Tag: Three Technique

Hoist The Gold Tops Mineshaft 1-2 In the Cigar Mile

It may not have been a Grade I race this year, but the GII Cigar Mile H. came down to a horse with top-level class as Hoist the Gold (Mineshaft) sped gate-to-wire to hoist the trophy ahead of a talented, full field.

One of a pair of horses in the field coming back from last month's GI Breeders' Cup Sprint, Hoist the Gold took the GII Stoll Keenon Ogden Phoenix S. two starts back with a career-best 101 Beyer Speed Figure Oct. 6. Consistently raced throughout his career, the 4-year-old entered the gate Saturday for the 26th time with eight of his nine starts this year in graded-stakes races.

Slightly chilly on the board at 8-1, the Dream Team homebred broke from the outside but possessed all the early speed and quickly moved down to race between Pipeline (Speightstown) and the lightly-raced Cascais (Into Mischief). But as the field of 12 came out of the Aqueduct chute and onto the main track, Hoist the Gold was left alone on the lead under Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez. Allowed to run free on the lead with only Pipeline keeping in touch, the colt zipped through fractions of :22.41 and :44.88 as the rest of the field struggled to keep the leader in their sights. Velazquez stayed motionless on his mount into the lane, not even drawing his stick until the furlong marker as Hoist the Gold drew away in hand with only a late-closing Senor Buscador (Mineshaft) cutting into the winning margin late to make it a Mineshaft-sired exacta.

“What a race,” said winning trainer Dallas Stewart. “Johnny [Velazquez] picked the right race for us. He told us at Breeders' Cup, the horse doesn't like dirt in his face. He said, 'just let me ride him the way I want–run him a mile at Aqueduct and he won't get beat.' He was 100 percent right. At the eighth pole, he kicked in another gear and got in front of them some more. He made that separation and that's the sign of a good horse. I just hate that they took the Grade I away, but he showed he's a good horse and we'll take the $500,000 and head down the road.”

Pedigree Note:
One of 61 stakes winner for the Lane's End stallion, Hoist the Gold is one of three winners from three runners out of the winning Tapit mare Tacit Approval, herself a $320,000 2-year-old. Her other two winners were both fillies sired by Hill 'n' Dale's Mucho Macho Man. She foaled a Vekoma filly last year and reported another foal by Mucho Macho Man, this time a colt, earlier this year.

 

Saturday, Aqueduct
CIGAR MILE H.-GII, $500,000, Aqueduct, 12-2, 3yo/up, 1m, 1:34.28, my.
1–HOIST THE GOLD, 121, c, 4, by Mineshaft
          1st Dam: Tacit Approval, by Tapit
          2nd Dam: Punch Appeal, by Successful Appeal
          3rd Dam: Okanagan Dawn, by Two Punch
($47,000 RNA Ylg '20 KEESEP). O-Dream Team One Racing Stable; B-Dream Team Racing (KY); T-Dallas Stewart; J-John R. Velazquez. $275,000. Lifetime Record: MGISP, 26-5-6-3, $1,119,547. Werk Nick Rating: F. Click for the eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree or free Equineline.com catalogue-style pedigree.
2–Senor Buscador, 123, h, 5, Mineshaft–Rose's Desert, by Desert God. O-Joe R. Peacock, Jr.; B-Joe R Peacock Sr. & Joe R Peacock Jr. (KY); T-Todd W. Fincher. $100,000.
3–Castle Chaos, 116, g, 5, Palace Malice–Queen Victoria, by Flatter. 1ST BLACK TYPE, 1ST GRADED BLACK TYPE. O-Sanford Goldfarb, Nice Guys Stables and Beast Mode Racing LLC; B-Dragon Slayer Stable (KY); T-Robert N. Falcone, Jr.. $60,000.
Margins: 4HF, 4 1/4, NO. Odds: 8.70, 3.80, 32.50.
Also Ran: Three Technique, Coastal Mission, Offaly Cool, Dr Ardito, High Oak, Pipeline, Accretive, Everso Mischievous, Cascais.
Click for the Equibase.com chart or the TJCIS.com PPs. VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.

