Norm Casse Enjoying the Ride with First Oaks Filly

Norm Casse lived in Louisville throughout most of his childhood, but one spring, he spent a few months in Ocala with his father. Norm was responsible for getting himself up and out the door for school each morning while his dad was busy at the training center.

One morning, as Kentucky Oaks day dawned, Norm's alarm never rang.

It was well into the morning before Mark Casse burst into his son's room in a panic. “Norman, why aren't you at school?” he cried.

“Dad, chill out,” retorted a teenaged Norm. “It's Kentucky Oaks day.”

That was the day that Norm Casse learned that the country's entire school system does not, in fact, shut down for Oaks day.

As a kid, the Kentucky Oaks marked a special occasion for Casse because it meant a Friday away from school in Louisville. Years later, after discovering his own passion for racing, working for his father for a decade, and now having trained on his own for six years, the Kentucky Oaks–and Derby week–has all come to mean so much more.

“I've been coming to the Oaks and Derby every year since 1995,” Casse reflected. “Even when I moved to Canada and worked for Dad up in Woodbine, the only weekend I ever took off was Derby weekend because I didn't want to break that streak. Being born and raised here is the reason why I do it. It's not because my family is involved. It's more because I love the Derby, the Oaks, and the whole week leading up to it.”

This year, Casse will saddle his first starter in one of those famed 3-year-old races with GI Kentucky Oaks contender Southlawn (Pioneerof the Nile). For Casse, who is a third-generation trainer and has already earned multiple graded stakes victories and just under 150 career wins, claiming his first Grade I on Friday would be a pinnacle moment.

“I can't really describe what it would mean to win the Kentucky Oaks,” he said. “All my friends and family are from here. They may not know what the Breeders' Cup Classic or the Pacific Class is, but they know what the Kentucky Oaks is. If we were able to win that, they'd look at me like a rock star.”

Casse comes to the Oaks with a filly that he and his team have always had high hopes for. Southlawn, a $290,000 yearling purchase for Robert Masterson, showed potential early on as a juvenile, but drawing out her true ability in the afternoons proved to be a puzzling task for Casse.

Southlawn takes to the main track at Churchill Downs | Sara Gordon

Southlawn was unplaced in her debut last June, finishing fifth behind none other than Mark Casse's future champion and Oaks contender Wonder Wheel (Into Mischief). After breaking her maiden by five lengths in her second start at Ellis Park, the filly from the final crop of Pioneerof the Nile was never a contender in the GIII Pocahontas S. and she came up empty in two tries on turf in the fall.

“After her last start on the grass here in the fall, we knew she was going to get the winter off,” Casse explained. “Tyler Gaffalione came back and said that she was having a lot of issues with her breathing. We sent her down to the Fair Grounds and we performed a myectomy on her. She's been undefeated ever since.”

The procedure seems to have solved any displacement issues the filly was dealing with as she has returned to the main track this year and has taken her first two sophomore starts by storm. She claimed an allowance at Fair Grounds by eight lengths in February and stamped her domination of the 3-year-old filly ranks in New Orleans with a win in the GII Fair Grounds Oaks.

Casse said that what has impressed him most about Southlawn's sophomore campaign is her developing running style.

“She doesn't have that early speed she had before,” he explained. “Now she makes a big, sustained run, which I think is going to be very beneficial in the Oaks. It just seems to me that she's better off breaking and trying to get a decent position, but then letting her get into her own rhythm and not forcing things too much. I like that she's so kind and professional now that no matter where we are in a race, we're still going to feel comfortable that she is going to run when Reylu asks her to run.”

Reylu Gutierrez, who competed in his first Kentucky Oaks last year, just claimed his first leading rider title at Fair Grounds earlier this year. The up-and-coming jockey has gained even more recognition while riding  a hot streak at Keeneland.

“I think one of the storylines that shouldn't go unsaid is that Reylu gets along with her really well,” Casse noted. “He's riding really well right now and he's so confident in her and in how she's training that it gives me a lot of confidence.”

Another essential character in Southlawn's storyline is of course her owner Robert Masterson.

The California-based owner had horses in training with Mark Casse for many years, highlighted by the outstanding two-time champion grass mare Tepin (Bernstein). Tepin was in the Casse barn at the same time that Norm was overseeing much of the stable.

