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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Momos Has Ironhorse Thinking Big–And That’s No Joke

In Greek mythology, Momos is “the personification of satire and mockery.”

In horse racing, Momos is a very talented and very fast son of Distorted Humor and Inspeight of Us (Speightstown) who delivered the first ‘wow’ performance in the first 2-year-old maiden of the Saratoga meet July 18 (video), earning TDN Rising Star status.

“I think everybody that buys a horse that wants to win that first maiden special at Saratoga realizes that you’re going to be running against some of the best horses that have been specifically targeted for those races,” said Harlan Malter, the managing partner of Ironhorse Racing Stable, which owns Momos in partnership with Tami Bobo’s Secure Investments.

“No matter how good your horse is training, it’s difficult to expect to win,” he continued. “The reports I got were that the horse is healthy and training great and, something you always like to hear–‘This is a fast horse.’ We were concerned about a possible speed duel or running into a monster, but I was cautiously optimistic. We felt like he was going to run well, but I don’t think anyone goes into those races thinking that you’re going to win. But we were thrilled with the way he did it.”

Turns out Momos was the monster.

Momos was bred by Bobo and the Distorted Humor syndicate and was purchased for $75,000 as a short yearling at the 2019 OBS Winter Mixed Sale. Entered for, but withdrawn from the Fasig-Tipton July sale, the colt was rerouted for the breeze-up sales, where De Meric Sales was tasked with the prep work ahead of this year’s OBS March sale.

Malter has a soft spot for OBS, owing in no small part to the fact that it was at the auction house’s June sale in 2014 that he and his partners acquired a chestnut colt by Kantharos for $43,000. An Indiana-bred, Bucchero took the Ironhorse partnership on the ride of a lifetime, winning back-to-back renewals of the GII Woodford S. at Keeneland leading to consecutive appearances in the GI Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint. The over-achieving near-millionaire also represented Ironhorse at Royal Ascot in 2018, finishing a highly creditable fifth in the G1 King’s Stand S.

While in England, Malter–an enormous fan of Cigar–made the acquaintance of Riley Mott, the son of Cigar’s Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott, who was to be represented on the same opening-day program by Yoshida (Jpn) (Heart’s Cry {Jpn}) in the G1 Queen Anne S. The junior Mott recommended to Malter that he consider bloodstock agent Phil Hager if he was looking for advice on any future purchases. In July 2018, Hager, a one-time employee of the Mott barn, left a position in bloodstock services at Crestwood Farm to launch Taproot Bloodstock. A partnership was struck.

Ultimately, there was a fair bit of synergy between Malter–‘the pedigree guy’–and Hager, who concentrates more on the physical in front of him without regard to the page, where it came to the Distorted Humor colt, who hammered for $180,000, with Taproot signing as agent for IHR.

“What we’ll generally do is not put any horses in his mind,” Malter said of the team’s approach. “He’ll do his list and then we’ll see if there’s overlap and go from there. What was great about this one, which rarely happens, this was basically on the top of our list going into the sale. The horse obviously worked very, very well (:21 flat) and Phil was very happy with the work, specifically–the way he did it, how professional and forward the horse was. Once we had that overlap, it was basically the target of our whole sale. Phil does a tremendous job. Tami Bobo expressed an interest to stay in for part, and it’s been a pleasure to have her as part of the team.”

He added, “When you have a horse that you kind of model everything after–with Bucchero being in my mind’s eye–I like to see very efficient movers and when we saw him in the work, he just did everything the right way. He kind of just drove himself into the ground, low, a very driving and efficient mover. There was no wasted energy. He galloped out extremely well. We were also really happy that he was coming out of the de Meric consignment. We have a relationship with Tristan and Valery de Meric, we know how well they prep them and we knew he’d probably come out ready to go.”

Malter admitted that the colt was at the upper limits of what they wanted to spend, but that circumstances dictated that they be aggressive.

“We felt with what was going on in the world that (a) potentially this was going to be the last time to buy for a little bit; and (b) there also may be a little reluctance to spend as much money at that sale. We did see it as a potential value play, so we were ready to spend a little bit of money. As far as Ironhorse, we try to offer a wide range, from $30,000 up to $200,000, which is about as much as we want to spend. We’re really looking for value. We were looking to try to get a $300,000 horse for $150,000, and we weren’t too far off that. We are going to have to do a little bit of zigging when other people are zagging and this is a little bit of where I blend my other business, being a financial planner, with looking at horses.”

Ironhorse campaigns its horses with Tim Glyshaw–who called the shots on Bucchero’s career–Mike Trombetta and Mott, but Malter was keen on getting a horse to Christophe Clement.

“I met [Clement’s son] Miguel at last year’s OBS sale and that got the wheels in motion. I’ve really enjoyed working with Christophe and Miguel, they make a very strong team,” Malter explained. “When we gave the horse to Christophe, we said, ‘Maybe this is the horse that gets us back to the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint down the road,’ but the feedback we got was, ‘This horse can really run on dirt, let’s not worry about grass now.’ Initially the goal on this horse was turf sprinting and I don’t think there are a lot of trainers better at training turf sprinters than Christophe. But, obviously he showed what he could do right now on the dirt.”

With that in mind, Momos is a candidate for the six-furlong GII Saratoga Special S. Aug. 7 and/or the GI Runhappy Hopeful S. over seven furlongs Sept. 7.

As for Bucchero, he has completed his second year covering mares at Pleasant Acres Stallions in Florida. As hands-on as he was during his racing career, Malter has taken an active role in aggressively marketing his stallion to the breeding public.

“I grew up with the Todd Marinovich story, where his father was so heavily involved with managing his whole development and career,” Malter said, referring to the former professional football quarterback. “I often feel like if Bucchero could talk, he’d say, ‘Who is this guy and why is he always around?’ I’ve tried to take the bull by the horns and do the best that I could by this horse. But he’s done all the speaking. It’s been unusual that we’ve had an even bigger second year than we had the first year.”

Malter reports that Bucchero’s first crop numbers a healthy 76 foals.

“There’s really only one thing I was hoping for with the babies–that [Bucchero’s] mind would come through,” he said. “The feedback I am getting from the breeders on a consistent basis is ‘solid, balanced, athletic,’ but they almost always emphasize these horses’ minds. When I hear people describing these foals, it’s like they’re describing Bucchero to me.”

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