Tag: Wit

Wit Finds It Easy Like a Sunday Morning

The whole place was overgrown, and there was just so much work to be done. But among the weeds and dilapidation were rampant wild roses, and hedge apples; and they had each other, and they had a dream. For all the toil ahead, Rosilyn Polan and her husband Kenneth felt such a sense of homecoming that she had to scroll all the way back to girlhood for an answering chord of memory.

“When I was little, waking up on a Sunday morning, you'd smell coffee brewing in the kitchen, and pancakes cooking,” she explains, some 30 years later. “And so I always thought Sunday morning was just the best feeling. But when we bought the farm I thought, no, this here is 'Sunday morning'; this is the best feeling.”

And so they called it Sunday Morning Farm, this a 100-acre parcel between a loop of the Kentucky River and the Woodford Reserve Distillery. Even so, they knew that all the repose seeping from the name would have to be deferred for much honest labor.

Learning that the fencing was coming down at the old Warnerton Farm, they offered the crew a deal. If they did the work, could they keep the timber? Well, sure.

“We had a long pole, and a chain, and a wheel,” Polan remembers. “And we'd hook the chain over one end of the pole, and the other end would go over the tire, and we'd get on the end of it and just push, push, push, until it would pull that chain end up, and pull the fence post out of the ground.”

They loaded the salvage onto the truck and took it home, where they pried out all the nails and sawed off the jagged ends. They'd bought a post driver, among a lot of other old equipment bought at auctions to repair, and Kenneth mounted each board onto its post with a hammer.

“If you had seen the place then, it almost makes me weep to think back to how hard we worked,” Polan says. “I can't believe what we did that. But we just worked and cleared. We were young-well, Kenneth wasn't that young! But he was tough. And we were just 'living off love'.”

Polan speaks those last words with a charming, singsong lilt of self-deprecation, without remotely diminishing the joys that redeemed the perspiration of those days. Because somehow they made it work: they cleaned offices at night, they cut hay for other people, and of course there was still the catering business. Because the whole adventure had been underpinned by an inspiration that had seized Polan, pondering a history of her own with horses, when her delicatessen in downtown Lexington stood idle during sale weeks.

“I thought, 'Gosh, everybody's at the horse sale but me,'” she remembers. “So I thought I'd go out and see if anybody wants me to deliver lunch. Because prior to that, you'd just send out one of your show crew to McDonalds, and nobody liked their lunch.”

She started with a single client, but was soon known all round the barns as “The Bag Lady,” her sandwiches keeping consignors and their help going through long days of showing in the extremes of the Kentucky climate. It went so well that Polan was ultimately able to join the competition. But for all the romance of the idea, and the name, there was never anything merely fanciful about Sunday Morning.

“Kenneth was not a horse person, but he had grown up farming,” Polan says. “His family raised hay and tobacco, with a horse-drawn plough, and a horse-drawn hay cutter, so he had a knack-plus he was a really hard worker, and knew how to do anything. So we were a good complement, building this farm.

“My dad and his brothers had a hill farm in the mountains of West Virginia. All the aunts and uncles and cousins would go up there for the summer, and the menfolk would leave the womenfolk and go back to Huntington to work all week, and then come back at the weekend. We had a couple horses up there, that lived in the forest in the winter and then in the summer we had them brought over, and that was how I learned to ride: my mother standing at one point, my brother at another, and me going from one to the other. And then I'd spend the entire rest of my day in the shed where those horses liked to loaf in the cool, standing around among the tractors and machinery, and I'd read to them and write stories about them and I was just one of those horse crazy girls.”

So after college Polan decided she'd learn the horse business properly, and wrote to farm after farm in Kentucky. But every owner, every manager, told her the same. We don't hire women. Eventually she got a foot in the door, when Harold Snowden at the Stallion Station sent her to Keeneland, where his son was training, with instructions to give her a job walking hots; until, at last, Jonabell Farm gave her the farm work she craved. No doubt it was a wider education, too, with the grooms teaching her to shoot craps in the tack room during their lunch break. But the whole environment was so immersive that she would now feel ever restless, unless and until able to tend horses for herself someday.

In the early Sunday Morning years, admittedly, it proved just as well that they were still harvesting plenty of tobacco. Though they had scraped together enough for a first mare, her yearlings tended to sell for only $3,000 or so. But then, in 2005, everything changed.

