So what chance did Jason Cook have in the GII John A. Nerud S. at Belmont? He has a four-horse stable and in the 34 years he's been training, had never won a graded stakes race.

Now he has.

Three Technique (Mr. Speaker), a horse Cook claimed for $40,000, won the seven-furlong sprint by 3 3/4 lengths, beating, among others, horses trained by Todd Pletcher and Bill Mott.

“To tell you the truth, it didn't sink in until later,” Cook said. “But it was great to win a graded stakes. That's what make this sport so great. Anybody can win on any given day. That's why we run them.”

That Cook has persevered the way he has is admirable. For the last 11 years, he has raised his daughter Peyton by himself. Cook's wife Tracey died from sepsis when Peyton was just 2 1/2 years old. He has had to balance being a single parent, taking his daughter to her soccer games and attending parent-teacher conferences with training horses. He admits it hasn't been easy and that he hasn't been able to devote all his time to training.

“I have raised my daughter by myself,” the 49-year-old Cook said. “That's one of the reasons things have been pretty slow for me. I'm spending a lot of my time going to her soccer games. There are trade offs in life.”

Cook grew up on the racetrack. His father Lois Cook was a jockey who won the 1957 Kentucky Oaks with Lori-El and finished tenth in the 1955 Kentucky Derby. Jason Cook started out as a hotwalker when he was 13 and took out his trainer's license when he was 17. He won his first race in 1993 when he was just 19.

“I never really thought about doing anything else other than training,” Cook said. “It was what I wanted to do when I younger. At that age, you think being a trainer is the greatest thing in the world. You find out it's not. Its not as easy as you thought it would be.”

He won three stakes in 1996 and another in 1997, but his win totals remained modest. Based on wins, his best year was 2008 when he won 18 races. There have also been plenty of years like 2020, when he went 1-for-19, and 2018 when he was 1-for-24. He said he never got discouraged, but the right horses never seemed to find their way into his barn.

“There are a lot of capable people that given the chance might be the next big trainer,” he said. “There's somebody training horses somewhere out there not doing any good and the reason why is they don't have the stock that allows them to show their talent. It all comes down to the horse. You have to have the horses.”

But he says he can see why so many owners flock to the same top five or six trainers.

“Those people who have those big stables, I've never begrudged them,” Cook said. “Todd Pletcher, Bill Mott, they are at the top of the game because they produce very good results. You can't be mad at somebody because of their success.”

To help make ends meet over the years, Cook would haul horses, something he no longer does. His main client was Dale Romans.

“That was something I did to help me make a living,” he said. “I used to go to all the stakes races for Dale. I trained a few horses, I hauled horses for Dale. That's how I got by.”

In the fall of 2021 Cook, who had just two winners on the year at the time, was surprised to see Three Technique show up in a $40,000 claimer at Churchill. Four starts earlier, he had finished third in the same John A. Nerud S. for trainer Jeremiah Englehart and owner Bill Parcells's August Dawn Farm. Just prior to the claiming race, he RNA'd for $47,000 at the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale.

“It looked like they were giving up on him,” Cook said. “Yes, I was worried that it was a suspicious drop in class.”

But to be able to acquire a horse for $40,000 that had, only a few months earlier, hit the board in a graded stakes race was something Cook and owners David Miller, Eric Grindley and John Werner couldn't resist. They weren't alone. There were 27 claims put in for Three Technique that day.

“Someone asked me what did you see in this horse to claim him,” Cook said. “I just got lucky and hit the lottery.”

Three Technique lost his first five races for Cook, but broke through to win last year's Knicks Go S. at Churchill Downs at 36-1, giving Cook his first stakes win in 25 years. He would go on a six-race losing streak before winning a May 27 allowance at Churchill. Cook couldn't decide between the Nerud and the July 2 Hanshin S. at Ellis Park, the same race in which he almost beat Cody's Wish (Curlin) last year, losing by just a neck. He decided on the Nerud because he thought his horse preferred one turn.

Three Technique | Joe Labozzetta

Prior to the Nerud, he had never started a horse at Belmont. His lone starter in New York had come in a 1997 claiming race at Saratoga.

“I'm going to try and buck the trend and win one in New York,” Cook said prior to the race. “My dad was a jockey and I like history and that track has a lot of history. My dad was one of the leading riders in the country in the '50s.”

With Javier Castellano aboard, Three Technique won comfortably, looking like a horse who can hold his own against top sprinters.

“I just got to sit back and watch,” Cook said. “The horse had to do all the hard work. He is a very determined horse and he always runs his race.”

One of the first calls he got after Three Technique crossed the wire was from Peyton. She usually joins her father at the track whenever he has a horse in a race, but she didn't make the trip to New York.

