Friday’s Racing Insights: Laoban Full-Sister Debuts At Keeneland

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency

1st-KEE, $80K, MSW, 2yo, 4 1/2f, 1:00 p.m.

The opening day of the 2022 Keeneland Spring Meet features the first 2-year-old races of the year and the first opportunity for freshman sires to get their second careers off to a winning start. Success as a new stallion is of no concern for Uncle Mo, the sire of first-time starter DOMINICANA. A daughter of the SP Speightstown mare Chattertown, Dominicana is a full-sister to GSW and late sire Laoban. Purchased for $300,000 from the 2021 Keeneland September Sale for owners Don Alberto Stable and RT Racing Stable, the bay filly has worked three furlongs at Keeneland three times since Mar. 1 for superb 2-year-old trainer Wesley Ward, most recently going in :37 1/5 (14/28) Apr. 2. Jockey John Velazquez gets the ride as Dominicana takes on the boys in her career debut.

Freshman stallion Mo Town (Uncle Mo) will be well represented with two first-time starters here. Drawing the rail is MO'S TREASURE, a son of SP Beautiful Treasure (Unbridled). He is a half-brother to MGSP Flying Private (Fusaichi Pegasus) as well as six other winners from eight to race. He's had two four-furlongs works from the gate on this track for trainer John Hancock, going in :48 flat (10/65) Mar. 26 and :48 4/5 (18/72) Apr. 2.

Also representing Mo Town is BAYTOWN GET IT ON for trainer Paul McEntee. The chestnut comes in for his debut off of two bullet works including a four-furlong effort from the gate Mar. 24 in :47 flat, the fastest of 29 at the distance.  TJCIS PPs

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Friday’s Racing Insights: $1.2M Curlin Debuts at Gulfstream

6th-GP, $60K, Msw, 4yo/up, 7f, 3:05 p.m.
Fresh off a big win in last weekend's Colonel Liam (Liam's Map) in the GI Pegasus World Cup Turf, Robert and Lawana Lowe are represented here by PIGOTT (Curlin), who makes his belated debut for trainer Todd Pletcher. A $1.2 million KEESEP yearling purchase, the chestnut is a half-brother to GI Hollywood Derby winner Mo Town, who showed versatility winning the GII Remsen S. on the dirt. The trainer-jockey combo of Pletcher and Luis Saez have been deadly at the meet, connecting at a 30% clip. TJCIS PPs

9th-GP, $61K, $75K Opt. Clm., 3yo, 8f, 4:42 p.m.
WinStar Farm and Siena Farm's AMERICAN ICON (Gun Runner) marks his return to Gulfstream following a sparkling TDN Rising Star-earning 8 1/2-length win going seven furlongs Dec. 26. The $400,000 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Select yearling purchase has been firing bullets ever since that gaudy win, including his latest going four furlongs in :48 2/5 (1/16) at Palm Beach Downs Jan 28. Also returning off an impressive first-out win is Iron Works (Distorted Humor), who scored by four lengths while trying six panels in his Jan. 8 debut. A $550,000 OBSAPR purchase, the colt will be ridden by Irad Ortiz Jr., who partnered with Pletcher last weekend to win the GI Pegasus World Cup with Life Is Good (Into Mischief). TJCIS PPs

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Bittersweet Endings and New Beginnings at GreenMount

All good things must come to an end, they say, so on Friday Sabrina Moore, who co-bred the horse recently named the 2021 Longines World's Best Racehorse, boarded one last flight to watch Knicks Go (Paynter) make his final career start in the GI Pegasus World Cup before he begins stud duty at Taylor Made Farm.

Foaled at the Moores' GreenMount Farm in Reisterstown, Maryland, Knicks Go has taken his doting breeder to winner's circles most only dream of reaching. The story of a young horsewoman breeding a champion racehorse captivated many, with racing publications and local news outlets clamoring for interviews and visits to the farm throughout Knicks Go's ascension to stardom.

“It's funny, I keep telling people that I'm not sure how many times I can tell the same story over and over,” Moore said with a laugh. “I've used the word surreal a lot. Even now, it still feels surreal. He has opened a lot of doors for me as far as networking and meeting people. He's super special and always will be.”

Moore said that usually, she doesn't get too nervous before his races until a few hours before post time. But this week in the days leading up to Knicks Go's final start, the butterflies arrived early–perhaps because yes, she hopes Knicks Go can go out on a high note, but also because maybe she knows that as he crosses the wire, a life-changing chapter closes for them both.

