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Colin Brennan Gets Fast Start at Keeneland September

Colin Brennan hit a home run with the first horse to represent his consignment during its inaugural appearance at the Keeneland September Sale when he sold a $55,000 pinhook for $100,000 during the eighth session of the sale.

Brennan purchased the Flatter filly out of stakes-placed Summer Reading (Hard Spun) at last year's Keeneland November Sale.

Before the yearling went through the ring on Tuesday, Brennan walked alongside his pinhook prospect for the long trek to the sales pavilion and discussed how he was first drawn to the filly after working with her half-sister at his father Niall's training operation.

“Dad and I pinhooked her sister Very Scary (Connect) last year and she had quite a bit of ability,” Brennan explained. “Then I saw this one at Keeneland November and she fell within our price range. She was a bit immature and narrow at the time, but looked like she had the potential to grow into a pretty filly. She has really blossomed and of course you can't go wrong with Flatter.”

Brennan was greeted by a chorus of well-wishes from fellow horsemen as the filly entered the back walking ring. The consignor has already sold at various auctions in the past two years, but he didn't deny that there is something special about offering his first horse at Keeneland September.

“We're in the big leagues now,” he said with a smile before the filly stepped into the sales ring. “It's always on a young consignor's to-do list to be able to sell at Keeneland, so this is pretty cool”

Hoping to get within a target range of $75,000 to $100,000, Brennan was more than content when the filly hit six figures and sold to Granpollo Stables. Later in the sale, Colin Brennan Bloodstock sent four additional yearlings through the ring including an Audible filly that Brennan pinhooked at Keeneland November for $35,000 and sold during Book 4 for $95,000.

Establishing a consignment of his own has been a dream come true for Brennan, who can pinpoint the exact moment when he decided he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps by making his career in racing.

Three generations of Brennans on the job | photo courtesy Colin Brennan

“I remember working the Miami Calder sale with my dad when I was 13 and I told him that this is what I wanted to do for a living,” Brennan recalled. “Growing up, it has always been a family affair. My mom [Jolane Weeks] was a large Florida breeder and we would foal out 100 to 150 head of mares each year. I grew up working a lot with her, but also at my dad's farm doing the 2-year-old sales. I learned a lot from both of them.”

After graduating from the Godolphin Flying Start program a decade later, Brennan joined Stonestreet Stables as a traveling assistant trainer for several years and then returned home to Ocala to be an assistant trainer at Niall Brennan Stables.

While working for his father, Brennan began pinhooking a few weanlings to yearlings of his own. On top of helping develop the 2-year-olds each day, he would hand walk all of his yearlings himself, often putting in over 30 miles on foot under the Florida sun every day.

“It was exhausting,” he said with an easy laugh. “There weren't enough hours in the day. Eventually when my son was born, that was the ultimate deciding factor. I had started buying more and more weanlings to yearlings and I thought that this was more of a conducive lifestyle to be with my family.”

While focusing on his own operation does allow Brennan a touch more flexibility, he said he has always been drawn to the yearlings in particular.

“I enjoy raising horses and seeing the changes that they go through,” he said. “I like being able to shape them physically and mentally and have an impact on their development. This was always something that I thought I would like to give a try, and I'm still able to go visit at Dad's and have some useful input at the 2-year-old sales.”

Brennan credits his father and Mike Ryan for the eye he has developed for scoping out future stars.

“I think of all the influences I've had, they would be the two biggest in terms of sales and selecting horses,” he explained. “It's about [looking for] an overall quality in their mindset and their demeanor. I look for an active, fluid mover that gives you a good energy. Of course you also have to understand who your end user will be and envision where they would fit in the market, but ultimately I'm looking for a big mover with a real athletic feel to them.”

With his first Keeneland September consignment under his belt, Brennan said he hopes his operation continues to grow from here.

“Long term, I would like to increase the quality,” he said. “I don't ever want to be a very large consignment. I would like to keep my numbers well under control and be able to offer quality over quantity at the major sales. I hope to be able to provide people with confidence that we've raised and prep a good horse.”