“This was one of the few trips she didn't make,” Cook said. “She was home with some friends. She was so excited. She was crying and screaming she was so excited. I wish she would have been here.”

Cook isn't sure where Three Technique will run next. One concern he has is that the horse doesn't like the heat, which could be a factor later this summer in places like Saratoga. That's a problem for another day. For now, he's going to sit back and relax and enjoy the day he beat the big boys.

The post The Week In Review: On Another Day Dominated By Super Trainers, Jason Cook Wins One For The Little Guy appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Fourth in both the GIII Kent S. and Bald Eagle Derby this summer, Speaking Scout could only manage seventh in the GIII Dueling Grounds Derby Sept. 5. A decisive winner of the Hawthorne Derby Oct. 1, he came up a half-length short of Cabo Spirit last out in the GII Twilight Derby at Santa Anita Oct. 29.

Pedigree Notes:

Speaking Scout is the second Grade I winner and fifth graded scorer for Mr Speaker. A daughter of SW It's Over, SP Miss Scout failed to get in foal to Cross Traffic for 2020, but had a Laugh Track filly in 2021. She did not get in foal to Runaway Ghost for 2022 and was bred back to that stallion this year.

Saturday, Del Mar
HOLLYWOOD DERBY-GI, $402,500, Del Mar, 12-3, 3yo, 1 1/8mT, 1:49.34, fm.
1–SPEAKING SCOUT, 122, g, 3, by Mr Speaker
               1st Dam: Miss Scout (SP), by Pleasant Tap
               2nd Dam: It's Over, by Stop the Music
               3rd Dam: Terminal Blush, by Silent Screen
1ST GRADED STAKES WIN, 1ST GRADE I WIN. ($10,000 Wlg
'19 KEENOV; $3,000 Ylg '20 OBSOCT). O-Eclipse
Thoroughbred Partners; B-Mike Abraham (KY); T-H. Graham
Motion; J-Juan J. Hernandez. $240,000. Lifetime Record:
14-4-4-0, $500,668. Werk Nick Rating: A.
Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree
or the free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree.
2–Spycatcher, 122, c, 3, Noble Mission (GB)–Monique's
Candy, by Candy Ride (Arg). 1ST G1 BLACK TYPE. ($220,000
2yo '21 OBSAPR). O-Muir Hut Stables, LLC; B-St. Elias
Stables, LLC (KY); T-Mark Glatt. $80,000.
3–Wit, 122, c, 3, Practical Joke–Numero d'Oro, by Medaglia
d'Oro. ($575,000 Ylg '20 KEESEP). O-Repole Stable, St. Elias
Stable, & Gainesway Stable (Antony Beck); B-Rosilyn Polan
(KY); T-Todd A. Pletcher. $48,000.
Margins: 3/4, NO, 1 1/4. Odds: 8.20, 33.90, 1.90.
Also Ran: Handy Dandy, Cabo Spirit, St Anthony, Evan Harlan, Script, Clutch Hitter, Celestial City. Scratched: War At Sea.
Click for the Equibase.com chart or the TJCIS.com PPs. VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.

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“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to stand a horse of Mr Speaker's caliber in Texas,” said Mark Collinsworth. “He was a very talented racehorse, and he is off to a great start in his stallion career with a number of stakes horses already to his credit. With the creation of new Texas-sired stakes races this year and the purse increases we have seen recently in Texas, we are thrilled to offer a stallion with his proven credentials to Texas breeders.”

Mr Speaker is currently represented by four Northern Hemisphere crops of racing age. His top progeny to date includes Grade 1 winner Speech, who annexed the Grade 1 Ashland Stakes at Keeneland as a 3-year-old, and impressive 2021 juvenile stakes winners Speaking and Ironstone. From just 135 foals of racing age, Mr Speaker has produced average earnings of over $47,000 per starter.

A multiple graded stakes winner on dual surfaces, and an earner of over $1.2 million on the racetrack, Mr Speaker won six of his 18 careers starts and finished on the board 11 times in his career. His career highlight came in his 3-year-old season, winning the G1 Belmont Derby over an internationally renowned field that included eight graded stakes winners. In addition to his Grade 1 win, Mr. Speaker added graded stakes victories in the G2 Commonwealth Cup at Laurel Park, the G3 Lexington at Keeneland, and the G3 Dania Beach at Gulfstream Park.

Mr Speaker is from one of the last crops by sire-of-sires Pulpit and hails from a deep Phipps Stable pedigree. Out of the Unbridled mare Salute, Mr Speaker is a half-brother to Grade 3 winner Fire Away. His second dam is the undefeated, Hall-of-Fame member Personal Ensign.

Mr Speaker will stand for $5,000.

