Hall of Fame trainer Neil Drysdale, currently overseeing a stable of six horses at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y., said last-out Grade 1 Jaipur winner Oleksandra looked sharp in her six-furlong breeze Sunday in 1:14.04 on Big Sandy in preparation for the Grade 1 Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint.
“She's doing very well,” said Drysdale. “She doesn't need speed because she's very fast. She worked in company behind another horse and started a half dozen lengths back and finished well.”
The ultra-consistent Animal Kingdom mare, Team Valor homebred, sports a record of 15-7-3-3 with purse earnings of $537,353. She rallied from last to beat the boys in the six-furlong Jaipur on June 20.
Oleksandra has worked six times on the Belmont main since October 2, including a trio of half-furlong breezes in close succession, ahead of a strong five-furlong effort in 1:01.58 last week.
“That was because of the layoff to get her fit,” said Drysdale regarding the busy work pattern. “We gave her some small easy works and then we've only done two serious works – this one and the last one.”
Oleksandra won the Grade 3 Buffalo Trace Franklin County in October 2019 in her only start at Keeneland.
“She's won down there and if it comes up a bit soft she doesn't mind,” said Drysdale.
A six-time Breeders' Cup winner, Drysdale won the 1992 Belmont Stakes with A.P. Indy and added a Kentucky Derby win to his ledger in 2000 with Fusaichi Pegasus.
One of the early mileposts for just about any racehorse purchased at a 2-year-olds in training auction is to finish that season with a win in a Breeders' Cup race.
By that standard, Tasso's road from the sale ring to the Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner's circle was an unmitigated success, making him the first 2-year-old sale graduate to win the race in the same year. By the standards of a commercialmarket racing prospect, Tasso was an economic dud whose true value would only be appreciated after his time in the ring.
From the first crop of Grade 1 winner Fappiano, Tasso was bred in Florida by Timothy Sams of Waldemar Farm and his business partner Gerald Robins. The same operation had produced Hall of Famer Foolosh Pleasure a decade earlier. Both men owned five shares in Fappiano, purchased during his racing career, meaning their incentive to get the stallion off to a fast start was high.
The Waldemar Farm consignment had a pair of Fappiano colts on offer for the 1984 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Yearling Sale, with the first selling to $250,000 – the most anyone paid for a foal by the stallion at the marquee auction. Tasso, on the other hand, was brought home after hammering at $50,000, under his reserve.
In the months that followed, Tasso was trained toward the 1985 Fasig-Tipton Florida Selected 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale at Calder Race Course. After being the less-impressive half of the Fappiano tag team among Waldemar's Saratoga consignment a year earlier, the bad luck continued for the colt who was cataloged as Hip 1; a notoriously hard spot for a horse to maximize its value, while buyers are still straggling onto the sales grounds, finding their seats, or saving their bullets for later offerings or sessions.
Sams knew he was going to be up against it in that spot, so called in a favor from prominent owner Bertram Firestone, a Virginia-based horseman who earned the 1980 Eclipse Award for outstanding owner with his wife Diana. That early in the sale's proceedings, Sams knew he'd need someone to prime the pump for him.
“Bert is a good friend of ours, and I saw him in the walking ring before the sale and asked him if he would bid this horse up to $100,000 for us,” Sams said in a 1985 interview with BloodHorse. “He said 'Sure.' Then he came up to me later and asked me if I liked the colt, and I told him that I did. He suggested that we send the horse to Aiken to Marvin Greene and see what Marvin thought about him, and said 'If Marvin likes him maybe we can make a deal.'”
The colt went to South Carolina to begin his formal racetrack training, but an injury kept him on the shelf for much of his time there, Greene decided there wasn't room for him in his barn, and Firestone walked away from the arrangement.
Newspapers reported that Tasso's beleaguered owners spent more time trying to shop the horse out for private sale, but at some point, a juvenile has to prove himself on the racetrack to be worth selling. Tasso was placed in the California barn of Neil Drysdale, and he made his debut in May of his 2-year-old season, three months after his trip through the sale ring at Calder.
Tasso quickly cast aside whatever the buying public failed to see in him, winning five of seven starts during his juvenile year. Showing the ability to win from a deep close or a stalking trip in the preceding starts, Tasso earned his first major win in the G1 Del Mar Futurity. The going was much smoother two starts later when he dusted the G2 Breeders' Futurity at Keeneland by six lengths.
The colt was not nominated to the second-ever Breeders' Cup in 1985, but his purse earnings from his Breeders' Futurity rout were just enough to cover the $120,000 late entry fee, ensuring him a spot in the gate at Aqueduct.