The post Colin Brennan Gets Fast Start at Keeneland September appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Keeneland Ringman Sends First Pinhook Through Sales Ring

Of all the pinhookers at this year's Keeneland September Sale, DeJuan Smith has definitely taken the most hands-on approach. While some sellers might watch anxiously from the back ring or in a seat in the sales pavilion, Smith will quite literally be on the shank of his own horse as it goes through the sales ring.

Smith is a ringman for Keeneland and also a show person for Taylor Made Sales. On Thursday Hip 3452, his first pinhook project, will sell with Taylor Made.

Could Smith be the first person to ever handle his own horse in the esteemed Keeneland sales ring? Quite possibly.

Smith has led hundreds–if not thousands–of horses through the ring, but will he be nervous for this particular sale?

“Yes,” the horseman said without a moment's hesitation. “I just want people to like him and for him to go to a good home.”

Smith's pinhook is by Palace Malice and out of Fiery Pulpit (Pulpit). The colt's female family features several stakes horses including Grade I stakes-placed Edwards Going Left (Midnight Lute).

“He has a good mind and he's a very strong horse,” Smith explained. “He covers the ground with a nice, big walk and he's balanced through his shoulder and hip.”

Smith leads a million-dollar yearling through the ring during Book 1 of Keeneland September | Keeneland

Smith and his wife Madeline have had a long-term goal of getting involved in the pinhooking game. They decided to take action at this year's Keeneland January Sale. Smith knew he would not have time to peruse the sales grounds looking at horses himself since he would be busy showing at the Taylor Made consignment in the mornings and then working as a ringman throughout the day, so he asked Mark Taylor to pick out a few prospects. They ended up with the Palace Malice colt, a $23,000 purchase, as well as a Preservationist colt who is from the family of champion Halfbridled (Unbridled) and will sell as Hip 4010 on the final day of the sale this week.

Both yearlings have developed at the Smiths' home in Florida, where the couple meticulously prepped them for the sale themselves.

“We've broke them too,” Smith said. “They're already ready for a rider. We probably took a month off of training for someone when they purchase these horses. They love apples and carrots and peppermints. Most yearlings don't know about treats like that, but my wife has them eating out of your hand. When you look at these yearlings and see how good they look, that's all her. That's not Show Sheen. It's just natural shine from her grooming them.”

Smith, who has built an impressive resume in the industry since he first got started in 2008, is the only member of his family to be involved in the sport. He described how his childhood in New York City was a drastically different environment than where he is today.

“We didn't have anything,” he said. “It was my mom, my brother and me and we were living between shelters and moving around the city a lot. My mom had some personal issues so we eventually had to go with her sister for a bit until she got straightened out.”

Smith was a self-described 'knucklehead' as a teenager, but when he and his family moved to Virginia, it was there that he was introduced to horse racing.

At a party, he met the son of Dale Jenkins, brother of legendary show jumper and trainer Rodney Jenkins. Smith was instantly interested in the business and began helping his new friend turn out horses and scrub water buckets.

Smith said his favorite job in racing is riding, exclaiming that he has, 'A need for speed!' | photo courtesy DeJuan Smith

He began working as a groom at various farms and major sales, and eventually claimed a horse for $500 at Charles Town. The filly won several races and when it came time for her to retire, Smith decided to teach himself how to ride.

“Nobody ever has time to teach you,” he said. “So I just watched what other people did. I'm perceptive in that way.”

From there, he looked to get involved with the 2-year-old sales.

“I knew how to ride and had been working the yearling sales, but it's very hard to get in when people haven't seen you ride,” he said. “Eventually Kip Elser [Kirkwood Stables] gave me a shot. I'm still an assistant trainer for him to this day. At the time he had some difficult horses and people saw how I handled them, so it kind of gave me a name.”

When Smith wanted to try his hand on the racetrack, he spent several summers exercise riding in Saratoga for Todd Pletcher and Jonathan Thomas, riding the likes of Grade I winners Audible, Always Dreaming and Catholic Boy. It was there that he met his wife Madeline, who was working for trainer Jeremiah Englehart.