Casse said that working with the talented filly and playing a role in her success at the top of the game, from the 2015 GI Breeders' Cup Mile to the 2016 G1 Queen Anne S., gave him the confidence he needed to go out on his own. When Casse first set up his stable, Masterson was his first–and for a short time, his only–client.

Masterson has been involved in racing for over 40 years and explained why he wanted to support the fledgling trainer back in 2018.

“Norm was the one that really took care of Tepin the whole time she was there,” he said. “When he decided to go out on his own, I just felt an obligation. Everybody needs a shot and I felt like I could be the person to give him a shot. I'm not the guy who is going to have a 40-horse stable, and his father already had all these big owners, so I thought that I could give him four or five horses and that would help him out.”

Picked out by Deuce Greathouse, Southlawn was a $290,000 yearling purchase for Robert Masterson | Sara Gordon

While Casse's success quickly grew in those first few years, Masterson's horses ran through a streak of bad luck. But Masterson stuck with his trainer and was eventually rewarded for his faith with the success of Southlawn.

“We didn't have much luck in the beginning, but it wasn't because of Norm,” Masterson said. “I think he's a really good trainer and a good caretaker of the horse. You're going to look at him five years from now and people are going to go, 'Where'd he come from?'”

Other than horses he owns in partnership, Masterson sends all of his horses to Casse. His stable is off to a fast start in 2023 and Friday could set up to be a monumental day. On top of Southlawn's Oaks bid, Masterson's Grove (Munnings) and New Beat (Not This Time), both 3-year-old fillies coming off maiden wins, are aiming to get into the entries. He also has a juvenile filly named Loveland (Munnings) looking to make her debut.

Masterson, a graduate of the University of Maryland, said that Southlawn is named after a neighborhood in Maryland outside of Washington D.C. He explained that his mother moved to South Lawn to be close to him when he was in college and years later, his first son was born there.

While Masterson hinted at his excitement ahead of Oaks day, noting that this is his first starter in the historic contest, he added that he is hoping for a happy outcome because of the positive implications it would have for Casse, his longtime bloodstock agent Deuce Greathouse, and the filly's many other connections who are making a name for themselves in the industry.

“I've been in the business since 1980 and I've had a lot of great horses so I'm not nervous,” he said. “I just hope she gets all the right chances. We always thought she was really going to be good and when she came back as a 3-year-old, she was a monster.”

Southlawn will face her toughest competition yet on Friday. The rematch of Southlawn with GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Wonder Wheel might be the start of a friendly father-son rivalry at the highest levels of the sport.

“When I went out on my own, my dad kept talking about how he couldn't wait until the day where we starting running against each other in these marquee races,” Casse explained. “So here's our first opportunity and it's a very cool opportunity. I'm just proud of my entire team. I feel like one of the things that we've done right since I went on my own is that I've built a really nice team that I'm confident in. I think they make a big, big difference in the stable and how well we're doing.”

Derby Week brings an unparalleled kind of excitement to the Churchill Downs backside, but Casse said he plans to embrace the hubbub and take in every moment. After all, it's an opportunity he's been dreaming about for years.

“I think the filly is training so incredibly well,” he said. “She looks great and her coat is great. She seems happier than ever and I know we're ready. I'm sure I'm going to be extremely nervous the morning of, but right now I'm just trying to enjoy the ride.”

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‘Nobody Has a Crystal Ball’

Probably you know Carrie Brogden. The way her ideas, opinions, memories, emotions come tumbling out, one on top of the other. And how even after a few minutes she will have shared way too much of this torrent of vitality for the narrow channel of paragraphs that follows here.

Except you don't know Carrie Brogden. For instance, did you know that she's only here because of Einstein? Seriously. We'll come to that, and to the Beanie Babies, too, who have a more immediate role in her story.

But how are we truly supposed to know any human being, when even our collective obsession with an animal of largely simple needs still leaves us groping for answers?

Okay, so the latest Machmer Hall graduate to hit the big time, Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup winner Gina Romantica, is one of those that makes us feel that we might indeed be working to some coherent, viable principles. She's by Into Mischief, she cost a million bucks, so of course she's a Grade I filly.

