Tiz the Law Filly Zips Fastest Quarter at OBS Tuesday

A filly from the first crop of multiple Grade I winner Tiz the Law (hip 365) tied the track record when working a quarter-mile in :20 1/5 during the third session of the under-tack preview for the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's Spring Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training, while 17 juveniles shared the session's fastest furlong time of :9 4/5, Tuesday in Central Florida.

“It was pretty special,” consignor Tom McCrocklin said of the bullet quarter-mile work. “I have one disability that keeps me knowing that one will go that fast and that is that I don't clock my horses at any point. But I did know that she could really run. She's been doing extremely well for the last month, getting better and better. So she obviously peaked at the right time and put in a stellar performance.”

The bay filly is out of stakes-placed Moonlight Sky (Sky Mesa), a half-sister to champion Abel Tasman (Quality Road) and a full to graded winner Sky Girl. Moonlight Sky is also the dam of graded-placed Urban (Quality Road).

McCrocklin purchased the juvenile for $170,000 on behalf of Jim Tilton at last year's Keeneland September sale.

“She looked like an athlete, looked like a runner,” McCrocklin said of the filly's appeal last fall. “She's got pedigree as well. She is a half to a black-type filly and has Abel Tasman in the second dam. So there is a lot of quality there. For a first year stallion, it's a little bit of a gamble, but he was a very high-quality racehorse and she was a beautiful physical horse. She brought a lot of money as a yearling and, right now, I feel good about the purchase.”

Tiz the Law, winner of the GI Belmont S. and GI Runhappy Travers S. in the COVID-delayed 2020 season, has 12 juveniles expected to breeze at OBS this week.

“This filly has a lot of Tiz the Law in her,” McCrocklin said. “She is a strong, stout filly. There is nothing feminine about her. She's easily mistaken for a colt. She's real quiet. I checked in on her first thing this morning and she's in there sleeping like it's just another day at the office.”

The :20 1/5 mark was most recently set by a filly by Win Win Win, who went on to top the OBS March sale when selling for $1.8 million to Zedan Racing.

A Trio of Bullet Workers for Vekoma

Of the 17 juveniles to work the furlong in :9 4/5 Tuesday, three were by Spendthrift Farm's first-crop sire Vekoma. Leading off that trio was a filly out of stakes-placed Our Jenny B (Tale of the Cat) (hip 435) who was the second horse to work Tuesday morning. She is consigned by Grassroots Training & Sales, which purchased her for $60,000 in Louisiana last fall.

Just a few hips later, a colt by Vekoma out of Newbie (Bernardini) (hip 411) also turned in a :9 4/5 work. Consigned by Sequel Bloodstock, as agent for Chester and Mary Broman, he is a half-brother to graded winner Classy Edition (Classic Empire) and to multiple stakes winner Newly Minted (Central Banker).

A filly by Vekoma (hip 479) completed the stallion's three bullet workers midway through the session's second hour. She is consigned by Mayberry Farm on behalf of Nice Guys Stables, which purchased her for $130,000 at last year's Keeneland September sale.

“She's always been a lovely, honest filly,” Summer Mayberry said of the juvenile. “We were expecting that she would work very well. She tries every single time. She's got a great disposition. She just makes our job look easy.”

Out of Pray for Leslie (Bernardini), the filly is a half-sister to last year's GI Darley Alcibiades third-place finisher Alys Beach (Omaha Beach).

“She is an average-sized filly with a very racy body,” Mayberry said. “She has beautiful confirmation. She's got all the parts that you look for.”

Of the first-crop Vekoma juveniles that she has seen, Mayberry said, “We have three still at the farm. They all seem like they are pretty nice horses. They have great dispositions, good conformation. Just very nice racehorses.”

Steve Spielman's Nice Guys partnership has already enjoyed seven-figure success at OBS, having sold a daughter of Arrogate for $1 million to Katsumi Yoshida at the 2021 Spring sale. The operation has four fillies still to work this week at OBS with Mayberry Farm.

Twice as Nice

Both Grassroots Training & Sales and Sequel Bloodstock doubled up on bullet workers Tuesday. Grassroots sent out a colt by Improbable (hip 517) to hit that mark, while Sequel sent out a New York-bred son of Game Winner (hip 487), also for the Bromans.

First-crop sire Game Winner had a second bullet worker Tuesday with hip 389, a son of the 2018 champion 2-year-old champion consigned by Julie Davies.

Eddie Woods had a pair of bullet workers Tuesday: hip 454 is a daughter of Practical Joke; and hip 460 is a filly from the first crop of Thousand Words.

