazas did not foal Letruska, she was raised on their farm and spent well over a year growing up there before she was sent to race in Mexico, where she would be named champion 3-year-old filly. The St. George Stable homebred made the move to America with trainer Fausto Gutierrez in 2019 and soon rose to the top of the game in the U.S. Some of her more memorable wins came in a battle against champion Monomoy Girl (Tapizar) in the 2021 GI Apple Blossom H. and her near six-length victory in the 2021 GII Fleur de Lis S. The winner of 19 races from 28 lifetime starts, Letruska retired in 2022 with over $3.05 million in earnings.

Sara Gordon

Terrazas Thoroughbreds is also home to several of Letruska's family members, including her dam Magic Appeal (Successful Appeal), who was purchased by St. George Stable for $100,000 in 2015 with Letruska in utero. This year Magic Appeal has an Into Mischief yearling filly and is in foal to Gun Runner. Letruka's half-sister Mixteca (Tapizar) also resides at Terrazas and she recently produced a Charlatan filly.

“We have always been attached to Letruska's siblings, but we get attached to everything,” Terrazas admitted. “With all of her brothers and sisters that we have had, we know them like family. Having Letruska here is great, just to be able to say that you had something to do with a horse of that quality.”

Terrazas said they are in conversation with St. George Stable as they close in on their choice for which stallion Letruska will visit in 2024.

St. George Stable is owned by Mexican billionaire businessman Germán Larrea. His racing and breeding operation has a massive presence in Mexico and up until recently, he would race only a handful of his best horses in the U.S. Terrazas said those numbers have grown substantially over the past few years now that St. George Stable's trainer Fausto Gutierrez has planted a base in the U.S.

“In the past Mr. Larrea would probably breed around 10 or 12 mares here and most of them would be used to race in Mexico,” Terrazas explained. “Nowadays we are producing roughly 20 to 22 foals for them each year and the vast majority of them are staying here to race.”

St. George Stable has been active at the Kentucky breeding stock sales in recent years. At last year's Keeneland November Sale they bought nearly a dozen mares, including the $300,000 purchase of Ambassador Kelly (Pioneerof the Nile), a daughter of GISW Rachel's Valentina (Bernardini). At the 2022 Keeneland January Sale they went to $390,000 for Siempre Mia (Scat Daddy), the dam of MGSW Consumer Spending (More Than Ready).

The operation will also send mares who were successful in Mexico north to breed in Kentucky. Jala Jala (Mex) (Point Determined) and Malinche (Fast Anna) were both champions in Mexico before they joined St. George Stable's broodmare band at Terrazas Thoroughbreds.

Terrazas said it is a privilege to work with a client like St. George Stable that breeds exclusively to race.

“There are not a lot of people like that anymore,” he noted. “Everybody is so gung-ho on the market. This allows us to cater to him from a different perspective. Over the past few years, he has accumulated a really strong group of quality mares. We spend normally in the $250,000 to $300,000 range. That makes me really think high for the future. He's the type of owner that we need in the industry.”

Terrazas decided to launch his own boarding operation because of the changes in the commercial breeding industry. He served as stallion manager for Overbrook Farm and Taylor Made Farm for almost 30 years before opening Terrazas Thoroughbreds in 2005.

Eduardo Terrazas | Sara Gordon

“Frank Taylor is the one who talked me into going on my own,” Terrazas said. “At the time I decided that I needed a bit of a break. As a stallion manager there is a lot of pressure. I started noticing that the books for the stallions kept getting bigger and bigger. All of that pressure comes to you. When you're a stallion manager, you have to find a happy medium between the horse and the business side of it. We started stressing more about [the book sizes] and I said, 'Well, maybe I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. It's not fun anymore.' That's when I decided to try it on my own. I never had any big plans and I still don't. We all know this is a finicky business. We're fine today. Tomorrow, who knows?”

But Terrazas Thoroughbreds had found plenty of successes over the years. Along with St. George Stable, their client list has included White Fox Farm and Corser Thoroughbreds, who recently bred 2023 GI Pacific Classic S. winner Arabian Knight (Uncle Mo).

Terrazas credits their operation's success to keeping things simple and hands on. He and his daughter, Jenny, take their time with each and every horse.