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‘This is a Beautiful Gift Box Colt’: Veinot Has High Hopes for One-Horse Fasig July Consignment

Trudy Veinot's Dreamcatcher consignment makes its second auction appearance in the Fasig-Tipton July Sale of Selected Yearlings and, while a son of Gift Box (hip 107) is the veteran horsewoman's sole entry in the sale, she is excited about the colt's prospects in the ring Tuesday.

Veinot, a transplanted Canadian now living in Lexington, purchased the colt for $30,000 at last year's Keeneland November sale.

“I liked his frame,” Veinot said of the weanling's appeal. “There wasn't a lot of meat on those bones, but there was a beautiful frame. I liked the way he moved. This horse has probably the biggest walk on anything I've ever prepped in 20 years. I am hoping the buyers will see that. I am pretty sure that they will.”

Of the colt's transformation since last fall, Veinot said, “You wouldn't even recognize him. It doesn't always go that way. You buy that frame in hopes that it will all fill out in the right places. And with him, it has.”

The gray colt is out of La Boheme (Giant's Causeway), a half-sister to graded winners Electrify (Delaware Township) and Rothko (Arch).

Veinot worked as a showman for Taylor Made Sales Agency for two decades before starting her Dreamcatcher consignment with two horses at the Keeneland January sale earlier this year. But her relatively late start in horse racing was anything but certain after growing up showing horses in Canada.

“I left Canada when I was 24, almost turning 25,” Veinot recalled. “I was in Nova Scotia, married and had five businesses, and I didn't like anything I did. I was small enough. I always wanted to be a jockey. I knew a friend of a friend down in Maryland and he got me a job with Jonathan Sheppard. I packed up everything I owned and I went down to Jonathan Sheppard's farm.”

Veinot rode her first race at 30, but after five years in the saddle turned to training. She found a niche buying yearlings and selling them at the track as 2-year-olds.

“I would buy yearlings with no pedigree and I would run them at Keeneland and sell them off of the track,” she explained. “I would gate break and gallop them all on my own.”

That hands-on approach translated when she decided it was time to step back from breaking babies and transitioned to pinhooking weanlings to yearlings.

“When I had to step back from getting on those 2-year-olds, I wasn't really happy about that,” Veinot said. “To me, that was a step backwards. But I absolutely love weanling to yearlings. I break all of the babies before I bring them to the sale. And people know that I do that. I just like the one-on-one time with them. Anybody who knows me knows that I put a lot of groundwork in. All of my horses have had saddles and bridles and branches and tarps and balloons–I tie helium balloons to their backs before I get up on them. My favorite part is the groundwork and building confidence in the horse because I think it transcends onto the racetrack.”

In addition to showing at the sales for Taylor Made, Veinot sold her horses through the farm's sales consignments.

“I've partnered and sold with the Taylor Made boys for over 20 years,” Veinot said. “Taylor Made always blessed me with the privilege of going into their consignment and coming with my horses. So I was always able to show my own horses with them because I showed for them for 20 years.”

Among her pinhooking successes is Three Technique (Mr Speaker), who she purchased for $50,000 at the 2017 Keeneland November sale and sold the following year with Taylor Made for $180,000 at the Fasig-Tipton July sale. The 6-year-old recently added the July 1 GII John A Nerud S. to his resume.

“Three Technique was the first horse by Mr Speaker to go through the ring,” Veinot said. “I didn't even know who Mr Speaker was, but I really liked him.”

She also pinhooked Kalik (Collected), who she acquired for $80,000 at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton October sale and resold for $200,000 at Keeneland the following September. The colt, owned by Bob LaPenta, e Five Racing Thoroughbreds and Madaket Stables and trained by Chad Brown, won the June 3 GII Pennine Ridge S. and heads postward in Saturday's GI Belmont Derby.