Thousand Words had his second bullet of the session when hip 506, a filly by the Spendthrift stallion, worked in :9 4/5 for Britton Peak. Thousand Words has already had his first winner on the racetrack after The Queens M G's victory at Keeneland Sunday.

Also sharing the :9 4/5 bullet Tuesday: hip 372, a filly by St Patrick's Day consigned by Sweet River Thoroughbreds; hip 392, a filly by Khozan consigned by Shanbally Acres; hip 407, a colt by Bernardini consigned by Envision Equine; hip 448, a filly by Mendelssohn consigned by Paul Sharp; hip 477, a colt by Oscar Performance consigned by Wavertree Stables; hip 489, a filly by Mendelssohn consigned by Randy Miles; hip 502, a colt by Global Campaign consigned by Top Line Sales; and hip 511, a filly by Ride On Curlin consigned by Blue River Bloodstock.

The under-tack show continues through Saturday with sessions beginning daily at 8 a.m. The OBS Spring sale will be held next Tuesday through Friday. Bidding commences each day at 10:30 a.m.

The post Tiz the Law Filly Zips Fastest Quarter at OBS Tuesday appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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For Bloodstock Agent Ingordo, Flightline Always Had The ‘It’ Quality

Halley's Comet comes around once in a lifetime. Someday, the same might be said of Flightline.

In three starts, the 3-year-old colt by Tapit has won by a combined 37 ½ lengths, going six furlongs in 1:08.75 in his debut, the same distance in 1:08.05 next out, and then racing seven furlongs in 1:21.37 while winning the Grade 1 Runhappy Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita on Sunday's opening day of the winter-spring meet. Jockey Flavien Prat was like a statue down the lane as Flightline won under wraps by 11 ½ lengths for trainer John Sadler.

His Beyer Speed Figures were 105, 114 and 118, respectively. The latter is the highest Beyer Speed Figure given to any horse this year, according to Daily Racing Form's Jay Privman.

“That puts this horse in a different stratosphere,” said West Point Thoroughbreds' CEO Terry Finley, one of Flightline's owners.

An hour before the Malibu, the 3-year-old filly Kalypso won the G1 La Brea Stakes with a seven-furlong final time of 1:24.78, fully 3 2/5 seconds slower than Flightline.

Performance numbers are one way of measuring a horse's ability. David Ingordo, the bloodstock agent who bought Flightline on behalf of West Point Thoroughbreds and several other partners for $1-million at the 2019 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Yearling Sale, said the colt also passed the eyeball test.

“He's a brilliant horse and you don't need Ragozins or Beyers to see that,” Ingordo said. “You can tell that he doesn't have to put a lot into what he's doing. He does it so easily.”

Ingordo first laid eyes on Flightline when he and Bill Farish from Lane's End visited breeder Jane Lyon's Summer Wind Farm in Georgetown, Ky., to look at a different Tapit colt from the 2018 foal crop, a chestnut-coated half brother to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Lane's End consigns the Summer Wind horses and Ingordo said there was interest in buying the colt off the farm privately.

“There was another horse in the paddock and I said to Bill, 'I like the brown one.' Bill said, 'We're here to see the chestnut one.'”

The brown horse turned out to be Flightline. The chestnut colt, who remained the property of Summer Wind, was named Triple Tap and turned over to trainer Bob Baffert. Two-for-two going into the Malibu, Triple Tap finished 18 ¾ lengths behind Flightline in fourth place.

Ingordo saw the two horses several more times and his preference for the brown colt never wavered.

When it came time for the Saratoga sale, Ingordo hitched a ride to New York on a Tex Sutton flight to ride with a group of yearlings. “I was sitting in the back with one of the guys I knew well,” Ingordo said. “He said it was going to be a bumpy ride and asked if I would grab a couple yearlings. “One of them had a pretty good head on him and I noticed his name was Flightline. I looked up his pedigree and saw it was the horse from Summer Wind that I liked so much.”

Ingordo began representing West Point Thoroughbreds in 2017 and the Tapit colt out of the graded stakes-winning Indian Charlie mare, Feathered, is the kind of prospect Finley said his partners are looking for. Finley knew it would take serious money to buy Flightline, so put together a group that included Hronis Racing LLC, Siena Farm LLC, Farish's Woodford Racing LLC and Summer Wind. The hammer price was $1-million.

“Stephanie Hronis was there and David has done great work for them (she and husband Kosta Hronis),” said Finley. “She fell in love with the horse at the Lane's End consignment. We've had good luck partnering with Siena (Anthony Manganaro), buying five together and getting two Grade 1 winners, a Grade 2, and a stakes winner. We had not done anything with Jane Lyon before, but that really makes a difference when a breeder has the confidence to stay in, especially when it's big dollars. She bypassed the chance to take $250,000 off the table, and that's a strong statement.”