“I've been trying not to think about it because I'm not sure how I feel about it yet,” she admitted. “It will be different and very weird. I guess I'll find out how I feel about it on Saturday. You wait your whole life to get a horse like this and I highly doubt I'll get another one. So I guess you just regroup and do the best you can to duplicate the process.”

First-time breeder Rodney Williams and his Mo Town filly | photo courtesy Sabrina Moore

Life may be quieter at GreenMount Farm once Knicks Go is out of the spotlight, but it certainly won't be any less busy. Moore estimates that this year she will be foaling out over 20 mares between clients' mares and their own broodmare band and already, foaling season is underway at GreenMount.

The first foal arrived on Jan 22. and Moore said the newborn's story reminds her of her own early days as a breeder.

The robust youngster, a filly by Mo Town, is the first foal for industry newcomer and first-time breeder Rodney Williams.

Over the past five years, Williams has owned several Midlantic-based claiming-level horses and despite many cautioning him against it, the Baltimore native decided to try out the breeding game.

A medical device manager, Williams discovered his passion for racing when he spent his childhood summers alongside his grandfather, a high school principal and lifelong racing fan, bouncing between Bowie, Pimlico and Timonium racetracks.

In 2018, following the passing of his grandfather, Williams was able to achieve both their dreams by purchasing Lovely Girl (Bodemeister), a maiden claimer running at Mahoning Valley. When Lovely Girl ran a close second at Timonium a few months later, he lost his voice for two days. Then when she won her first race, he knew there was no turning back.

After Lovely Girl's win, a breeder approached Williams about purchasing her. He reluctantly agreed, but couldn't stop thinking about the 'what if's' of if he had kept her as a broodmare himself.

Meanwhile, he had his eye on another race filly named Ask Siri (Union Rags).  He had lost the shake to claim her three times, so when it came time for her to retire, he was able to purchase her privately. Williams connected with Moore through a mutual friend and after Ask Siri was bred to Mo Town, the maiden mare returned to Maryland and arrived at GreenMount Farm.

As the foaling date approached, Williams did his research and compiled a list of everything he could do in order to prepare for the new foal. He even volunteered for foal watch at GreenMount, but Moore assured him that she had everything under control.

“I told him not to worry and reminded him that this is what he was paying me for,” Moore said with a laugh.

On Saturday morning, Williams woke up to a text at 6 a.m. His foal had arrived. He pulled through the gates at GreenMount roughly 15 minutes later.

“I just couldn't believe it,” he recounted. “She was already standing up and nursing. 'Siri' was totally calm and she was looking at me like, 'What's your problem? I've got this.'”

Ask Siri (Union Rags) and her Mo Town filly | photo courtesy Sabrina Moore

Asked to compare the experiences of a racehorse owner and a breeder, Williams was quick to answer, “It's completely different, but just as exciting. As a racehorse owner, it's just two minutes. There's anxiety when they're getting in the gate, but after those two minutes, all that really matters is that they come back healthy. With breeding, you have a whole year of stress. It's a process that requires a lot of patience, but once they're born, all your research and your conversation with people comes to fruition and it's a pretty darn good feeling”

As long as the name is approved, the daughter of Ask Siri will fittingly be called Ask Alexa.

Williams said he isn't sure yet where she could end up, but as he weighed the options of selling her verses keeping her for his own small racing stable, his voice rose at the mention of watching Ask Alexa run with his own silks.

“Once you dip your toes in the water, there's no turning back,” he said. “You go through the ups and downs of everything, but the true, raw story is really the care that goes into these athletes. It's an amazing thing and it's very contagious.”

Moore is looking forward to the weekend in the spotlight at Gulfstream with Knicks Go. But for her it might be just as rewarding, be it more humble, to watch a young filly step onto wobbly legs in her first hours of life as her novice owner looks on.

“One thing I've realized is that our first job is to take good care of our horses, but the second is to provide an experience for the owners by being as transparent and hands-on as possible,” she explained. “Rodney's excitement is so cool to watch. He really appreciates all the hard work that everyone puts into it and he's a natural. It's like looking back in time to when our first couple of babies arrived and how exciting that was.”

Moore had a long checklist to get through before she could leave for Florida. She has a mare due to foal any day that needed to find a sitter and in between turnout, cleaning stalls and monitoring foals, she had to find time to pack. But she's thrilled that for this last go-round, her sister is coming along with her for the first time.

“No one else in my family is really 'horse-y,'” she said. “They can't really grasp how much of a big deal this is. I gave my dad a Knicks Go hat the other day and I was like, 'Hey, these are going for $250 on Ebay so please don't put this in the Goodwill pile.'”