But then she only cost that much because her mother Special Me (Unbridled's Song) had already produced millionaire Gift Box and graded stakes winners Stonetastic (Mizzen Mast) and Special Forces (Candy Ride {Arg})–and Brogden and her husband Craig found that mare, all 14.2 hands of her, for $6,000 at the Keeneland January Sale of 2009.

“Nobody has a crystal ball,” Brogden says. “We bred another Into Mischief, a colt we sold for $500,000, and he was a morning glory. He did not give a crap about running. The only Into Mischief I ever had that had no heart to run, it's such an unusual thing for him.”

Rather more characteristically, Brogden made it her business to salvage the horse from the wreckage of expectation.

“He was running in cheap claimers, and being claimed and claimed and claimed,” she says. “So I called the last trainer and bought him privately, and we placed him. And of course, he shipped in and, goddamn, he is breathtaking. But I'll tell you one thing, he's a lot happier being a show hunter, because he's happy going slow. And that's something I cannot predict. None of us can.”

But that cuts both ways. If all that glisters is not gold, then nor should we ignore diamonds in the rough.

“I've had so many great horses whose X-rays do not match,” Brogden says. “Just recently, I had a super-nice racehorse failed for a private sale, because 'issue' was found on an X-ray–from a cracked shin as a young horse, before his racing career, long healed. He's running, he's sound, he's working awesome, he's just won a couple of stakes. I mean, Flat Out (Flatter) had a big old defect in his front sesamoid. And he won, what, $6 million? And the people that bought him did so because they took the consignor's word [i.e. Meg Levy of Bluewater] that this was a nice, sound horse–which, obviously, he proved to be.”

She cites a maxim of Florida horseman Albert Davis: “Never forget that vets pass as many horses that can't run as they fail horses that can.”

Without that crystal ball, then, all we can do is try to breed and raise horses for a competitive outlook.

“Management makes you, management breaks you,” says Brogden. “I mean, ours don't come in. Sleet, rain, thunderstorms, they're out there learning how to face adversity. Now, if they're sick or injured, we take care of them. But if they're healthy, horses need to be outside. As Chris Baker once told me, 'Barns were created for people.'

“Year after year, it's the same breeders raising the racehorses. There's a big reason why those Ashview horses ran one-two in the Belmont. Because they keep them out in the fields, bumping around. We don't separate any of our colts until we go to prep. That's why I'm really proud of my horses a lot of times: in a crowded situation, coming up the rail, they won't be afraid.”

Brogden works from flesh and blood, not paper formulae. She comes from a family of mathematicians, took statistics in college herself, and is dismayed by the influence of flimsy data on mating strategies. All she wants is to breed a big, beautiful athlete, and that should be challenge enough. If you breed by numbers, and end up with a little rat, good luck.

Of course, she absolutely believes in pedigree; and why wouldn't you, when you have one like hers? Ever wondered where Machmer Hall gets its name? Step forward great-grandfather Dean William L. Machmer of the University of Massachusetts. Opposite him, on the maternal branch of her family tree, stands an equally distinguished figure: Guido Fubini, who fled Italy as Mussolini began to accelerate persecution of the Jews.

“If you ever saw the movie A Beautiful Mind, with Russell Crowe, the theorem on the blackboard, that he's trying to work through, is the Fubini Theorem,” Brogden explains. “Einstein, believe or not, helped my great-great-grandfather get a job in Princeton. They didn't tell their anyone, their housekeepers, nobody, they just went across the Swiss border on a day trip, and my grandmother had sewn the jewelry into her fur coat.”

One day Guido's son found a young woman in the lobby of their New York apartment block struggling to buckle a ski boot. He offered to assist her, and that's how Brogden's grandfather Eugene met her grandmother Betty. Eugene went on to become Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Brogden has a vivid sense of her Italian ancestry. “Oh, definitely, those genes flow very freely through me,” she says with a laugh. “I love Italians because we wear our hearts on our sleeves, we put it all out there. We're flamboyant and ridiculous and over-the-top. I remember when my grandfather would blow his top, yelling and screaming. And then we'd sit down for dinner two minutes later, and he'd be like, 'Can you please pass the butter?' And that's kind of how I am, too. My poor kids! I have three great teenagers, all super-easy and responsible. Thank God they're not like I was!”