While riding is easily his favorite job amongst all the many hats he has worn, Smith said that he and his wife hope that their pinhooks this week at Keeneland September will serve as the launching point for them to get more involved in the sales arena. Smith doesn't spend much time shadowing bloodstock agents or watching the sales from the sidelines. Instead he prefers to learn in action as he shows horses at Taylor Made and works as a ringman.

“Even when you're doing stuff like that, you're meeting people and they're telling you about confirmation and pedigrees and everything,” he explained. “The more you're around it, the more you learn. Right now I'm trying to learn the sales business and make a bit of money. I still have a lot to learn, but I think I'm pretty good at the confirmation part.”

Once the Keeneland September Sale concludes, Smith will catch a flight west to help run a consignment for the Fasig-Tipton California Fall Yearlings and Horses of Racing Age Sale. From there, he'll be in Florida for the OBS October Sale and then will head back to Kentucky for the fall breeding stock sales. After that it's back home to Ocala, where 2-year-old consignors are already clamoring for his help leading into the juvenile sales season.

Smith explained that he is a completely different person than he was before he got involved in racing and he credits people like Mark Taylor and John Hall, the late, longtime yearling manager for Taylor Made, who have helped him along the way.

“With racing, I learned that trying to be a good person and staying humble gets you farther than trying to always be looking for your next quick move,” he said. “Ever since I started with the sales, people like Mark and John Hall have been life-changing people. Their presence inspires you to do well.”

Aside from the Smiths, no one will be more excited to watch this pair of pinhooks go through the ring than Mark Taylor.

“I have a lot of respect for DeJuan,” Taylor said. “He's very loyal, smart and hard working. He's everything you would want from someone working for you, and now the fact that he owns horses is great. One of the great things about this business is that it gives the opportunity for people who have started at the bottom and have an entrepreneurial spirit to take that step and become participants. We're going to be working hard so we can help him have a good sale.”

“We're not expecting to make a fortune,” Smith said. “But we're hoping to make a return so we can get another one.”

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A Pinhook to Justify Parrish Principles

You can do all those other things, if you like: expensive supplements and therapies, scans and samples. But none of it will do the slightest good unless your horse can trust its weight to the soles of its four feet.

Last September, veteran horseman G.W. Parrish was as usual scouting the later books at the Keeneland September sale for yearlings to pinhook through the small farm he operates at High Springs, Florida, along with wife Karen and daughter Kristin.

In the Gainesway consignment, he came across a gray colt by Justify. Lurking as low as Hip 1442, he obviously wasn't considered in the first rank of the Triple Crown winner's debut crop. The colt's dam had certainly appeared deserving of that level of cover, as a daughter of Tapit who had won the GII Pocahontas S. by five lengths. But she had been a disappointing broodmare so far, and her son was frankly lacking in size. Rather more seriously, he also appeared to be afflicted by some kind of deformity on a hoof.

As a result, most people were putting a line straight through his page. But Parrish took a closer look, and realized that it was the result of some adhesive repair treatment and essentially pretty superficial.

“He had some Equilox on the front of one foot, and it did look ugly,” Parrish recalls. “But I've been a blacksmith all my life, and I figured I could fix it. There was some white line, that was all. Most of the horses I get from Kentucky will have a spot of that and you can just grow it out.”

He cast his mind back to the time, a decade or so previously, when he had bought a Roman Ruler colt at the same auction for $4,000.

“With that horse, it looked like he was club footed on one foot,” Parish recalls. “But I thought, this horse just wore his toe off, where the blacksmith had tried to put a shoe on an intorsion. So I got him home and I kept that shoe on him for two months, and when OBS came to select for the February Sale, as it was back then, they said: 'How did you buy this Roman Ruler so cheap?' So I told them about the club foot, and they looked at him and said, 'Which foot was it?' And I said, 'Well I don't remember now!' You really couldn't tell anymore, it had just grown out. And as soon as they left, I took the shoe off, trimmed his feet, and just took care of them the rest of the time through.”

Dogwood Stable bought that colt for $100,000 and he won a maiden special weight at Saratoga on Travers Day.