“My daughter and I do all the dirty work,” he said. “We foal every single horse. When we are raising horses, we just try to stay out of their way. Our horses come in each morning, eat, and an hour later they go back outside.”

Terrazas Thoroughbreds will consign horses, but only those that they foaled and raised themselves. Terrazas said he wants buyers to have the confidence factor of speaking to a consignor that has known the horse for his entire life.

“I've never run an ad; it's all by word of mouth,” he shared. “I turn down mares every year because I'd rather say no than do a bad job.”

Terrazas said that being able to share his passion for the business with his daughter is what gets him out of bed for those late night foalings and the early morning feedings.

“I've always joked to people that if it wasn't for my daughter, I probably would have quit a while ago and just gotten a real job,” he admitted. “I tried to steer her away from a young age, but it didn't work out. She loves it. She's a very hard worker. She's a lot like me. You can be out here with triple pneumonia or whatever and still show up. I'm very proud of her. To see these horses doing so well is just unbelievable and to see our clients do good is really what we're here for.”

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From Turf Writer to Trainer: Gutierrez Writes His Own Story

DEL MAR, CA–It's fair to say that former turf writer Fausto Gutierrez does not fit the mold of a typical trainer at the Breeders' Cup World Championships.

While the background in media sets the outgoing 54-year-old Gutierrez apart, he is a veteran horseman with loads of experience and massive success in Mexico. His first starter in the Breeders' Cup is Letruska (Super Saver), the 5-year-old mare who is the 8-5 favorite on the morning line in the $2-million Distaff. Gutierrez has developed the Kentucky-bred for St George Stable LLC, owned by the Mexican billionaire Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco. She has won six of seven starts in 2021, four of them Grade Is, and is the leading contender to win the Eclipse Award as the older female dirt horse.

Gutierrez, the son of a now-retired lawyer, grew up in a family that was not connected to Thoroughbred racing.

“One of my first memories I have about horses was from the Hipódromo de la Zarzuela in Madrid, Spain,” he said. “We lived near there and when I was very, very young, sometimes we would go there.”

During his youth in Mexico City, Gutierrez said he became a fan of the sport at Hipódromo de Las Américas, the one track open in the country.

“I entered with the general public because I liked to see the horses go to the paddock, [handicap] the races, read in newspapers what's happening, who is winning, the selections,” he said. “This is one sport that can get your attention. It isn't important if your family is there. When you have the first contact with the horses, you want to smell all of what is around. And you recognize immediately, too, that the horses are athletes and this is another sport that is different from other ones, because there are human and equine athletes.”

Gutierrez went to college, majoring in communications, figuring that it would lead to a job in television or advertising. It delivered him to racing.

“I had a good friend who liked [soccer] and he started to work for the Periódico Reforma. It is one of the most important in Mexico,” he said. “When the newspaper started, he called me. We are very good friends from the university, we finished together, and he told me, 'I'm looking for a person to write about the horses.' A special [contributor], or something like that. I thought, 'Why not?'”

Gutierrez with Letruska this summer | Sarah Andrew

As he told the story a few feet from Letruska's stall at Del Mar, Gutierrez laughed about how an unplanned set of circumstances put him on what became his life's professional journey.

“This is the reason I started there,” he said. “At that point of my career, it determined things because if I don't find that job, for sure I had to go another way, maybe something in advertising. At that moment, I had a trainer's license and an owner with one or two horses. At the same time I was writing for the newspaper. This put me 100% into the Mexican racetrack and I had a chance to make a living.”

Gutierrez said he found his way into training in a most unusual way

“The first day I went to the university, my first class, I went with a book for a Mexican sale,” he said. “I put it under my seat and the professor said, 'What is this?' That professor was a partner in a horse that was at sale at that auction. After that he told me, 'Let's go on Saturday to the barn area.' I went with him and he introduced me to a trainer and we became friends. We claimed a horse together and I started to train him. It was a coincidence of life.”

Gutierrez said he believes the first winner he trained was in 1988 when he was 21 years old. About five years later, he was offered the turf writing job.

“When I started to work at the newspaper, I understood the real power of the media,” he said. “Whatever you write has more importance. This was the most important newspaper in Mexico. This helped me to know a lot of the owners and we became friends.”