It would be wrong, however, to conflate this candid, demonstrative nature with her status as a relative pioneer, in a walk of life where women have long been underrepresented.

“Sometimes you do have to remember that you're dealing with a lot of men, and that often they're not so emotional,” she says with a shrug. “And that's okay. That's the yin and yang of it. My partner Andrew Cary always used to be like, 'Be careful, make sure what you're saying is what you mean–not the emotional, flippant Carrie!' And the closest men around me are all very smart, level-headed, even-keel: they do help to calm my over-the-top, passionate nature. But men are from Mars, women from Venus? I think that that is definitely changing. I don't think the young girls coming in will face the same stuff. I mean, women weren't even allowed in the breeding shed until the '80s. So, a lot of things have changed.”

Besides all her colorful antecedents, more immediately Brogden was also born to horses. Her parents were both veterinarians, ran an animal hospital in Virginia before taking on a farm in Ocala for a while. After they separated, Brogden's mother brought the kids back to Virginia to live with their Fubini grandparents. A traumatic experience, at an impressionable age, but the memory of her cherished grandmother would later be honored by Baby Betty (El Corredor) among Machmer Hall's foundation mares.

Brogden had been riding and showing through her girlhood, but parked the horses for psychology at college, and–ah yes, for the Beanie Babies. Her mom had launched a pet-themed gift store, and landed on a bewildering craze for these stuffed animals. Each cost only $2.50 wholesale but they were selling them online for $75 as fast as they could pack them up.

Their house was full of boxes, literally floor to ceiling. They rode the hectic wave, were glad when it finished, and Brogden's mom played up some of the winnings on a couple of mares, including an unraced daughter of Affirmed for just $7,700 deep in the Keeneland November Sale. And her half-brothers by His Majesty turned out to be GI Arlington Million winner Tight Spot and GI Hollywood Futurity winner Valiant Nature.

“So, she got really lucky there, and that was the start of it,” says Brogden, who now slipstreamed back to her first love, the horse; and met another one on the way, in the Australian chap she met one night in McCarthy's in Lexington.

But Brogden's debt to her mother Sandy Willwerth is not just a career path. All four siblings, growing up, were constantly challenged to raise the bar. And, sure enough, all graduated college to make an impact: one brother is a high-flying venture capitalist in California, another owns a construction company back in Virginia, their other sister has carved out a similar niche with show hunters to the one Machmer Hall has established with Thoroughbreds.

The program took root in Virginia but the superior land soon summoned them to Kentucky, where they started in 2001 with a parcel of 105 acres, cattle-grazed but auspiciously sited between Stone Farm and Claiborne. Craig had been working under the late Dr. Phil McCarthy, the pioneering reproductive veterinarian, at Watercress Farm.

“And a lot of our philosophy comes from Dr. McCarthy,” Brogden acknowledges. “Let horses be horses. Don't hothouse them. The only time they have to look spectacular is the day they walk onto the sales grounds.”

She says people give her grief over her support of HISA. It's not as though she won't give antibiotics to a horse with an infection; or apply shockwave to a hematoma.

“But I don't go through my stable and inject hocks and stifles on 15 different yearlings,” she says. “I think we've injected one yearling's ankle in two years. Any treatment we give is warranted and needed. I don't want to do blanket treatments, which I think is really what happened with Lasix. I know certain people won't like that I feel this way. But ultimately it's because I want our industry and everyone in it to be more successful.

“I'm not trying to talk down anyone else's product. I'm trying to raise the best horse I can. And I am not money-driven. I am success-motivated. The buyers know, if I know of a legitimate problem with a certain horse, I will absolutely tell them. I mean, we swim all our yearlings. I have a very good idea of who can and cannot breathe! The last thing in the world I want is somebody to buy a bad horse from me, especially for a lot of money.”

She would rather write off a sale and earn repeat business, just as she herself goes back to the same, trusted sources: whether Unbridled's Song mares, or Fox Hill mares, or mares bought by Ron Ellis for Spendthrift. Those have all added up, mind: Machmer Hall is now up to 560 acres, and 115 mares–the most they've ever had, and some will be traded out as they want no more than 85 foaling. Plus, don't forget 40 to 50 2-year-olds, spread among different consignors, and others retained for the track.