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“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to stand a horse of Mr Speaker's caliber in Texas,” said Mark Collinsworth. “He was a very talented racehorse, and he is off to a great start in his stallion career with a number of stakes horses already to his credit. With the creation of new Texas-sired stakes races this

year and the purse increases we have seen recently in Texas, we are thrilled to offer a stallion with his proven credentials to Texas breeders.”

A Phipps homebred trained by Shug McGaughey, Mr Speaker won six of 18 races and earned $1,247,544. His four black-type victories were topped by a win in the 2014 GI Belmont Derby. He previously stood at Lane's End Farm and his top progeny includes GISW Speech.

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W.S. Farish's Royal Flag (Candy Ride {Arg}) kicked off 2020 with a pair of optional claiming wins, including a half-length score at Churchill in May, before finishing third in Monmouth's GIII Molly Pitcher S. in July. Runner up in Saratoga's Aug 30 GIII Shuvee S. followed by the Lady's Secret S. at Monmouth Oct. 7, the chestnut rounded out the season with a confident score in Aqueduct's GIII Turnbackthealarm S. Nov. 7.

Juddmonte's Bonny South (Munnings) also looks to kick off her 2021 campaign Friday. Victorious in three consecutive races, capped off last spring's GII Fair Grounds Oaks, the homebred finished fourth in the Ashland before finishing runner up behind Classic winner Swiss Skydiver (Daredevil) in Saratoga's

GI Alabama S. in August. Given some time off before returning with a close-up second in the GII Black-Eyed Susan S. at Pimlico, the Brad Cox trainee closed out the year once again playing the bridesmaid–this time behind Envoutante (Uncle Mo)–in the nine-furlong GII Falls City S. at Churchill Nov. 26.

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The Tropical Park Oaks, a 1 1/16-mile turf stakes for 3-year-old fillies, highlighted Saturday's 11-race program along with the $75,000 Tropical Park Derby, a 1 1/16 turf stakes for 3-year-olds, and the $75,000 H. Allen Jerkens, a two-mile turf stakes for 3-year-olds and up.

The Shug McGaughey-trained Vigilantes Way ($7), by Medaglia d'Oro, broke alertly to take the lead heading into the first turn and never looked back, resisting mild early pressure from longshot Blue Mistress and pulling away to a 2 ¼-length victory in 1:40.61 built on fractions of 23.91 and 47.66 seconds for the first half-mile.

A half-sister to Mr Speaker, who captured the 2013 Dania Beach (G3) over the Gulfstream turf, Vigilantes Way was the second stakes winner of the day for Julien Leparoux, who guided Sir Anthony to an upset victory in the Jerkens.

“Nice day today, beautiful to win two stakes. The horses ran great, so we're happy with that, it's been a great day,” Leparoux said. “I was not expecting to be on the lead, but she broke very sharp and she was doing it very nicely. She relaxed for me on the backside and from there she was very comfortable the whole time. When I asked her in the stretch, she won nicely.”

Ask Bailey closed to finish second, a nose ahead of Speaktomeofsummer.

Vigilantes Way registered her first stakes victory Saturday in four starts on turf, which include an allowance win and two stakes placing.

“She's a half-sister to Mr. Speaker and he liked the grass, so we always had that in mind,” McGaughey said. “She's been a pleasant surprise. As a yearling, she was a little bit of a small, immature filly, and she's still small. But she's matured out and her races have all been very good.”

McGaughey said Vigilantes Way would be pointed toward another stakes at Gulfstream.

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Like many of the major Kentucky stallion operations, Lane's End has decreased its stud fees nearly across the board to account for the uncertain economy both inside and outside the Thoroughbred industry.

The 2021 roster is led by elite commercial sire Quality Road, who will stand for $150,000. The 14-year-old son of Elusive Quality's runners have been led this year by Grade 2 winners Dunbar Road and Captain Scotty, along with Grade 3 winner Bellafina and Belmont Stakes runner-up Dr Post.

Quality Road's yearlings have posted an average sale price of $354,947 in 2020.

Veteran sire Candy Ride joins Quality Road at the top of this year's Lane's End roster, standing for $75,000.

A 21-year-old son of Ride the Rails, Candy Ride has seen his banner carried this year by multiple Grade 1 winner Vekoma, Grade 2 winner Rideforthecause, and multiple Grade 1-placed Ollie's Candy.

Lane's End will add three rookie stallions to its roster in 2021, along with hot sire Daredevil, who returns stateside from Turkey.

Game Winner, the champion 2-year-old of 2018, will stand for an initial fee of $30,000. The 4-year-old Candy Ride colt went undefeated during his juvenile season, capped off by an Eclipse-clinching victory in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs.

Honor A. P. will enter stud for a fee of $15,000. A 3-year-old from the first crop of fellow Lane's End resident Honor Code, Honor A. P.'s on-track career was highlighted by a victory in the G1 Santa Anita Derby.