While not everyone will understand quite how monumental Saturday's race may be, Moore is thankful for the support and encouragement she's received by many throughout Knicks Go's career and is equally grateful for the horse that made it all possible.

“To have a horse win one Grade I is just insane and something I never thought would happen to me,” she said. “This horse has had to work so hard to prove himself but this weekend, whatever happens will happen. He doesn't have to prove himself anymore, but for him to close the book by going out a winner would be something really special for us all.”

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Value Sires, Part IV: First Juveniles in ’22

Though the first three installments of this series have featured the stallions with most to prove, we know that they will collectively be dominating commercial traffic in the new covering season. But today we come to the group that has just completed that first, critical market cycle–and finally stands on the brink of testing their stock where it really counts.

Or should count, anyway. The sad reality is that they have already exhausted their usefulness to a lot of breeders, many of whom will meanwhile have ridden the carousel through two subsequent intakes of rookies and will now be sizing up a third.

Even the rest of us, as a result, face a challenge in seeking that delicate value equilibrium between market energy, which will keep that famous “pipeline” loaded, and keeping the faith with those we think will come good on the racetrack. The second part of the equation demands particular perseverance, of course, when it comes to those whose stock may require a second turn and maturity to approach their full potential. By the same token, as such types almost inevitably tend to lose numerical support, so they offer the potential of increased reward for those that do hang in there. By the time the yearlings conceived next spring come to market, this group will have sent a second sophomore crop into the fray. If those first couple of crops come good, then there's potential for demand greatly to exceed supply.

Needless to say, that's not a gamble too many commercial breeders are inclined to make, when it can be so much easier to make a fast buck from sires whose ability to recycle their excellence on the racetrack remains more or less completely unknown. It's not as though we ever learn as much as we might think from the market's reception of first weanlings and yearlings. In most years, averages tend to replicate pretty scrupulously the rankings implied by fees, with only marginal deviations indicating one or two whose stock has either disappointed or surpassed expectations.

This lot, however, have experienced a little more volatility. The averages achieved by first yearlings in 2021 disclose a couple of pretty blatant disasters, as well as a couple of equally conspicuous outliers in a positive direction–one of which duly retains a place on the value podium.
As with the previous intake, several of these were given fee cuts last year by farms making a really substantial gesture to breeders facing the uncertainties of the pandemic economy.

Given that these sires have meanwhile reached a notoriously vulnerable moment in their careers, some have been trimmed again; while others who have performed very well in the sales ring remain pegged at a rate that has come to seem pretty indulgent with the market having rallied so powerfully since. In other words, there should be plenty of value around.

One young stallion, admittedly, has proved such a smash at the sales that–most unusually, for one at this tricky crossroads–access will cost 50% more than last spring ahead of the launch of his first juveniles. City of Light, now up to $60,000, sold 67 of 75 for a spectacular average of $337,698. We'll have to see whether he can keep up that kind of momentum as these animals proceed to the track, not having been the most precocious himself, but he basically hasn't stopped glittering between his first career and the start of his second.

City of Light is a compliment to one of those farms that believes its clients' interests best served by restrained book sizes. In fairness, however, both Justify and Mendelssohn showed that the more industrial model can also function at ringside. It did feel almost shocking that both should have covered as many as 252 mares in their debut seasons, but each achieved the necessary dividends at the sales. Indeed, value being a relative concept, you could even make a case for Justify to be on the podium now that he has had consecutive cuts from $150,000 to $125,000 and now $100,000.

But those who can afford to operate at that kind of level can clearly make those judgements for themselves! So here, as subjectively as ever, are our suggestions for three more accessible steps of the pyramid. Once again, no apologies for fidelity to stallions we've liked all along. Though too much of this business operates as though their work is already done, they actually haven't even started yet–and they certainly haven't done anything to warrant desertion.

Bubbling under: For a stallion who has apparently been tough to handle at times, Bolt d'Oro is certainly getting with the program where it counts: he got the big numbers through that revolving door at Spendthrift, with 214 mares in his debut book at $25,000, and his $155,097 average edged out two $35,000 start-ups in Mendelssohn and Good Magic. Having participated in his farm's big gesture last year when slashed to $15,000, he is actually restored to $20,000 this time around–but is plainly entitled to make that fee work if he gets juveniles as accomplished as he was himself.

At the same farm, Cloud Computing processed his first crop at a brisk rate (53 sold of 60 at $45,783) and we've spoken previously in this series of trying to catch a rising tide with his sire Maclean's Music. A feasible roll of the dice at $5,000.