In the early 1990s, Gutierrez was handling what turned into a career-influencing Kentucky-bred filly named Mactuta (Bates Motel) out of a Little Current mare, who he said won a dozen stakes and Mexican championships in 1993 and 1994.

When his newspaper career, which he said lasted for about 10 years, beckoned, Gutierrez found himself in the unusual situation of writing about some of his own horses. The connections he made with owners led to a foray into Texas racing.

“In 1996, the track was closed abruptly by the government because of the political situation,” he said. “It was supposed to close for one weekend, but it closed for three years. After eight months, we made a group of 24 horses from different owners and we sent them to Texas. We ran at Sam Houston, Lone Star and Retama and after the year of 1999, the track was ready to open again and I moved back to Mexico.”

Equibase stats show him with 20 victories from 182 starts in 1998 and 1999.

Quite by accident, in 2001, two years after returning to Mexico, Gutierrez developed a relationship with Larrea Mota-Velasco, the CEO of Mexico's largest mining corporation and a former horse owner.

“After 9/11, he was planning to come to Keeneland to buy some yearlings to go back into racing,” Gutierrez said. “He didn't fly because the airports were closed. He contacted me and asked me if I wanted to come. I took one of the first flights after they opened operations. After that, we have been together all this time.”

Letruska training at Del Mar | Breeders' Cup/Eclipse Sportswire

Larrea Mota-Velasco reinvested in bloodstock in a big way and Gutierrez handled his growing and increasingly powerful stable. It was so dominant, Gutierrez said, that he might saddle 11 of the 12 horses in a stakes race. He won 10 consecutive training titles at the Mexico City track from 2010-19 and twice won the Triple Crown.

Gutierrez found international success and U.S. exposure when the Clásico del Caribe series was relocated to Gulfstream Park in 2017. His victories included Jaguaryu (Mex) (Point Determined) in the 2017 Lady Caribbean; Jala Jala (Mex) (Point Determined) in the 2017 Caribbean Classic and 2018 Confraternity Caribbean Cup; Kukulkan (Mex) (Point Determined) in the 2018 Caribbean Classic and 2019 Copa Confraternidad del Caribe; and Letruska in the 2019 Copa Invitacional del Caribe, facing older males as a 3-year-old filly.

Larrea Mota-Velasco decided to open a U.S. division and Gutierrez and his family relocated to Florida.

“I moved here in March 2020 and really then I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay in the United States or not,” he said. “I was really planning to go back to Mexico. But after the pandemic, I'm staying here. A trip I had planned for 10 days I have extended until now.”

Letruska has carried Gutierrez's American stable, which has won 16 races with eight different horses this year. He said he has 15 horses based at Keeneland, likes the feel of a less-is-more business and hopes to grow a bit.

“Any trainer to continue to be competitive needs to have material, to have horses,” he said. “I want to have an operation that I can control very closely. Maybe I can have 30 to 40 horses that I can pay attention to. In Mexico before, I trained nearly 200 horses at the same time. It's different. At this point, I prefer to be closer to the horses and make more decisions.”

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Bill To Ban Horse Slaughter Reintroduced

Today, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers reintroduced legislation to permanently ban horse slaughter in the United States and end the current export of American horses for slaughter. Sponsored by U.S. Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, the Save America's Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act is supported by leading animal welfare groups, including the ASPCA® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®), the Animal Welfare Institute, the Humane Society of the United States, the Humane Society Legislative Fund, and Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation.

“The gruesome practice of slaughtering horses for food has no place in the United States, and it's well past time for Congress to say once and for all that horsemeat is not what's for dinner,” said Sen. Menendez. “Horses are routinely treated with drugs that are dangerous for human consumption and do not belong in our nation's food supply. Our bipartisan legislation will help put an end to the cruel and inhumane slaughter of horses while protecting families from toxic horse meat and safeguarding the reputation of the U.S. food industry worldwide.”

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“Horses hold a special place in our history and culture, and the practice of slaughtering them to satisfy foreign appetites simply does not reflect the admiration we have for these animals,” said Sen. Collins. “In an effort to protect horses, this legislation would deter the transport or purchase of horses for human consumption.”