Rounding out the trio of newcomers is Grade 1 winner Gift Box, who will stand for $10,000. The 7-year-old Twirling Candy horse retired with earnings in excess of $1.1 million, with wins in the G1 Santa Anita Handicap, and two editions of the G2 San Antonio Stakes.

Daredevil joins the Lane's End roster in 2021 after standing the previous season in Turkey. The 8-year-old More Than Ready horse has been represented this year by Preakness Stakes winner Swiss Skydiver and Kentucky Oaks winner Shedaresthedevil, and the two star fillies filled out the Oaks exacta. Daredevil will stand for $25,000 as property of the Turkish Jockey Club.

Following is the complete list of 2021 advertised fees for the Lane's End stallion roster:

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Wednesday's auction saw 142 horses sold for revenues of $2,795,300 (Canadian), down 17 percent from last year's renewal when 157 yearlings brought $3,381,400.

The average sale price fell 8 percent to $19,685 from $21,538. However, the median price rose 11 percent on Wednesday to $14,500 after finishing at $13,000 in 2019. The buyback rate finished at 28 percent, compared with 36 percent last year.

John Di Scola purchased Wednesday's sale-topper, an Old Forester colt, for $90,000 (Canadian).

The chestnut colt, offered as Hip 15, is out of the stakes-placed Smarty Jones mare Holidaysatthefarm, who is the dam of three winners from as many runners. Bred in Ontario by Whitford Bloodstock, the colt hails from the family of Grade 2 winner Wishing Gate and Grade 3 winner Rich in Spirit.

Cara Bloodstock consigned the sale-topper, as agent.

Two horses tied for the day's second-highest price, each bringing $82,000 (Canadian).

Hip 119, a Mr Speaker filly, went Jim Menzies. The bay filly is the first foal out of the unraced Proud Citizen mare She Stands Proud, from the family Canadian champion Woodcarver and Grade 3 winners Grand Bili and Firm Dancer.

The filly was bred in Ontario by Gustav Schickedanz, and she was consigned by Hill 'n' Dale Sales Agency, agent.

Schickedanz and Hill 'n' Dale were also responsible for the other half of the second-highest price, Hip 136, a Langfuhr colt named Langstaff Road who sold to Derek Chin.

Langstaff Road is out of the stakes-placed City Zip mare Sweet Bama Breeze, whose four foals to race are all winners. He is a half-brother to stakes winner Will She and stakes-placed Sweet Grass Creek, and he is a full-sibling to stakes-placed Sweet Crimson and winner Wandofuhr.

To view the auction's full results, click here.

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As one of the original partners of the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital, Dr. Scott Pierce could scarcely have gone into breeding with fewer illusions. Yet perhaps that is precisely why he has proved so adept; why no more than 100 acres at Omega Farm, straddling the Bourbon and Scott County border, should have launched a couple of alpha males from the same crop towards Grade I prizes at Saratoga. On Saturday, Three Technique (Mr Speaker) lines up for the Allen Jerkens S.; and then, a week later, Country Grammer (Tonalist) is sizing up the Travers S. (Both races, incidentally, under the Runhappy sponsorship umbrella.)

Certainly Pierce meets in similarly wry vein the suggestion that his professional experiences might sooner have put him off.

“Actually it was quite refreshing, not having to call owners and go through all the bad news,” he says. “And it also helped me relate to what my clients were going through, because now it was happening to me too. So no, it wasn’t discouraging at all. In fact, it made you tolerate and accept when things go wrong. That’s just part of the industry, part of a natural process, part of raising a horse. Things go wrong with all living species. And, when things do go well, this industry is a lot of fun. Especially when you have a business plan, and it starts to bear fruit, and you start to watch your horses run on the weekend.”

True, the 20-year transition out of veterinary practice–these days Pierce confines himself to public auction work–into a farm owned with his wife, Debbie Spike-Pierce, was a guarantee that he would never have anything recognizably resembling “retirement”. But there’s no mistaking the accompanying fulfilment.

And that breadth of perspective, critical to both his vocations, prepares Pierce even for the times when the best of fortune is sometimes conflated with regret. When Country Grammer made a splendidly game Travers reconnaissance in the GIII Peter Pan S., he confirmed that Pierce and his team can breed and raise a good horse: perhaps he can even emulate Saoirse Abu (Mr Greeley), a dual Group 1 winner in Europe. On the other hand, there’s no getting away from the fact that Country Grammer’s dam Arabian Song (Forestry) was culled—for just $5,000, apparently to Saudi Arabia—a couple of months after her son had been sold, for $60,000, at the 2018 September Sale.