Bronze: ARMY MULE (Friesan Fire–Crafty Toast by Crafty Prospector)
$7,500 Hill 'n' Dale

Okay, so sire and damsire together hardly represent an obvious commercial formula, while his career was confined to four minutes. But there's no denying that this was a pretty wild talent. He won each of his three starts, by an aggregate 22 lengths, smashing the GI Carter H. on his stakes debut by half a dozen lengths in 1:20.94.

What would the market make of this meteor? Well, his opening book of 140 slumped to 47 next time round and he was trimmed from $10,000 to $7,500. Maybe those who responded, with 83 covers last spring, had noticed his weanlings had shown something of the physical majesty that underpinned his bullet time as a $825,000 F-T Midlantic sale-topping juvenile.

With that profile, he always seemed an obvious pinhooking medium and doubtless that helped to drive a stunning debut at the yearling sales. With a colt and filly both hitting $400,000, he shifted 63 of 76 at $91,809–nine times their conception fee!

One way or another, the genes were certainly functioning in this freak: remember that his sire has an aristocratic pedigree, while his first three dams respectively scored at stakes, Grade III and Grade II level. John Sikura is building something special on a far narrower foundation, in Maclean's Music, and I suspect that those who get aboard with Army Mule now will already find themselves ahead of the curve at the 2-year-old sales–never mind once the freshmen's championship begins to take shape.

Silver: MO TOWN (Uncle Mo–Grazie Mille by Bernardini)
$7,500 Ashford

Now here's a guy whose every trajectory is climbing sharply–with the solitary exception of his fee, which is 40% down on his opening $12,500. Time, in other words, for breeders to catch a rising tide.

Having stayed in training at four, only to disappear after a single start in the spring, he was rather a forgotten horse when assembling a debut book of 144. In 2020, down to $10,000, he received 108 partners. Last spring, however, came a transformation: encouraged by Uncle Mo's flying start as a sire of sires, no fewer than 204 mares profited from another reduction in his fee (partly, of course, a Covid concession). So whatever Mo Town can do with his first couple of crops, he is going to be far better placed than most to consolidate.

In the meantime, moreover, Mo Town has made a fine debut at the yearling sales, processing 70 of 78 at an average $60,250. And his stock is entitled to land running, Mo Town having won the GII Remsen S. at two. Though he had to regroup the following year, he eventually did so with a dashing turn of foot to land his Grade I on turf (his half-sister by War Front was runner-up in an Irish Classic).

And, actually, let's just forget Uncle Mo for a minute. For the bottom half of this horse's pedigree has been beautifully seeded, with his first five dams by Bernardini, Carson City, Danzig, Sir Ivor and Native Dancer, the fifth being a full sister to Raise A Native. (As such, the purchase of the Grade I-placed granddam as a bargain weanling showed a typically alert Gunther touch, her sire Carson City being a grandson of Raise A Native.)

But nobody, of course, is going to forget Uncle Mo for terribly long. His stratospheric pricing will surely direct the farm's less affluent clients towards an alternative so eligible to emulate those already making Uncle Mo well named as a young sire of sires. Momentum is exactly what Mo Town has now, at a stage in his career when most rivals are nervously treading water.

Gold: ACCELERATE (Lookin At Lucky–Issues by Awesome Again)
$15,000 Lane's End

A horse like this was never going to cause a commercial stampede. Even so, he was priced with nearly brutal realism, at just $20,000. That told us much that was wrong with our business, as this was a model racehorse whose soundness and attitude underpinned a $6.7 million career of inexorable improvement, crowned by what would have been a Horse of the Year campaign but for the claims of a historic Triple Crown winner (five Grade Is interrupted only by a neck defeat at nine furlongs by the dasher City Of Light). But the strategy paid off with an opening book of 167, really pushing the boundaries by the laudably conservative standards of this farm. He has been ticking over nicely enough over the two seasons since, too, with another 213 mares; and processed his first yearlings at a perfectly respectable rate, rehousing 70 of 88 at $72,831.

Even from such a terribly low base, Accelerate has been consecutively eased to $17,500 and now $15,000. He's an unbelievable amount of horse for that kind of money. We know that his own sire remains scandalously under-rated, but turn that round and ask yourself what kind of physique he must be recycling to raise $380,000 as a yearling from one of the best judges in the game.

That's all packaged with brothers placed at Grade I and Grade III level, their dam a stakes-placed half-sister to a Grade I winner; he's also inbred to Broodmare of the Year Smartaire. Not a chink in his armor, then, and you'll be sorry to have turned down this insulting fee when foals bred at much higher cost start being crushed by his stock.

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