Polan had bought a Meadowlake mare for $51,000 at the 2003 November Sale, in foal to El Corredor. She now sold the resulting colt at the Fasig-Tipton July Sale to B. Wayne Hughes, the new owner of Spendthrift Farm, for $385,000. Almost as suddenly as the sun had come out over the farm, however, it was hidden behind the blackest cloud imaginable. For it was that same year that Kenneth was claimed by cancer.

“At least he knew he was now leaving me financially secure,” reflects Polan. “He was there at the sale that day, and he was so proud. Because of that colt, I had a little money in my pocket. We paid off all our debts, and Kenneth made sure I had new equipment. And, in the years since, I've somehow had more home-run, lucky years than unlucky ones.”

So while quantity remains modest–with nine mares of her own, and five boarders–Polan has achieved repeated and skillful increments in quality, each success containing the seedcorn of the next. The one time she made a perilous stretch was in borrowing $160,000 for a Tapit mare named Anchorage, in foal to Will Take Charge, at the 2015 November Sale. Each of her foals sold since, however, has raised more than she cost–notably a $370,000 Runhappy filly at the 2019 September Sale.

In further vindication of her strategy, essentially to seek fine mares with glamorous rookie covers, at the same auction she realized $250,000 for a Frosted colt acquired in utero with an unraced Medaglia d'Oro mare, Numero d'Oro, for $175,000 at the 2017 November Sale. The following year, however, the same mare's colt by Practical Joke would do better yet.

“I was one horse in the middle of three huge consignments, and I would have to push my way into the middle to make room for him to be shown,” Polan remembers. “But he never turned a hair. He just got bigger and better every day. He just puffed up and his stride got longer. He was so professional–and he was shown a lot. He was scoped, oh, 27 times I think. People came back and back, and several who I know told me: 'Rosilyn, this is one of the nicest horses in the whole sale.' There we were, day one of Book 2, surrounded by Tapits and Curlins and Medaglia d'Oros. And he was head and shoulders above anything in there. Every time I watched him go out, he made my knees go weak. He knew he was special.”

And so, it appeared, did everyone else. There was a single caveat: slightly puffy tendons. In a normal year, Polan might have done some therapy to tighten them up a little, maybe some ultrasound or PST. But this was not a normal year. Who on earth, she asked herself, would be buying racehorses in the time of coronavirus? But the ultrasounds evidently showed only an immature, growthy colt, just maybe not the type for a 2-year-old sale.

As it was, he made $575,000. His new owners, regular partners Vinnie Viola and Mike Repole along with Antony Beck of Gainesway, gave him the time he needed; and when he surfaced from the Pletcher barn on Belmont S. day, under the name of Wit, he won by six lengths. The dazzling impression he made then has, of course, since been reinforced by a still more emphatic success in the GIII Sanford S. at Saratoga, qualifying him as the trailblazer of the juvenile crop.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” Polan says. “I've sold well, more than once. And I've always thought that was the ultimate. But now, oh my gosh! In both races he was away a little slow but he didn't have to do anything, just lengthened and lengthened as he went through the race. It was like a dream, watching, and it still is. I'm just so proud of that boy.

“To me, the best part was after his first race, when he loped back to the winner's circle on a loose rein. He turned to the crowd, took in his surroundings, and just put his nose on the rail, took a deep breath and seemed to say: 'Now what do you want me to do?' He's always been a 'What-can-I-do-for-you-today?' type.”

And this, of course, is a win-win situation. Polan is not just delighted for the buyers who gave the farm such a good payday, but also in a position to reap further rewards through Wit's dam. Numero d'Oro was wisely given a fallow year, having delivered Wit as late as May 5, but now has a City Of Light weanling colt who Polan describes as a “duplicate” of his sibling; and she is in foal to Authentic.

“She just has aura about her, a beautiful walk and beautiful manner,” says Polan. “It makes your eyes happy to watch her walking, and her baby the same. He has just the same big rear end, the same bullet appearance as Wit, that same swinging stride. They're just so confident and unruffled.”

Whatever each may have been inherited from their dam, the intimate Sunday Morning regime has doubtless contributed significantly as well.

“Well, I do handle my foals a lot,” Polan says. “But nothing really special. I have two young men who work for me, and they too have really easy-going temperaments. We hand walk, for sales prep. We've dogs running around. In the evening I'll go through the fields, give them a scratch, take their fly masks off. They pretty much do what you ask, and we don't fight. For years I did this by myself, so they had to be good. But really I don't know that much. I just give them time.”

Many a bigger farm could do with that kind of “ignorance”. And the smaller ones, for their part, can take heart from her example.