Finley confirmed that Summer Wind owns 25% of Flightline but didn't want to disclose how the remaining share of the horse was divided among the four additional partners.

There is no textbook for picking potential athletes, whether they are equine or human. Ingordo said he spent time with a couple of professional baseball scouts who are also interested in horse racing and found it's the same in both professions. There's an “it” quality with some athletes that is hard to miss, he said, whether it's a LeBron James in basketball or Bo Jackson, one of the greatest two sport athletes of all time who was named a Major League Baseball All Star and an All Pro running back in the NFL. (The two scouts, Ingordo said, both thought Jackson would be better at baseball if he stuck to one sport.)

“Horses are the same way,” he continued. “I remember when Garrett O'Rourke (Juddmonte Farms general manager) showed me a bunch of 2-year-olds. One of them just stood out, and it was Empire Maker (eventual G1 Belmont Stakes winner). Same thing with Zenyatta. I said, 'This is a horse we have to have.' Honor A.P. (G1 Santa Anita Derby winner) is another. I said, 'I don't give a crap. I'm buying this horse.'

“Flightline is another one of those. Each time I saw him I liked him more. There was just something about him. Of course the history books are littered with stories about trainers getting great unraced 2-year-olds where something happens.”

Something did happen to Flightline, but, fortunately, it only postponed his racing career.

In January 2020, Ingordo went to visit Flightline and other clients' horses at Mayberry Farm in Ocala, Fla., an operation run by Jeanne Mayberry and her two daughters, April and Summer.

“I'm watching these sets train and saw lots of beautiful horses,” he said. “I'm waiting for the next set and I hear this big crash, a loud bang. The Tapit colt scared himself, something startled him. He had his tack on and was ready to go out, but caught his butt on a stall door latch. It was a pretty deep wound and took a long time to heal. You can see that scar back there. One of those fluke things that will happen. We gave him plenty of time to heal, then COVID hit, and a lot of people were on a holding pattern.

“The Mayberrys are a big part of the program,” he said. “Jeanne (working alongside her late husband, Brian) trained a Kentucky Oaks winner (Sardula in 1994 for Ann and Jerry Moss). They called me very early on about Zenyatta. And two years ago they called me and said we might have another good one, Honor A.P. And then April called me early last year to say, 'You're going to think I'm crazy, but we might have two or three horses that are better than the group we had with Honor A.P.”

It's tempting to get overly excited about a horse after one start. Flightline won his April 2021 debut by 13 ¼ lengths at Santa Anita, then didn't show up again until Sept. 5 at Del Mar, Sadler giving him plenty of time to overcome a foot bruise. He won that allowance race by 12 ¾ lengths.

That second win brought more hype and speculation that Sadler might point the lightly raced colt to the G1 Breeders' Cup Sprint at Del Mar. No dice. He instead circled Dec. 26 on the calendar. Flightline didn't miss a beat in his training up to the Malibu.

Flightline passed this latest test with flying colors, even though this was not the deepest Malibu field we've seen and the other leading 3-year-old colt in training, G1 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner Life Is Good, is in Florida with Todd Pletcher training up to a start in the G1 Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 29.

Sadler, according to Daily Racing Form's Steve Andersen, is looking at a possible start in the G1 Met Mile on the June 11 Belmont Stakes day card for Flightline and possibly three other starts in 2022.

“John will steer the ship,” Finley said when asked about possible races for Flightline. “He's done so well. He's been training 40 years, and it's really something to see his passion and intensity – not just John's but the whole barn. John's assistant, Juan Leyva, is talking about this horse in a way that I've never heard someone at a barn say before.  Rene Quinteros, the barn foreman, every single day at 4:15 in the morning, walks this horse for 30 minutes. Everyone is just zeroed in on him.”

Ingordo has been down this road previously with one of the greatest horses of the modern era, Zenyatta, who didn't lose a race until her 20th and final career start, coming up a head short of Blame in the 2010 Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.

“John has referred to Flightline as his Zenyatta,” Ingordo said.

“We've all been let down before,” Ingordo said of horses that showed early promise then failed to sustain it. “That's why when you expect a great performance and everybody has done everything right and then it really happens, it's that jaw-dropping.

“This one does everything so easily,” he added. “He's so smart. He's got it all. We're not looking to rush him off to the (breeding) shed. We want to run, just as much as the fans want to see him run. We might have to temper our desire to run more than the fans do. But you know how it goes sometimes. Horses will laugh at our plans.”

There's no telling just what Flightline may be capable of doing. Let's just hope he has the opportunity to show us.

The post For Bloodstock Agent Ingordo, Flightline Always Had The ‘It’ Quality appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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