“The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose horse slaughter for human consumption and the ASPCA is working resolutely to solve equine welfare issues on the ground, but we cannot fully succeed while the slaughter pipeline remains open,” said Nancy Perry, senior vice president of Government Relations for the ASPCA. “We thank Senators Menendez, Graham, Whitehouse, and Collins for their leadership on this bill, and urge Congress to pass the SAFE Act to finally end this cruel, unnecessary practice and provide protections to American horses and the people who love them.”

“The predatory horse slaughter industry has persisted for far too long in the United States, but we are now closer than ever to shutting down this inhumane operation that exports beloved animals to be killed for human consumption, said Cathy Liss, president of the Animal Welfare Institute. “We are grateful to Senators Menendez, Graham, Whitehouse, and Collins for their leadership on the SAFE Act, and we hope that the Senate will move swiftly to pass this crucial legislation.”

“Just nine years ago, 160,000 American horses were exported abroad for slaughter. Due to awareness of this inhumane and predatory industry, that number has dropped dramatically with just over 35,000 shipped to slaughter in 2020. But one horse is still too many,” said Sara Amundson, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund. “We are grateful to Senators Menendez, Graham, Whitehouse and Collins for their leadership and commitment to passing this crucial equine protection bill, which will end this grisly industry and protect these American icons from those who profit off their deaths.”

“We applaud Senators Menendez, Graham, Whitehouse and Collins for hearing American's overwhelming opposition to horse slaughter,” said Neda DeMayo, founder of Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation. “It is still too easy for America's horses, including wild horses that once roamed freely on our public lands, to fall into the slaughter pipeline and be shipped to an inhumane death in foreign slaughterhouses. Horse slaughter is wholly un-American and needs to end now with the swift passage of the bipartisan SAFE Act.”

In recent years, the number of American horses shipped to Canada and Mexico to be slaughtered for human consumption in foreign countries has dropped, making this an opportune time for Congress to close this legal loophole that causes so much suffering. Last year, over 35,000 horses were exported for slaughter, and research published in 2017 found that 2.3 million Americans have the interest and resources to adopt a horse. America's equine adoption community is working swiftly to match the horses in their care with foster and adoptive families, increasing the number of adoptions every year. This means that every horse who might have been sent to slaughter could have a home waiting, if given the opportunity to find it.

The horse slaughter industry not only exploits horses, who endure grueling journeys to slaughter plants and an inhumane death. It also harms the broader equine community, including horse owners, riders and rescues, who fear that their horses will end up in the slaughter pipeline despite their best efforts to keep them safe. Kill buyers – those who buy horses to ship to slaughter in Canada and Mexico – attend auctions and often outbid rescue groups trying to help vulnerable equines. Kill buyers have also been known to pose as good homes in response to ads from horse owners who can no longer care for their animals. Many owners are so fearful that they may even keep their horses beyond the point they can afford, to prevent their sale to slaughter. Horses have even been stolen out of their stalls or pastures and shipped to slaughter.

Earlier this year, U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., introduced the SAFE Act (H.R. 3355) in the U.S. House of Representatives. We encourage the public to contact their U.S. senators and representative to urge them to cosponsor the SAFE Act, and secure its swift passage, to protect horses, their caregivers and consumers.

Trainer Guadalupe Preciado Celebrates 2,000th Win At Parx

When Chub Wagon, a 3-year-old filly making her career debut, came romping home to thoroughly convincing 7 1/2 length win in the fourth race Monday afternoon at Parx, trainer Guadalupe Preciado celebrated the 2,000th win on his career.

A native of Mexico, Preciado came to the U.S. and began training horses in 1989. A chance meeting with owner Jack Mondel (Hidden Lane Farms) jump-started his career in the early '90's, led by multiple graded stakes winner Mr. Nasty (G3 Gravesend Handicap
– 1990 and G2 Tom Fool – 1991). He also won the G2 Demoiselle for Mondel in 1990 with Debutante's Halo.

Inducted into the Parx Hall of Fame in 2013, Preciado also trained multiple graded stakes winners Favorite Tale (G3 Gallant Bob – 2014 and G2 Smile Sprint – 2015) and Caught in the Rain (G2 Mrs. Revere – 2002 and G3 Athenia – 2003). Favorite Tale was honored as Pennsylvania Horse of the Year in 2014.

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