“It just shows, anybody can do it,” Polan says. “I started out peddling sandwiches. I've just been super lucky. People always say, 'Well, you work so hard.' But we all work so hard, don't you agree? And some of us are lucky, some of us are not. But I'm not only a very lucky person. I'm a positive person, too. I expect good things to happen. And when bad things do happen, I just keep looking forward.

“Even at age 68, I'm still like a little kid. These horses give me way more than I do them. My farm's so pretty, so secluded. Lot of birds. And then to have these beautiful horses, that give me so much joy… So you meet your challenges, and you carry on. And then when you hit a home run like Wit, really there are no words. It just fills me up so much, looking at his baby pictures: that cute little bugger, with a zigzag stripe on his face.”

So really the GI Hopeful S., scheduled as the next step of the colt's journey at the end of the Saratoga meet, has seldom been so well named. Wit will not just represent Sunday Morning Farm, but every program that has realized what could have been an idle dream, not so much by dollars and cents as by passion and endeavor.

“I'll never go anyplace or do anything,” says Polan. “My life is very small. You think, how nice it would be to go trekking through the Alps, go see Machu Picchu. But I'll never do that. This is who I am. And I'm just really happy doing what I do.”

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Wit Helps Everyone to Get the Joke

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat. Even setting aside the fact that our industry–with the complicity of the media–devotes disproportionate attention and resources to freshman sires, July is way too early to be deciding which few will ultimately build a sustainable career in Kentucky.

True, it can only be auspicious to see Gun Runner already perched at the top of their prizemoney table. Though he put together his Horse of the Year campaign as a 4-year-old, he has already had eight winners from 18 starters. But other two-turn types in the intake still have plenty of time to show their wares.

By the same token, while horses of that kind have barely adjusted the microphone, some of their more precocious rivals are already halfway through their routine. But with that in mind, whoever ends up with the last laugh, there's no mistaking who got the first one.

Practical Joke, who had taken the stage before a packed house, has immediately settled any nerves after his son Wit produced a flamboyant performance in the GIII Sanford S. last Saturday.

After opening for business at Ashford in 2018, this son of Into Mischief saw his stock secure a striking fidelity in an era when so many breeders flit neurotically from one newcomer to the next. Having mustered a remarkable opening book of 220 mares, Practical Joke retained 200 customers in 2019, and 188 for that tricky third cycle. In this day and age, that represents an exceptional commercial commitment.

Despite lavish supply, Practical Joke made a strong debut at the yearling sales, achieving a $90,000 median, three times his $30,000 opening fee; and behind only Gun Runner, Arrogate and Mastery with his $120,243 average for 74 sold (of 92 offered). What has been particularly striking, however, is the vogue achieved by that first crop both with pinhookers and then with their clients. No fewer than 56 were processed through the 2-year-old sales, with 48 achieving a $152,500 median and $188,993 average. One of his daughters topped OBS March at $750,000, and then another ended up as the second highest filly at Gulfstream, at $800,000. News traveled fast, too: a third Practical Joke filly topped the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale at 360,000gns.

So Practical Joke has maintained persuasive momentum all the way. To be fair, there were always solid grounds for believing that he might not just be a fast starter. He's a strongly made, quick-looking horse who could nonetheless appeal to those shrewd enough to distinguish between speed as an indicator of class, and speed as an indicator of mere precocity. Yes, he won on debut at Saratoga, followed up at the end of the meet in the GI Hopeful S. and confirmed himself the top youngster on the East Coast in the GI Champagne S. But he also matured well enough to win the GI H. Allen Jerkens S. back at the Spa, a performance that suggested sprinting to be his true metier despite having held out for fifth in the Derby.

As such, he made a significant contribution to the evolving profile of his own sire. An ongoing upgrade in Into Mischief's mares, however, has since allowed them to start stretching his brilliance through a second turn. And it is the resulting, stratospheric elevation in his fee that gives all his young sons at stud their most obvious selling point, as a more affordable route to the most expensive blood in the land. Trimmed to $22,500 (from $25,000 in 2020) to maintain momentum in the pandemic economy, Practical Joke this spring traded at a fee exactly 1/10th of that now commanded by sire.

We had seen this angle worked at the first opportunity, with Goldencents graduating from Into Mischief's first crop to join his sire at Spendthrift–where he covered 929 mares across his first five seasons. (A stark contrast with Into Mischief himself, whose fifth crop of 168 live foals surpassed 150 from his first four combined!)