“Let me just say I have no illusions; I don’t have any problem with that,” Pierce says candidly. “As we all know, the perfect, 20/20 vision is hindsight. If we had that, we’d make a lot less mistakes in this world. That’s just life. But we’re a small farm, and small farms usually purchase lesser-valued mares. I purchased Arabian Song [privately] for very little, as a maiden mare. And I’d been a little disappointed in her first three foals to hit the races. On a small farm, when things don’t happen relatively quickly, then there’s turnover; there’s downsizing.

“If you can buy more expensive mares, they’re longer-term investments; and they require bigger stud fees. I don’t go there. That’s not been our model. It’s extremely expensive to keep mares. So small breeders like me typically tend to have more turnover. I had way too much inventory, and when it came time to be downsizing, she was one that got away. And that’s okay. You know, I’ve had clients tell me that when they look back and ask how many mares they regret selling, they can maybe count one or two out of 100. Now I did break my rule a little bit, because typically I try to let four of them get to racing age, and she’d just had three. But they were claimers.”

All that makes perfect sense. On the face of it, after all, with another $90,000 banked for her Runhappy weanling at that same Keeneland November Sale, you could argue that a nugatory initial investment had produced a perfectly acceptable yield from her stint on the farm. Both Country Grammer and the Runhappy filly, moreover, proved productive pinhooks for their purchasers, much as Pierce had promised would prove the case. Country Grammer, remember, is a May 11 foal.

“I asked quite a few 2-year-old pinhookers to go see him,” Pierce recalls. “They loved his big walk, but said he was too immature, too small, to make a 2-year-old sale. Then somebody bought him out of California, I believe–and, lo and behold, he ended up going to a 2-year-old sale. Ciaran Dunne had him and when they got $450,000 I was over the moon. That’s awesome. Those people will come back and want to buy another one from you.

“He was always a bit of a diamond in the rough, quite frankly: always a very nice individual, just not the super-obvious yearling that everyone just had to have. The mare was always bred late, which was a disadvantage because her foals were always a bit small. Always correct, but just a little immature. So he was not a great big bull. But he had that huge walk, and a great mind.”

Three Technique, sold as a weanling at the previous November Sale for $50,000, was found to have suffered a minor ankle injury after flattening into fourth in the GII Rebel S. He now reverts to seven furlongs, over which trip he twice impressed–by an aggregate 10 lengths–at the end of his juvenile campaign.

His dam has already produced Stan the Man (Broken Vow), runner-up in the GII True North S. on his latest start, and Three Technique will be going out to bat for a full brother entered in the September Sale.

“Three Technique was getting a lot of press early on so we’ll see, maybe he’ll be as good as some of the early reports,” Pierce says. “The yearling is very nice and correct, real similar to Three Technique. That mare Nite in Rome (Harlan’s Holiday), she just has lovely foals.”

Another smart sophomore from the same little Omega crop is Bank On Shea (Central Banker), winner of a $500,000 stakes in the New York Stallion Series last winter. He was bred from a $5,000 mare, another that was flipped: brought into the program for 18 months, to do a job. Bank On Shea made six figures at auction, and his dam had no pedigree that warranted longer investment. (“Thank goodness for the breeders’ fund!” exclaims Pierce.)

Even Saoirse Abu, who made $260,000 as a yearling, was bred from an unraced Florida-bred, picked up cheaply as a maiden mare. One way or another, then, it would certainly seem that Pierce has developed a shrewd eye for a horse during a career that had no roots in the Thoroughbred world.

Yes, his father was also a veterinarian, but in rural Missouri. “I knew I didn’t want to do small animals and I didn’t want to do food animals,” Pierce recalls. “So I went to Oaklawn Park as a vet student back in the early ’80s and worked for a track vet there. And I recall standing by the first turn and hearing the sound of the horses galloping by during the race. And that was my epiphany, the ‘ah-ha’ moment that said: this is for me.”

For the education of his eye, in the years since, he gives much credit to a long professional association with Mike Ryan.

“If you hang out for 30 years with probably the best agent in the world, you hope some of that rubs off,” he says. “Just in my visualizing the type of horse people want, the type to breed for. I don’t get down in the weeds with him: I’m his veterinarian, and I value our friendship. But vetting horses for him, I do see the type that he picks. That athletic horse, typically very correct. And obviously some that others tend to not choose. Mentally and physically, they have certain characteristics. A big stride. No question, he’s the best; and it’s been a privilege to work for him for so long.”

Pierce was one of a handful of partners when Rood and Riddle launched in 1985. “I was fortunate to meet Bill Rood early in my career,” he says. “And this has been a really fun endeavor: to start off with four or five of us and end up, I’ve lost count, with over 70 vets now. So it’s been fulfilling. I always say how sorry I feel for people that get up in the morning and don’t want to go to work, because I was never that person. I got tired, obviously, and wore out, but I always loved doing what I was doing.”