“I'm just a horse addict,” Brogden apologizes. “But they help you learn every year. I mean, one thing I've definitely learned through X-ray: don't start prep too early. They only need 60 days, otherwise you're going to create sesamoiditis. You watch that show, The Biggest Loser, where all these butterball people start a program of exercise and eating right, and all of a sudden most of them, wow, they look amazing. I think that prep is really our way of seeing the true nature of the athlete. When my parents had the farm down in Florida, you just kept them in the stall, kept their coats, and everything sold off pedigree. But all that's changing.”

The one constant, of course, remains the need for luck. Thirteen years ago this week Brogden and her partners were underbidders on the weanling colt that became Prime Cut (Bernstein), and instead settled for his dam for $4,500 from the back ring. If Life Happened (Stravinsky) could produce such a gorgeous son, then never mind if she was barren and reputed to be savage.

They tried to return her to Bernstein, but he had three mares confirmed that day so Brogden called round. Here was this big, stout, beautiful mare that needed to be bred today–and Spendthrift offered a new stallion called Into Mischief.

That mating produced Vyjack and next time, getting back in to Bernstein, they came up with Tepin herself. Brogden gratefully salvaged Prime Cut for $1,000 when he was discarded through a sale at the end of his racing days. Their dam, after all, couldn't have been better named. In a game of such uneven fortunes, in the end life just happens. No crystal ball.

“But that's the greatest thing about it,” Brogden says eagerly. “The fateful part that we can't control. I think that that's why so many men and women that are super-successful in other businesses come here–because they can't put a box around it. If they could, Sackatoga Stables would never have won the Derby with Funny Cide, you'd never have had the school bus and everything. I mean, that's what dreams are made of, right?

“You can have the best mare, the best stallion, and it's a beautiful physical mating. Everything works on paper. And then you have a nocardioform placentitis foal, 75lbs. And that's it, you're not going to have a racehorse. But ultimately, the fact that we can't really know is the greatest thing about it. Because the most valuable commodity of all is hope.”

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Week in Review: Is Classic Best Fit for Life Is Good?

'TDN Rising Star' Life Is Good (Into Mischief) got the job done Saturday in the GI Whitney S. at Saratoga, which probably means that a start in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic is on his schedule. The Whitney was a “Win and You're In” race for the Classic and has traditionally been one of the most important preps for the season-ending $6-million race. If trainer Todd Pletcher and owners WinStar Farm and the China Horse Club play this one by the book, the Classic is where they will end up.

But is that the best Breeders' Cup race for him?

After his performance in the nine-furlong Whitney, where he didn't quite deliver the type of spectacular performance he is capable of, it's a fair question to ask. The Classic is run at a mile-and-a-quarter and it's pretty clear than 10 furlongs is not Life Is Good's best distance. He'll have a lot easier time winning the GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile, the race he won last year, than the Classic.

Life Is Good has tried a 1 1/4 miles only once, in the G1 Dubai World Cup, and the result was, perhaps, the most disappointing race of his career. He had the lead until about 100 yards before the wire only to be passed by three horses. Pletcher has pointed out that the racing surface at Meydan was deep and tiring and said that worked against Life Is Good. That may be true, but with a horse with this much talent, he should have found a way to pull off the win. More so than the condition of the racetrack, the distance got him.

His first start after Dubai came in the GII John A. Nerud S. at seven furlongs and he thrashed a good horse in Speaker's Corner (Street Sense) to win easily. That seemed to set him up perfectly for the Whitney, where the competition included Olympiad (Speightstown) and three others. It's not that Life Is Good ran a bad race, or anything close to it. He won by two lengths and got a 107 Beyer. It was a good effort, some have said it was gutsy and that he showed heart. After getting loose on the lead, he had to fight off stablemate Happy Saver (Super Saver) to grind out the win. But, as brilliant as Life Is Good had been in some of his earlier starts, we expected something more than gutsy.

It also matters that Olympiad, who had been so consistent, winning five straight, picked this day not to show up. That meant the competition Life Is Good faced wasn't as strong as had been expected.