“Chad Brown said he was his best 2-year-old last year, but he got slow going,” Veinot said of Kalik, who has now won three times from five starts. “He just won a stakes at Belmont that gave him an automatic entry into a $750,000 stakes. So I think he runs in New York before he heads to the Queen's [King's] Plate.”

The 58-year-old Veinot made the decision to go out on her own in January. In Dreamcatcher's first consignment, she sold a 2-year-old filly by Vino Rosso for $28,000 and RNA'd a daughter of Thousand Words.

“It was just time to take the leap,” Veinot said of the decision to start her own consignment. “By the time you give Keeneland 5% and [the consignor] 5%, it's $10,000 to sell your $100,000 horse. Financially this makes more sense. Truth be told, it made me a little nervous to step outside of the Taylor Made umbrella because they took care of the details, the paperwork, the entry forms. If I forgot something, they were on top of it. But, as long as I keep my ducks in a row as far as the paperwork goes, I am quite comfortable.”

While she purchased individuals with little pedigree when selling 2-year-olds off the track years ago, Veinot has found a new strategy with her weanling buys.

“That's the toughest part of the game that I've had to conform to,” she said. “I had the most beautiful Orb filly–just as one example–and nobody would buy an Orb. At that point they had all been burned by Orb and so I never got paid. So when I am looking at babies now, if I can afford the first-crop sires, I will. I can't afford the established sires, so what I will generally do is go in there and buy a first-crop sire with a smaller stud fee, like Mr Speaker and this Gift Box colt. But then I will try to buy something in that pedigree that might have a 2-year-old that could help me out next year. So I will look at all the yearlings turning two and the 2-year-olds turning three [in the weanling's pedigree] and hope to get a little lucky that way. That would be my niche, if you're buying on a budget.”

Veinot, who leases a farm off Huntertown Road, plans on keeping her operation small to continue her hands-on approach.

“I keep a really boutique bunch because I do all the work myself,” she said. “So a half-dozen is my magic number [to pinhook]. I did eight a couple of years ago and it was just too many.”

Veinot still has her trainer's license and has two horses in her stable.

“I kept a horse that I liked and had some talent and named him after my dad,” she said of You Make Me Happy (Firing Line). “He broke his maiden here at Keeneland in the fall, but I don't brag to be a trainer. I did that when I was pinhooking yearlings to 2-year-olds. I did that for 10 years and then I took a break and started doing the weanlings. When You Make Me Happy came along, I took my trainer's license back out for him. And I've kept another filly who went through that January sale, she's a filly by Thousand Words who I think has a ton of talent and I'm going to race her under my own name.”

Fasig-Tipton will host its July Selected Horses of Racing Age Sale Monday at Newtown Paddocks with bidding beginning at 2 p.m. The Fasig-Tipton July Sale of Selected Yearlings will be held Tuesday beginning at 10 a.m.

The post ‘This is a Beautiful Gift Box Colt’: Veinot Has High Hopes for One-Horse Fasig July Consignment appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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The Week In Review: On Another Day Dominated By Super Trainers, Jason Cook Wins One For The Little Guy

There were 13 graded stakes races run in North America Saturday and the combination of Bob Baffert, Chad Brown, Steve Asmussen, Brad Cox and Mark Casse won eight of them. That's three Hall of Famers and two future Hall of Famers. Not that any of this should come as a surprise. The so-called super trainer stables seem to only be getting bigger and more powerful by the day, leaving everyone else to fight over the leftover scraps.

So what chance did Jason Cook have in the GII John A. Nerud S. at Belmont? He has a four-horse stable and in the 34 years he's been training, had never won a graded stakes race.

Now he has.

Three Technique (Mr. Speaker), a horse Cook claimed for $40,000, won the seven-furlong sprint by 3 3/4 lengths, beating, among others, horses trained by Todd Pletcher and Bill Mott.

“To tell you the truth, it didn't sink in until later,” Cook said. “But it was great to win a graded stakes. That's what make this sport so great. Anybody can win on any given day. That's why we run them.”