Karen and G.W. Parrish | Courtesy of the Parrish family

So once again Parrish, 73, called on his decades of experience–for a long time he had trained at places like Atlantic City and Hialeah, getting to understand how to keep cheap horses sound–and took a gamble on the Justify colt. Nonetheless he was astonished when the bidding stopped at $25,000, one-sixth of his sire's opening fee.

“I could have doubled my money on the day I bought him,” Parrish admits. “Mark Casse offered me $50,000, but I'd have paid that for him myself. I was so surprised when they knocked him down to me. I just got lucky, because I thought he was a really nice colt, a super mover. Obviously Gainesway are pretty good at putting them in the right spot, and I guess he was a little small. But still with his pedigree, that shouldn't have stopped him. I guess it was just a case of getting the right advice about that foot. You'd think people could see that it could be fixed okay. It was always going to grow out, just like a fingernail would.”

Parrish took the Justify colt back to Florida, removed the shoe and trimmed the foot. “And I just kept him barefoot all winter,” he explains. “The foot grew out fine, wasn't anything wrong with it. Once I got the shoe off, I wasn't too worried. We're lucky, where my farm is: we don't have any rocks, and the track is really good, so I can train all my horses barefoot. I could just let his foot grow back. In fact, when I took him to the sale, that was the first time he'd had shoes on since September.”

Everything the colt had done in the meantime was heartening. He grew taller and stronger, and took to tack like a natural.

“He grew extremely well,” Parrish says. “He made a 16-hand horse, having been barely 15, I'd say, when I bought him. Grew at least four or five inches taller. And he just trained perfect all winter. He was the first horse we trained every morning, and nearly every time the rider would come back and say, 'You know, this is a really nice horse.' He wasn't scared of anything, he'd gallop right on. He had a really good mind, and just seemed to have this extra endurance. He never got tired.”

It was the same at OBS: he was just as sprightly when shown at the end of the day–and, indeed, just as eager to take a nip at Parrish–as he had been first thing in the morning.

Parrish had driven his six-strong draft into the grounds on Mar. 1, as he likes to complete his preparations over the track there.

“So I prepped him, and he went, like, 11 flat; 10-and-three; and the three-eighths in 34-and-2,” Parrish says. “I was on the podium on the backside, chatting with Jimbo Gladwell. And he said, 'I think your rider might need some help!' He was having trouble slowing him down, and they went right by me before I could get out there in front of him. And he ended up going all the way round the track again. He wasn't running off, just didn't want to stop. I knew then that he'd go a quarter! His endurance was just phenomenal.”

Some of the agents and the other consignors had witnessed that unscheduled extra exertion. The word was soon out. Sure enough, the colt clocked :20.4 in his breeze show, and was caught galloping out in :32.2 and :46.1.

“Pretty good for a baby,” Parrish remarks. “And switched leads on his own, like he always has.”

In the end, then, he had turned into just the type of youngster you would hope to get from a mating between Justify and a Tapit mare. And Rosedown Racing Stables/Oracle Bloodstock duly put their name to a $425,000 docket, 17 times more than he had cost six months previously.

At this stage of a long career in the game, Parrish is not one to be carried away. Only last year, after all, he pinhooked a $34,000 Midnight Storm yearling to realize $310,000 at OBS April. (Named India Ink, that colt recently won his maiden at Tampa Bay for Peachtree Stable and trainer Vicki Oliver.) But this was nonetheless a coup that deserves celebrating–based, as it was, on old-fashioned precepts of horsemanship.

For a time Parrish had emulated his father as a trainer of Quarter Horses, and his initial exposure to Thoroughbreds included galloping at $3 a head for Noel Hickey at Irish Acres. Earlier he had also had a formative experience at the Morven Park riding school operated at Leesburg, Virginia, by the ex-cavalry officer and Olympic eventing coach Major John (Joe) Lynch.

“That was 1968,” Parrish recalls. “I was 20-years-old and that was one of the best things I ever did, the year I spent with him. I rode some really good three-day eventers there. I don't gallop the horses much anymore. Used to, for years and years, but not at the age I am now. But I still break them myself, and pony them. We try to start all our babies by ponying them, until they jog well, get a good mouth on them, get used to the pony. We live right here on the farm, it's only 50 acres, so it's all pretty hands-on.”