His veterinary career spanned a period of unprecedented advances. When Rood and Riddle opened for business, the first ultrasound pregnancy tests had been conducted only three years previously. But the restless quest of science goes on, each new answer raising new questions. The rest of us can only envy people like Pierce, viewing each breakthrough not as a conclusion but as a platform for fresh discovery.

“It’s been phenomenal, all the advancements that have occurred,” Pierce enthuses. “I started off in mare work for years, loved it, but then became interested in upper airways: there was really nothing published, we had nothing to go on. So I started to do a lot of research, and actually I’m working on another paper now.

“Technology is advancing to the point where we know now that you can miss a lot of things in the resting endoscopic exam. That’s why your ‘over-grounds’, your dynamics, are becoming so popular. We know a lot more; we know that certain airways aren’t good, and that you don’t want to buy those grade threes. But I think there’s still too much subjectivity. You can have 10 vets look at the same video, and half of them call it one thing and half call it something else.”

He rejects fears that veterinary checks are becoming too defensive, suggesting that this perception simply reflects better information.

“With the repositories now, everyone is looking at the same exam,” he says. “Obviously if you’re not happy with that, you can have your own exam performed by your vet. But I think there’s more transparency on the vetting end now. And the steroid bloods they installed, that’s another positive change. There hasn’t been a single positive reported yet. A lot of good stuff has happened.”

And that is no less true of his personal journey through the profession. Most obviously, he met Debbie at Rood and Riddle, where she took over as President/CEO two years ago. Besides being listed as co-breeders of Country Grammer, they have “bred” daughters Vivian and Audra.

“My partner in business, and partner in life,” Pierce says.

“Debbie’s helped me at sales since the mid-’90s, she’s one of the best at reading radiographs. She still helps me, goes to Tattersalls every year.”

And it was also at the “day job” that Pierce found Emma Quinn, originally his assistant but now–along with husband Dermot–indispensable to the day-to-day operation of Omega Farm.

“We started off small with just five or six mares,” Pierce says.

“And Emma and Dermot have done a great job, making the business as profitable as it could be–both with a few boarders, and in allowing me to do my thing. It’s important for the owner to have his or her boots on the ground, too: to see things, fix things, advise. But they’re the ones who have created the business, not me.

“Emma also has a little sale consignment, Garrencasey, that mostly sells off our farm; and she’s really good at that too. For years everyone has kept trying to hire her away from me, but she stuck it out–so something must be going right!”

Indeed it must. Omega may be a relative minnow: Pierce says that even around 20 mares is still too many. But this is a consignment that deserves attention. Its graduates are given a foundation that allows them to keep thriving. Pinhookers were able to get Country Grammer, Three Technique and Stan the Man for an aggregate $192,000, before selling them on for $780,000.

Pierce and his crew don’t cram these animals with supplements. They just try to raise a healthy, robust animal, physically competent for the next stage of its education. “We try to do things as naturally as possible,” says Pierce. “We try not to have an extended period in the stalls, etc. They’re not raised rough, they’re well cared for, but they’re raised naturally.”

So nobody is trying to be reinvent the wheel here. Cloth is cut according to resources, and it’s a case of keep things sufficiently shipshape to ride out the bumps in the tide.

“The way the small guy gets lucky is breeding to a new stallion in his second or third year and hoping he hits before the stud fees go up dramatically,” Pierce says. “But there’s downsides that go with that. A lot of stallions don’t hit, and you’re also buying mares you hope to make from scratch. So I’m pretty satisfied with our little program. We’re just waiting on our next Grade I winner, and I hope Country Grammer could be the one.”

If he is, then Pierce is seasoned enough to shrug off his dam’s exit. No farm, of any size, can afford to keep rolling every single dice; can persevere indefinitely with every mare just in case one of her ugly ducklings turns out a swan. The bigger picture is that the emergence, from so small a farm, of two legitimate Grade I contenders in consecutive weekends must be welcomed as a symbol of hope for anyone operating at the unforgiving margins of the business.

“It’s a win for the small guy,” Pierce says. “Kudos to the people that got lucky and bought Arabian Song. Hopefully we’ll have more in the pipeline. We’ve had a bit of success on this lower end, we’re very happy with how it’s going, and feel pretty good about the future. We’ve some really good 2-year-olds coming out, some nice yearlings. So I’m pretty encouraged. And it’s a lot of fun to watch these horses you’ve raised. There’s camaraderie, and congratulations, and relationships. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s fun when you see that the small guy can occasionally jump up there and be a winner.”