Winning a $1-million, Grade I race in Saratoga is no easy feat, but this didn't look like Life Is Good at his best, and the distance probably had something to do with that.

In some years, maybe Life Is Good could overcome distance limitations and win the Classic. But this year's field will be loaded. At a mile-and-a-quarter, can he beat Flightline (Tapit) or Epicenter (Not This Time)? Then there's Country Grammer (Tonalist), who finished ahead of him in the Dubai World Cup and is partially owned by WinStar.

Passing on the Classic isn't exactly a no-brainer. It's worth $4 million more than the $1-million Dirt Mile and if they don't run there they may cost themselves any chance at being named Horse of the Year.  It's a race everyone wants to win and looks great on the record of a future stallion. But if you want to pick the race that is the best fit for Life Is Good and the one where he has the best chance of winning, that's an easy call. It's the Dirt Mile.

The Future of Belmont Park

On this week's TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland, NYRA CEO and President Dave O'Rourke said that NYRA's long-range plan is likely to include shutting down Aqueduct and running at Belmont in the winter. That's one of the reasons NYRA is planning on installing a synthetic Tapeta surface at Belmont. It also looks like stands will be torn down and replaced with a smaller facility.

O'Rourke also said there are no plans to change the current circumferences of the tracks, meaning the main track at Belmont will remain the massive mile-and-a-half oval that it is. Buy why? The 12-furlong track works for one race, the GI Belmont S. For every other race, it's simply too big, it's impractical and the sight lines are not good. It also means that any 1 1/4-mile dirt races, like the Breeders' Cup Classic, have to start on the clubhouse turn. A nine-furlong main track, which they have at Aqueduct ands Saratoga, makes more sense.

Fillies Dominate the Hall of Fame

Two horses from the modern era were inducted this week into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame and, in Tepin (Bernstein) and Beholder (Henny Hughes), both were fillies. That's no coincidence. Since 2015, six fillies have made the Hall of Fame and only three male horses: American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile), Lava Man (Slew City Slew) and Wise Dan (Wiseman's Ferry). The latter two are geldings.

In an era where star males horses who are not geldings will almost always call it quits after their 3-year-old seasons and maybe run nine or 10 times in their careers, you're not going to get many who have Hall of Fame credentials. Justify (Scat Daddy), who raced just six times, is one of the few exceptions, but only because it would be awful hard to keep a Triple Crown winner out of the Hall of Fame. Otherwise, the voters will be hard pressed to put a horse into the Hall of Fame who raced just two years and made a limited number of starts.

Fillies are a different matter. With a top broodmare being worth considerably less than a top sire, it makes economic sense to continue to race them. Beholder ran 26 times and raced at six. Tepin retired after her 5-year-old campaign and made 23 starts.

Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}) ran 20 times and was still out there at age six. Rachel Alexandra (Medaglia d'Oro) raced 19 times and stuck around through her 4-year-old year. With top male horses, those are numbers you don't see anymore.

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Leading Ladies Inducted Into Hall of Fame

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – By far, the most enthusiastic applause during the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame induction ceremony Friday morning was for a video clip of race that everyone in the audience likely had seen many times.

Beholder's (Henny Hughes) career-capping victory by a nose over the previously unbeaten champion Songbird (Medaglia d'Oro) in the 2016 GI Breeder's Cup Distaff was nearly as gripping on the big screen at the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion as it was live at Santa Anita Park. For sheer drama it ranks with the finish of the 1988 Distaff when Personal Ensign (Private Account) rallied to overtake Goodbye Halo (Halo) and GI Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors (Caro) to complete her career unbeaten.

With a slew of impressive statistics, Beholder and the seven other members of the Class of 2022 joined Personal Ensign in the Hall of Fame, which fittingly is located across Union Ave. from historic Saratoga Race Course. Beholder and Tepin (Bernstein) were elected by Hall of Fame voters in the contemporary division; Hillsdale (Take Away), Royal Heroine (Ire) (Lypheor {GB}) and trainer Oscar White were selected by the Historic Review Committee; three were honored in the Pillar of the Turf category: James Cox Brady, Marshall Cassidy and James Ben Ali Haggin.