Parrish and his family quit the racetrack some 15 or 20 years ago, and settled north of Ocala in a district that is, relatively speaking, something of a backwater in the local horse industry. Between their own investments, a few others made in partnership, and pre-training projects for a handful of clients, Parrish Farms will reckon to process only around 25 head of horse every year. But plenty of good performers have shown the benefits of their grounding here.

2018 Flower Bowl winner Fourstar Crook was a Parrish grad | Sarah Andrew

Fourstar Crook (Freud), whose GI Flower Bowl S. success crowned a $1.6-million career for Chad Brown, was sent here as a $55,000 Saratoga New York yearling purchase by Allied Bloodstock (sold on for $110,000). Stormy Embrace (Circular Quay) was broken here for Matalona Thoroughbreds before winning the GII Princess Rooney S. twice. And Hull (Holy Bull) for a time looked one of the best sophomores of 2009 in winning his first three, including the GIII Derby Trial at Churchill.

Horses on this farm tend to have been dredged from the lower reaches of the market. But Parrish's work with the Justify colt shows what can be done, if you go beyond the superficial judgements reached by people in a hurry, and then apply tried-and-tested principles of husbandry.

“I think when you've trained Quarter Horses, you'll always like them to have a good hip and hind leg,” Parrish says. “A nice 'V' in the chest, some muscle under the belly, and a good, deep shoulder. They've got to be pretty correct, and I like them to have a big walk. Those are the horses I try to buy, at least. They won't all work out, but it averages out okay.”

The idea being to lay a sustainable foundation, Parrish doesn't always feel comfortable with the industry's addiction to the bullet breeze.

“I do think we push them too much,” he says. “Back in '78, we sold horses in Hialeah just galloping. We didn't breeze them then, though of course they didn't bring the kind of money they do now. All the same, I like to put a lot of bottom and condition in these horses. I feed them well and try to start them very slowly, build up the bone. And last week [at OBS] they all did it no problem, came back good, no shins or anything.

“Most of our horses don't need any time off after the sale, people can go right on with them. They do tend to give horses time off, but that's when things can go wrong, when they're turned out. Mine can mostly go right on training: their mind is good, they gallop well, they're not hot, fiery horses. And that's because we try to do a slow process over the winter.”

But let's not forget one last, vital element. “They've got to have good feet, for sure!” Parrish says with a chuckle. “But while you can't fix a crooked leg, you can fix a foot.”

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Simplification Takes Bobo to Holy Bull

Florida horsewoman Tami Bobo has picked out a number of sales prospects that eventually became elite racehorses.

Speech (Mr. Speaker), a filly Bobo pinhooked as a weanling for $65,000 who later sold for $190,000 as a 2-year-old, won the 2020 GI Ashland S. Lazy Daisy (Paynter), just a $2,000 weanling, went to the Breeders' Cup in 2019. Both were preceded by Take Charge Indy (A.P. Indy), a colt Bobo purchased privately in 2010 when he RNA'd for $80,000. After breaking and training him herself, she stayed in for a small piece and celebrated as he went on to become a Grade I winner.

On Saturday, Bobo is looking forward to watching one of her weanling purchases race in her own silks as Simplification (Not This Time) steps up to graded stakes company in the GIII Holy Bull S.

“I've had a lot of really good horses, but I haven't stayed in all the way like I did with this colt,” explained Bobo, who has been involved in the Thoroughbred business for 11 years.

Bobo purchased Simplification privately from Tris and Valerie de Meric in August of the Florida-bred colt's yearling year.

“We bought him because Not This Time was doing well at the time and we thought it was a good opportunity to buy [a Not This Time],” Bobo recalled. “We took him to our farm to break him and he was a tough colt. In the round pen he was super fancy and very bold. Fernando, my significant other, said that with as tough as he was, he could be a real runner.”

As the 2-year-old sales approached, X-rays showed a touch of sesamoiditis. Bobo was not bothered by the findings but knew it would hurt him in the sales ring, so she decided to race him herself.