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Yes she did. Because you would have had to strain your ears pretty hard to catch the hint, the time Rice saw a young New York-bred mare by Freud in the back ring at the 2015 Fasig-Tipton February Sale. Scribbling Sarah had won a Saratoga maiden as a 3-year-old, but that was her only success in 11 starts and she had last been sighted, under a $5,000 tag, down the field at Finger Lakes. But while Rice was not born into the game, and has only ever dabbled with breeding on a very small scale, over the years she had gleaned plenty of insight from her in-laws–a respected clan of horsemen and women, now extended by two sons and a daughter raised with ex-husband Wayne: Adam and Kevin, both talented trainers; and Taylor, a prolific jockey before her marriage to Jose Ortiz. And Scribbling Sarah somehow struck a chord.

“She had the walk,” Rice remembers. “She had that big Quarter Horse hip that the Rices have taught me to like. And the deep girth. Nice angles. All the things I had learned to look for, with Mr. Gladwell as well. I worked for him for a bunch of years, too.”

She sent in her son Adam to check over the mare. There was a bit of an issue in her hindquarters, which transpired to be a muscle tear.

“I found that out later, but I could see there was something going on,” Rice says. “But I’m like, ‘Well, that’s nothing. That’s not a problem.’ She was a sister to two graded stakes-placed horses and I thought, ‘This is a good enough page for me to sell babies for $50,000, maybe $100,000, if I get the right hot, new stallion. Let’s buy her.'”

She promptly did so, the docket in the name of second husband Bobby Jones, for $7,500. That same summer, Scribbling Sarah’s page gained a first new ornament when her full-sister was placed in black-type company at Saratoga. But her big break traces to the following spring, after the mare had delivered her first foal by Adios Charlie.

At the time she bought her, Rice had no idea that Scribbling Sarah had for a time been trained by Wayne’s sister Linda. In choosing the mare’s next covering, however, she did get an inside track.

“I had a budget and didn’t want to go over $10,000,” she explains. “So I put them all in the pot and did my research. I looked at all those matching programs, and Pulpit over Storm Cat is a really good cross. And my son-in-law Jose had ridden Mr Speaker in a race or two, so I called him and asked what he thought of the horse.”

Ortiz gave her plenty of encouragement, and the horse’s pedigree sealed the deal. Though his best form came on turf, notably a success in the GI Belmont Derby Invitational S., the Phipps homebred is kin to a number of dirt champions: he is out of a daughter of champion Personal Ensign named Salute (Unbridled), runner-up in the GII Demoiselle S. and half-sister to three Grade I winners (plus one Grade I runner-up) on dirt. These include My Flag (Easy Goer), whose multiple elite wins included the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies–a race also won by her daughter Storm Flag Flying (Storm Cat).

Since Scribbling Sarah was herself a turf sprinter, however, Rice was prepared for the probability that the filly she delivered by Mr Speaker the following February would end up on the grass too.

“So here’s my thinking,” she says. “Every year I can sell the babies or, if I end up keeping them, my kids are training at Presque Isle Downs, with its synthetic track. So they can race this horse for me, if needed. Because you know, you’ve got to have plans B, C and D!”

That shows the domestic scale of Rice’s breeding program, which until this week comprised a grand total of two mares. The other is a daughter of Grand Slam claimed at Presque Isle by Kevin for $5,000. Now, however, Scribbling Sarah has suddenly become simply too valuable to retain.

Rice sold her Mr Speaker filly as a short yearling, through Summerfield at the OBS Winter Sale, for $65,000 to First Finds. Wisely retained as a $95,000 RNA at the Fasig-Tipton July Sale, she then realized $190,000 from Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners when consigned to OBS March last year by SBM Training & Sales.

Rice was delighted when Scribbling Sarah’s daughter, meanwhile named Speech, won a maiden at Los Alamitos in December; and still more so, when she got herself black type as runner-up in the GIII Santa Ysabel S. Then she consecutively took on the two leading fillies of the crop: running Gamine (Into Mischief) to a neck in an Oaklawn allowance (subsequently awarded the prize on the winner’s contentious lidocaine positive); and then getting a Grade II podium behind Swiss Skydiver (Daredevil) in the Santa Anita Oaks. All very welcome accomplishments in a second foal. But then, at Keeneland 10 days ago, Speech sent her dam’s value through the roof: she not only won the GI Central Bank Ashland S., but broke the track record.

Speech, then, is one of those rare Thoroughbreds for whom everyone has been a winner, offering productive value for her purchasers at every stage. (These, meanwhile, include Madaket Stables, who made a private deal to enter partnership with Eclipse.) But the ultimate dividend, for her breeder, is now the chance to cash in a dam who is still only 10 years old. A contract with WinStar Farm was signed a couple of days ago, through the agency of BSW Bloodstock.

“I mean, this is a life changer for me,” Rice says candidly. “I can’t turn down good money. But I’m like, ‘Okay, if I sell her, I’ll just do it again.’ When I started with my first mare, maybe 15 years ago now, my goal was to do what I could within my budget and just keep upgrading, upgrading, upgrading. Well, this was like the flash in the pan, the ultimate upgrading, all in one minute and 41 seconds.