That Cook has persevered the way he has is admirable. For the last 11 years, he has raised his daughter Peyton by himself. Cook's wife Tracey died from sepsis when Peyton was just 2 1/2 years old. He has had to balance being a single parent, taking his daughter to her soccer games and attending parent-teacher conferences with training horses. He admits it hasn't been easy and that he hasn't been able to devote all his time to training.

“I have raised my daughter by myself,” the 49-year-old Cook said. “That's one of the reasons things have been pretty slow for me. I'm spending a lot of my time going to her soccer games. There are trade offs in life.”

Cook grew up on the racetrack. His father Lois Cook was a jockey who won the 1957 Kentucky Oaks with Lori-El and finished tenth in the 1955 Kentucky Derby. Jason Cook started out as a hotwalker when he was 13 and took out his trainer's license when he was 17. He won his first race in 1993 when he was just 19.

“I never really thought about doing anything else other than training,” Cook said. “It was what I wanted to do when I younger. At that age, you think being a trainer is the greatest thing in the world. You find out it's not. Its not as easy as you thought it would be.”

He won three stakes in 1996 and another in 1997, but his win totals remained modest. Based on wins, his best year was 2008 when he won 18 races. There have also been plenty of years like 2020, when he went 1-for-19, and 2018 when he was 1-for-24. He said he never got discouraged, but the right horses never seemed to find their way into his barn.

“There are a lot of capable people that given the chance might be the next big trainer,” he said. “There's somebody training horses somewhere out there not doing any good and the reason why is they don't have the stock that allows them to show their talent. It all comes down to the horse. You have to have the horses.”

But he says he can see why so many owners flock to the same top five or six trainers.

“Those people who have those big stables, I've never begrudged them,” Cook said. “Todd Pletcher, Bill Mott, they are at the top of the game because they produce very good results. You can't be mad at somebody because of their success.”

To help make ends meet over the years, Cook would haul horses, something he no longer does. His main client was Dale Romans.

“That was something I did to help me make a living,” he said. “I used to go to all the stakes races for Dale. I trained a few horses, I hauled horses for Dale. That's how I got by.”

In the fall of 2021 Cook, who had just two winners on the year at the time, was surprised to see Three Technique show up in a $40,000 claimer at Churchill. Four starts earlier, he had finished third in the same John A. Nerud S. for trainer Jeremiah Englehart and owner Bill Parcells's August Dawn Farm. Just prior to the claiming race, he RNA'd for $47,000 at the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale.

“It looked like they were giving up on him,” Cook said. “Yes, I was worried that it was a suspicious drop in class.”

But to be able to acquire a horse for $40,000 that had, only a few months earlier, hit the board in a graded stakes race was something Cook and owners David Miller, Eric Grindley and John Werner couldn't resist. They weren't alone. There were 27 claims put in for Three Technique that day.

“Someone asked me what did you see in this horse to claim him,” Cook said. “I just got lucky and hit the lottery.”

Three Technique lost his first five races for Cook, but broke through to win last year's Knicks Go S. at Churchill Downs at 36-1, giving Cook his first stakes win in 25 years. He would go on a six-race losing streak before winning a May 27 allowance at Churchill. Cook couldn't decide between the Nerud and the July 2 Hanshin S. at Ellis Park, the same race in which he almost beat Cody's Wish (Curlin) last year, losing by just a neck. He decided on the Nerud because he thought his horse preferred one turn.

Three Technique | Joe Labozzetta

Prior to the Nerud, he had never started a horse at Belmont. His lone starter in New York had come in a 1997 claiming race at Saratoga.

“I'm going to try and buck the trend and win one in New York,” Cook said prior to the race. “My dad was a jockey and I like history and that track has a lot of history. My dad was one of the leading riders in the country in the '50s.”

With Javier Castellano aboard, Three Technique won comfortably, looking like a horse who can hold his own against top sprinters.