His legacy as a sire of sires is the last remaining challenge for the Into Mischief revolution. Remember that he was still standing at just $20,000 when conceiving Practical Joke, whose own juvenile endeavors would assist his sire up to $75,000 (from $45,000) for 2017. It stands to reason that Into Mischief's stallion sons will become more attractive with the improved bloodlines he has been able to access with each passing year.

Of course, the most blatant clue to his potency was precisely the fact that he produced such effective runners from his mediocre early mates. Practical Joke belongs to his breakout fifth book, a response to the straws in the wind among his first juveniles, such as Goldencents, Vyjack and Sittin At The Bar.

(The latter, incidentally, is not just nursing a drink telling everyone who comes in that she was a daughter of Into Mischief when nobody had heard of him: last month her first foal Club Car (Malibu Moon) was runner-up in the GIII Chicago S. while a few days ago her third, Cilla (California Chrome), won a stakes at Monmouth. A promising marker, this, for Into Mischief's embryonic career as a broodmare sire.)

Among those who had cottoned on was Keith Crupper of Whispering Oaks Farm, Ky., who sent his Distorted Humor mare Halo Humor to Into Mischief and sold the resulting colt for $135,000 to Clear Ridge Stables as a Keeneland January short yearling. He was pinhooked through the same ring that September for $240,000, a sum exceeded by just three of the other 123 Into Mischief yearlings suddenly offered to the market in 2015. (Up from just 38 the previous year.) Named Practical Joke, he raced for Klaravich Stables and William H. Lawrence from the barn of Chad Brown, for whom only Good Magic has ever earned more on dirt.

His sales history attests to the inherent physical appeal of Practical Joke, but what makes him an interesting test case for Into Mischief, as a sire of sires, is that his own family remained typical of the relatively modest material then still being transformed by the genetic alchemy of the Spendthrift phenomenon. Halo Humor herself did have ability and significant precocity, winning her first two at Saratoga in a light career, but produced only one other foal sound enough to show the modesty of his competence. She also had a half-sister who won a Louisiana-bred stakes as a juvenile, but the only real distinction in Practical Joke's page occurs under his fourth dam, who produced two graded stakes winners including GII Stuyvesant H. winner and GI Vosburgh S. runner-up Moment Of Hope (Timeless Moment).

But just as he vindicated a high valuation, among his sire's first big crop, Practical Joke has immediately found an ambassador to do the same in Wit, at $575,000 handsomely the most expensive of the yearlings sent into the ring from that huge debut book.

He was bred by Rosilyn Polan of Sunday Morning Farm from an unraced Medaglia d'Oro mare, Numero d'Oro, acquired as a 9-year-old (with a Frosted cover) for $175,000 at Keeneland November in 2017. By that stage her first foal, the Emerald Downs stalwart Barkley (Munnings), had won seven of his first dozen starts–though he was reserving his GIII Longacres Mile H. success for the following year. (Of her three subsequent foals, the only one then of racing age was an industrious son of Caleb's Posse, who had won the first of what would become six wins at claiming level.)

Polan only keeps a handful of mares on her farm outside Versailles, but has evidently assembled them with skill. At Keeneland a couple of years ago, for instance, she sold a Runhappy filly out of her Tapit mare Anchorage for $370,000. In the case of Numero d'Oro, she covered her outlay at the first attempt by selling the Frosted colt acquired in utero for $250,000, also at the September Sale. She had meanwhile sent the mare to Practical Joke, and obviously did an outstanding job in preparing the resulting colt for the equivalent auction last year.

Though Polan had four others to bring in (a couple as agent) deeper into the catalog, to those prospecting the third session of the sale this appeared a one-horse consignment. But what a horse!

Alex Solis II, in his first year as Director of Bloodstock and Racing at Gainesway, was bowled over and later brought Jason Litt, his longstanding partner at Solis-Litt Bloodstock, and their colleague Madison Scott, to look at him. Did they see what he saw? Indeed they did: same energy, even at the end of the day; same physical flair, same buoyancy. “A man among boys,” as Solis puts it. He also consulted his new Gainesway colleague Brian Graves, who had pinhooked Practical Joke through Clear Ridge Stables, and was assured that the colt was the very image of his sire.

So while the docket for the colt was signed by Jacob West on behalf of Repole Stables and St. Elias Stable, who have partnered in so many good horses, this was one in which they also took aboard Gainesway's owner Antony Beck.