Despite coming into the race off an impressive victory, Tasso left the gate in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile as the field's third choice. Everyone looked up to even-money favorite Mogambo, a homebred for Peter Brant who obliterated the G1 Champagne Stakes by 9 3/4 lengths, and beat several of the field's hopefuls in the process.
The betting public's second choice was Storm Cat, a Grade 1 winner who appeared to have the race in hand after a well-placed stalking trip until the very last jump, when Tasso and jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. completed a wide-running closing move to outkick the future superstar sire by a nose. Mogambo never threatened, and ran sixth.
The Breeders' Cup win later clinched Tasso's case for the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male of 1985.
Tasso wasn't the first graduate of a 2-year-old sale to win a Breeders' Cup race. That honor went to Wild Again, the winner of the inaugural Breeders' Cup Classic, who was an RNA during the 1982 Fasig-Tipton juvenile sale at Calder. However, Tasso's victory was proof of concept that a young horse could go through the ring at a 2-year-olds in training sale and win at the fledgling marquee event just a few months later. The fact that he was essentially unwanted at the sale is just icing on the cake.
Tasso continued to race into his 4-year-old season, but he never won another graded stakes contest after his juvenile season.
He retired to Lane's End in Kentucky for the 1988 breeding season, but he never found significant footing at stud domestically. Tasso finished his stud career in Saudi Arabia at Al Janadriyah Farm, an operation once owned by the late King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz that became a popular stop for visiting U.S. presidents.
E Five Racing Thoroughbreds' Rushing Fall will chase history Saturday when she headlines a field of eight fillies and mares for the 32nd running of the $350,000 Coolmore Jenny Wiley (G1) going 1 1/16 miles on the turf at Keeneland.
The Coolmore Jenny Wiley will be the eighth race on Saturday's 10-race program with a 4:57 p.m. post time.
Trained by three-time race winner Chad Brown, Rushing Fall will be trying to join Intercontinental (GB) (2004-2005) as the only repeat winner of the race. With a victory Saturday, Rushing Fall would join Lady Eli and Beholder as the only horses since 1976 to win Grade 1 races at ages 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Regular rider Javier Castellano, who has been aboard for Rushing Fall's four previous stakes victories at Keeneland, has the call Saturday and will break from post position four. Only Wise Dan has won more Keeneland stakes (seven) than Rushing Fall, who shares the second spot with Take Charge Lady.
Invading from California are Fox Hill Farms' Jolie Olimpica (BRZ) and Ken Baca, Edward Hudson Jr. and Lynne Hudson's Toinette.
Trained by Richard Mandella, Jolie Olimpica has won five of six career starts with her most recent victory coming in the Monrovia (G2) at Santa Anita in May. Mike Smith the mount and will break from post six.
Toinette, who came off a six-month layoff to win the Wilshire (G3) in her 2020 debut, owns a victory over Rushing Fall with a neck triumph in the 2018 Edgewood (G3) at Churchill Downs. Trained by Neil Drysdale, Toinette will be ridden by Flavien Prat and break from post eight.
The field for the Coolmore Jenny Wiley, with riders from the inside, is: Secret Message (John Velazquez), Juliet Foxtrot (GB) (Luis Saez), La Signare (FR) (Ricardo Santana Jr.), Rushing Fall (Castellano), Mucho Unusual (Julien Leparoux), Jolie Olimpica (BRZ) (Smith), Altea (FR) (Joel Rosario), Toinette (Prat). All starters will carry 118 pounds.
Team Valor International's Oleksandra came out of her Grade 1 victory over males in the Grade 1 Jaipur Stakes in good shape, except for a nick on a lower front limb as a result of runner-up Kanthaka bearing into her at the break.
Trainer Neil Drysdale has decided to leave her at Belmont Park instead of returning her to Southern California. She will point for the Grade 3 Troy Stakes going 5 1/2 furlongs on grass for a $200,000 purse on the Travers Stakes undercard on Aug. 8 at Saratoga.
The 6-year-old daughter of Animal Kingdom may have one more race before contesting the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint at Keeneland.
“That will be her last race for Team Valor,” said Barry Irwin of Team Valor International. “She will be offered for sale after the BC at an auction in Kentucky with an as-yet undetermined agent.”
William Nader of the Hong Kong Racing Club tendered an invitation to the mare for “the world's richest turf sprint on December 13” so it is possible the mare's new owner could race her there or in Dubai over the winter before sending her off to the breeding shed.
Oleksandra became the first Australian-bred to win a Grade 1 in North America since the Pattern Race scheme went into being in 1974.
Her 101 Beyer Speed Figure was bettered on Saturday's Belmont Stakes card only by runaway Grade 1 Acorn Stakes winner Gamine.