“For a small breeder like me, this is really fantastic. I am just ecstatic, and so grateful to everyone involved in raising, breaking and training Speech: from the wonderful people who bought her from me, to SBM who sold her to Eclipse, and of course the trainer who has her now [Michael McCarthy]. What a great job everyone has done with this filly, every step of the way.”

But it was Rice herself who set Speech on the right path. At the time, she was still married to Jones and–with his mares and boarders also on site–could measure her progress against a bunch of other foals.

“She was always so pretty, and showed us her class even when she was just tiny,” Rice says. “Her mother, out in the field, was kind of leader of the whole group of mares. And then when we weaned the filly, she took on the same attitude. She was always number one in the feeder pen. But the funny part is that when the babies would start to run, she would just pick up her head and kind of lope along at the back of the pack, nice and easy. If she needed to, she’d sprint to the front, but she really never showed that she wanted to be out there. She was beautiful and all, but the way she acted in the field, she didn’t really have that ‘go, go, go’ like a lot of them do. Yet here she is, three years later, and beats them all up.”

She gives much credit to Kathie Maybee in Kentucky, who takes her mares to be bred back and sends the babies home with immaculate manners. But Rice must have quite a knack of her own, judging from her record with only three other mares up to this point. One was a $2,000 mare who produced a graded stakes-placed earner of $350,000; another, a gift from a client of Linda Rice, came up with two black-type performers who earned $450,000 between them.

Scribbling Sarah herself is now back with Maybee, having last week tested in foal to West Coast, but her yearling colt by Unified is with Rice on an 18-acre farm north of Ocala acquired by Taylor and Jose. Rice laughs that she is there “to mow their grass” but you can hear in her voice how much she loves the environment, and raising a colt that is now a half-brother to a Grade I winner.

“He’s a cute little thing,” she says. “Not huge, just average size, but he’s beautiful. The mare throws pretty foals every time. But he’s an April foal and just wasn’t big enough to be put in the November Sale [last year]. And now I know why! God’s looking out for me again: ‘You need to wait to sell this foal.’ Maybe now he’ll get big and tall. But if not, I’ll put him in a 2-year-olds in training sale next spring.”

Sadly, Scribbling Sarah lost a Midnight Lute foal this year; while her 2-year-old Upstart colt was sold relatively cheaply. He was entered at OBS just three days after the Ashland but was scratched. “Niall Brennan said he really liked the colt,” reports Rice. “And he said that before the filly won the Grade I.”

But such are the habitual, uneven fortunes of this business–more than redressed, clearly, by this sudden home run. It’s a story that gives renewed hope to anyone who can stretch to 75 banknotes for a mare.

Certainly Rice, a schoolteacher’s daughter, could never have imagined any such denouement when bumping into Wayne, a few years after he had quit her high school to become a jockey.

“He took me to the barns at Penn National in my platform shoes and dress pants,” Rice recalls. “And I was like, ‘You want me to walk in there?! That’s mud.’ But then he taught me how to clean a stall. And when I touched the horses, and experienced those babies learning to run, that was so exciting for me. To see a 2-year-old after the first breeze of their life, coming back to the barn with their eyes big, just all lit up. That took my heart, and it’s been my passion ever since.”

Needless to say, Rice’s principal pride as a “breeder” on the Turf will always remain her children. Taylor was runner-up for an Eclipse Award, as an apprentice jockey, and “pretty much self-taught, just a natural” according to her mother. With Ortiz as “sire”, moreover, Taylor’s two children have certainly been bred to keep the dynasty going.

“And Kevin has two children as well, carrying on the family name,” Rice says. “Those kids have horses, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, pot-bellied pigs and a goose! And Adam has done very well for himself, by winning races and selling 2-year-olds; and older horses, too, like Shekky Shebaz (Cape Blanco {Ire}), who was placed at the Breeders’ Cup last year. [Third in the GI Turf Sprint.] Both my boys are blessed to be making a fine living buying, breaking, training and selling.”

But Rice has now secured a professional legacy in the business, too. If Scribbling Sarah now warrants the kind of covering fees that can only be sustained by a bigger program, an umbilical connection of pride will endure.

“She’ll still be mine,” Rice says. “And I’ll call her ‘my mare’ the way I call Speech ‘my filly’. People can say: ‘She’s not yours, you sold her as a yearling.’ But I pulled her out of her mother.

“I wish WinStar the very best with Scribbling Sarah and her future foals. There were so many people calling to buy her, and I sincerely thank God, the buyers, the underbidders and my advisors for looking out for my best interest. This has been a true blessing, an exciting and life-changing experience.”

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