“I just got to sit back and watch,” Cook said. “The horse had to do all the hard work. He is a very determined horse and he always runs his race.”

One of the first calls he got after Three Technique crossed the wire was from Peyton. She usually joins her father at the track whenever he has a horse in a race, but she didn't make the trip to New York.

“This was one of the few trips she didn't make,” Cook said. “She was home with some friends. She was so excited. She was crying and screaming she was so excited. I wish she would have been here.”

Cook isn't sure where Three Technique will run next. One concern he has is that the horse doesn't like the heat, which could be a factor later this summer in places like Saratoga. That's a problem for another day. For now, he's going to sit back and relax and enjoy the day he beat the big boys.

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Keeneland November Sale Adds 11 Supplemental Entries

Keeneland has announced that 11 horses have been supplemented to the horses of racing age portion during the 78th November Breeding Stock Sale, to be held Nov. 10-19. In addition, a weanling colt by Liam's Map has been supplemented to Book 1 on the sale's opening day.

Consigned by Taylor Made Sales Agency, agent, the weanling colt is out of the Street Cry mare Amen Sista, a full sister to Grade 3 winner Southdale, and from the family of Grade 3 winner Plainsman.

Keeneland will accept supplements to Book 1 until the November Sale begins and continue to accept supplements to the horses of racing age portion through mid-November.

The horses of racing age section of the November Sale on Nov. 19 includes this latest round of supplements:

 – Ali Alley, a 2-year-old daughter of Quality Road out of stakes winner Madame Pele, by Salt Lake. She is consigned by Denali Stud, agent.

– Crowded Trade, a 3-year-old colt by More Than Ready who this year was second in the Grade 3 Gotham, was third in the G2 Wood Memorial Presented by Resorts World Casino and G2 Amsterdam and competed in the Preakness Stakes. Consigned by ELiTE, agent, he is out of stakes winner and Grade 3-placed Maude S, by Jump Start.

– Federalist Papers, a winning 3-year-old filly by More Than Ready out of the Galileo mare Infamous. From the family of European champion 2-year-old colt Mastercraftsman, she is consigned by ELiTE, agent.

– Made In Italy, a winning, Group 2-placed 4-year-old filly by Mukhadram consigned by ELiTE, agent.

– Piece of My Heart, a 4-year-old daughter of Flat Out who won the 2020 Gardenia Stakes at Oaklawn Park. Her dam, Intheriver, by Sunriver, is a full sister to multiple Grade 1 winner Weemissfrankie, third in the 2011 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. Eaton Sales, agent, consigns Piece of My Heart.

– School of Thought, a 3-year-old Empire Maker filly out of the A.P. Indy mare Sequel, a full sister to Grade 1 winner A. P. Adventure. She is consigned by ELiTE, agent.

– Take Joy, a 3-year-old daughter of Empire Maker out of the Grade 2-placed Harlan's Holiday mare Duff One. Denali Stud, agent, consigns the filly, who is from the family of Grade/Group 2 winners Rabbit Run and Rainha Da Bateria and Grade/Group 3 winners Asakusa Genki, Assateague and Kindergarden Kid.

– The Peninsula, a winning 2-year-old gelding by Fed Biz from the family of champion Riboletta consigned by Keith Dickey.

– Three Technique, a Grade 2-placed winning 4-year-old colt by Mr Speaker. The half-brother to multiple stakes winner Stan the Man is consigned by Blackwood Stables, agent.

– Tuggle, a Grade 2-placed winning 4-year-old colt by Point of Entry consigned by Blackwood Stables, agent. He is from the family of champion Heavenly Prize, Grade 1 winners Oh What a Windfall and Dancing Forever and Grade 3 winner Carrumba.

– With Cause, a 2-year-old filly by Creative Cause whose dam, Withhold, by Tiznow, is a half-sister to Group 1 winner Cafe Pharoah, Grade 2 winner Regal Glory and Grade 3 winner Night Prowler. She is consigned by Paramount Sales, agent.

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