This year's event had a smaller crowd than usual, possibly because there were no contemporary trainers or jockeys inducted. All four of the people who received racing's highest honor for their distinguished careers, have been dead for decades. Haggin, a remarkable owner and breeder, who at one time owned 1,500 broodmares, was born 200 years ago.

Beholder, owned by the late B. Wayne Hughes' Spendthrift Farm and trained by Richard Mandella, completed her brilliant career with a record of 18-6-0 from 26 starts and earnings of $6,156,600. She was a four-time champion, won three Breeders' Cup races and a total of 11 Grade I races. She won at least one Grade I in each of her five seasons on the track.

“It's an amazing and humbling honor for us to see our greatest race-mare, our once-in-a-lifetime horse enshrined next to the many others that came before her,” said Eric Gustavson, Hughes's son-in-law and the president of Spendthrift. “Beholder is already in the Hall of Fame now, so what you're getting feels like I'm lobbying for her to get in.”

Gustavson cited some of the high points of Beholder's career and acknowledged by name the people who worked with her, starting with the breeders, Fred and Nancy Mitchell of Clarkland Farm. He said Mandella, who had to miss the ceremony because he had tested positive for Covid-19, deserved credit for Beholder's success, “for his masterful horsemanship, patience and judgment, and managing Beholder's incredible career. Thank you, Richard.”

“I once heard Richard say, 'I can't get out of the horses what God didn't put in,'” Gustavson said. “Well, thank you God for giving Beholder so much talent. And thank you Richard for getting it all out of her.”

As he began to talk about Hughes, who died in August 2021, Gustavson paused for nine seconds to regain his composure.

“You should be standing here right now instead of me,” Gustavson said. “And while we're sorry, he didn't get to see Beholder win her final honor. We take solace in remembering how much Beholder meant to Wayne. You see, Wayne never got too attached to his race horses. They meant a lot to him, but he just wasn't the type to allow his emotions to come along for the ride. Until Beholder that is. She changed him in that regard. Following Beholder's impressive win against the boys in the 2015 [GI] Pacific Classic, Wayne said 'I've had a few good horses in the past, but she's the first horse that makes me feel lucky to be the owner. I've never had that feeling before. I think it's called pride.'”

Owner Robert Masterson saluted Tepin's Hall of Fame induction at the venue where he purchased her for $140,000 just over a decade ago. She emerged as a champion turf horse as a 4-year-old, winning 11 of her last 15 races, including the G1 Queen Anne at Royal Ascot, the second of her three victories over males, and won two division titles.

“The one thing about Tepin that I really admired was the more she raced and the more success she had, the greater the following she seemed to get from the people,” Masterson said. “The fans seemed to start to really love her. The first time I recognized it was when she overcame a 13-length deficit to win a Grade II [Hillsborough S.] at Tampa Bay Downs. When she crossed the finish line, there was just as an eruption of applause. It was like a crescendo at the end of a concert that was so good. And when she won up in Woodbine in Canada when she beat the boys in the Grade I [Woodbine Mile S.], we're having the trophy presentation, and we stopped the trophy presentation to recognize the fans who shouted loudly, 'Tepin. Tepin. Tepin.' It was such an appreciation from the Canadian fans.”

He continued, “Then again when she finished second in the Grade I at Santa Anita at the Breeders Cup [2016 Mile], when she was leaving, to go back to the barn, the grandstand started going, 'Tepin. Tepin. Tepin.' I think that was because she finished the last quarter of that Breeders Cup, the fastest quarter ever recorded on the grass at Santa Anita. And the fans really appreciated that even though she came up half a length short.”

Masterson told a story about seeing a family at Saratoga wearing homemade Tepin shirts and said she had a bar named for her at the track after her score at Royal Ascot.

“On behalf of Tepin and myself, I want to thank all the fans who came out and reacted positively to her and loved to watch her race,” Masterson said. “I want to thank Mark Casse and his son Norm for the excellent training job they did on her. I want to thank Julien Leparoux for the rides. I want to thank [David] Greathouse for helping me find her right here at the Fasig-Tipton yearling sale. And I want to thank the Hall of Fame committee for recognizing her accomplishments and voting her into the Hall of Fame. It's such an honor.”

The post Leading Ladies Inducted Into Hall of Fame appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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