She sent Simplification to her primary trainer Antonio Sano at Gulfstream Park. Less than a month later, Sano was calling her and singing the colt's praises, proclaiming that this was one of the best horses he had ever trained and that she needed to be sure to make it to his first race. But when Simplification made his debut last October, he finished a disappointing fifth.”

“He didn't like the Tapeta surface at all,” Bobo explained. “It was one of those moments like, 'What just happened?' because Antonio had been raving about this horse.”

Simplification's four-length victory in the Mucho Macho Man S. | Ryan Thompson

When the colt returned to the starting gate 22 days later, this time on the dirt, he romped by 16 3/4 lengths.

“Antonio had said, 'Now that's the horse I train every day,'” Bobo recalled with a laugh.

At that point, offers starting coming in to purchase the promising colt, but Bobo went against her normal practice and decided to keep him to herself for the time being.

In his next start in an allowance optional claimer at Gulfstream, the race did not go as planned when Simplification reared in the starting gate and banged his head, but still held steady to finish third.

“When he came back, he was a disaster,” Bobo said. “There was blood everywhere. For him to still finish third, it truly solidified that this horse was full of heart.”

In his 3-year-old debut stretching out to a mile against open company in the Mucho Macho Man S., Simplification took the lead early and won by an authoritative four lengths.

“The experience this horse gave us that day was unbelievable,” Bobo said. “You never know if you will ever get there and now that this horse has done what he's done, he doesn't owe me anything. He truly doesn't owe me a dollar going forward. My thought is that hopefully he stays sound, but he has already given me the thrill of a lifetime and we're blessed to own him.”

Simplification will face a field of eight rivals in Saturday's GIII Holy Bull S. including likely-favored GII Remsen S. winner Mo Donegal (Uncle Mo), Kenny McPeek's GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf runner-up Tiz the Bomb (Hit It A Bomb) as well as Giant Game (Giant's Causeway), who ran third in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

Asked if she would still consider offers for the colt after Saturday, Bob responded, “I enjoy having him, but I'm a business person. If the time comes that it makes sense I'll probably entertain it at some point, but right now we just need to focus and see what we have after this weekend.”

Such difficult choices must be made in this business, a fact Bobo has learned many times over throughout her time in the industry. Bobo started out training 2-year-olds, but has now centered her focus on pinhooking weanlings to yearlings through her First Finds division and yearling to 2-year-olds through her Secure Investments division.

“We buy weanlings and sell as yearlings,” she explained. “The ones that don't get sold will go on and hopefully sell as 2-year-olds. If they don't sell, we will usually race them. However, if we have a horse whose sire maybe cools off or isn't as fashionable as it was six months ago, or if they have a little bump on an X-ray, it doesn't always make sense to sell them.”

She continued, “With Simplification, I wasn't in a position where I had to sell him, thank God. Looking at the big picture now, I didn't pay a lot for him, but it was a significant price at the time based on his sire's stud fee. Then going into the 2-year-old sales with

the sesamoiditis, I don't know that I'd have even gotten back what I paid for him. Knowing the colt and having worked with him at the farm, we weren't afraid to race him.”

With the 2-year-old sales fast approaching, Bobo says she has 43 pinhooks preparing to go through the ring.

“The de Merics are training 34 2-year-olds for me this year and Randy Bradshaw was brought on board this year as well,” she noted. “I have a few other people with horses here and there.”

Perhaps even more exciting for Bobo, she said they have put a large investment into this year's weanling to yearling pinhook operation. First Finds purchased a dozen weanlings at the Keeneland November Sale alone, including a $235,000 Medaglia d'Oro colt out of Canadian champion female sprinter River Maid (Where's the Ring) and a $200,000 Catalina Cruiser colt who has since become the half-brother to 'TDN Rising Star' Shahama (Munnings), winner of this year's UAE 1000 Guineas Trial at Meydan.

“We were really blessed with that Catalina Cruiser colt,” Bobo said. “We have a total of 28 weanling this year to pinhook. It keeps it fun and keeps it exciting.”

With a busy sales season ahead, Bobo is first looking forward to what will surely be a memorable weekend at Gulfstream.

“I am so excited to be going,” she said. “I love this business and am so blessed to do what I love everyday. To be blessed with a horse like this is what it's all about.”

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