“Alex had joined our team at Gainesway and he selected some horses for us to buy in partnership with some other people, amongst them Vinnie Viola and Mike Repole,” Beck explains. “It's wonderful to have a good horse with them and I think we're going to have a lot of fun together.”

Beck's recollection of the young Wit is powerful. “As a yearling, he was one of the most impressive horses I've ever laid eyes on,” he declares.

The colt's stylish debut for Todd Pletcher last month set up a great day for Beck, who later on the same card saw Essential Quality become a record-equalling fourth winner of the GI Belmont S. for Gainesway's champion Tapit.

Wit was again a little tardy from the gate in the Sanford, but you have to love the controlled way he came bounding along the rail before being driven eight lengths clear, looking highly eligible to emulate his sire in the Hopeful.

“The Sanford isn't always a very strong field,” Beck remarks. “But this looked a very good field, and he was extremely impressive. If you look at the history of the race, a lot of great horses have won it. We're tremendously excited about his future.”

Whether Practical Joke might someday get his stock to stretch, after the eventual fashion of his sire, remains to be seen. As such, Wit's prospects for a second turn are opaque. He does appear to have a helpfully composed style. But his dam, as mentioned, was unraced and her sire Medaglia d'Oro, while obviously a proven Classic brand, is also a pretty diverse influence. In this case he had been paired with a mare by the speedy Afleet who had twice been placed in graded stakes around a mile; she is also the second dam of a classy one-turn operator in Ivy Bell (Archarcharch). The next dam was an ordinary producer by Caro (Ire), but she was out of a top-class juvenile (later Classic-placed) in France, Silver Cloud (Fr)–by Dan Cupid, quite a name to find pegging down the pedigree of a new force on the scene in 2021!

Incidentally, anyone disposed to follow the family still farther back will eventually reach another resonant name: Wit's seventh dam is a sister to War Relic, who gave the male line of their sire Man o' War its survival, now so precarious, through his son Intent.

Rather too long a perspective, no doubt, for most tastes. Nonetheless we have to remind ourselves that even a horse as exciting as Wit can still only be welcomed as the first green shoots of whatever harvest eventually awaits Practical Joke. From 104 named foals, he has so far launched a dozen starters and four winners. But he couldn't have scripted a better ice-breaker, launching his most expensive yearling to look just what he was bought to be. If we reiterate that Practical Joke has barely started, then that may well turn out to be simply because there's so much more still to come.

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Practical Joke Rising Star to Beat in Sanford

Reflective of a murky early-season 2-year-old male pecking order, a full dozen will line up in Saturday's GIII Sanford S. at Saratoga, with 'TDN Rising Star' Wit (Practical Joke) expected to go favored from the rail.

Easily the most expensive of 88 yearlings to sell from his freshman sire in 2020 when hammering for $575,000 at Keeneland September, the dark bay was hammered down to 45 cents on the dollar debuting June 5 at Belmont only to break last. That was no matter though, as the Todd Pletcher trainee advanced strongly while wide on the turn, swept to the front in mid-stretch and burst clear to a six-length romp.

Mueller Thoroughbred Stable's Candy Landing (Twirling Candy), the second choice on the morning line, won like he was odds-on debuting as a 17-1 shot June 11 at Churchill. The homebred prevailed in a pace duel with the race's co-favorite and drew clear in the final furlong to a 4 1/2-length success.

Breeze Easy went to $550,000 at OBS March to secure Headline Report (Gormley) and the ridgling rewarded that confidence in his debut, cruising to a promising score Apr. 23 at Keeneland. Laid up since then, the bay has worked sharply for this, including a five-furlong bullet in :59 3/5 (1/12) June 28 at Keeneland.

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Repole Keeping His ‘Wits’ About Him

How badly does New York native Mike Repole want to win the GI Belmont Stakes?

Well, if the scene in the winner's circle following the eye-catching unveiling of 'TDN Rising Star' Wit (c, 2, Practical Joke–Numero d'Oro, by Medaglia d'Oro) after a tardy start in the blockbuster card's 11:35 a.m. lidlifter was any indication, NYRA may have to start constructing a larger enclosure.

“I had six horses running on Belmont day and had 50 family and friends there,” Repole said. “Here he is at 2-5 and eighth after spotting the field seven, eight lengths. I was about to go back to my car and just go home.”

It's a good thing he stayed.

Last of eight from post two and immediately under a busy ride from Jose Ortiz in the 5 1/2-furlong affair, the 2-5 favorite began to launch on the far turn, remarkably got himself into striking distance in a three-wide third passing the quarter pole and turned on the afterburners from there in the stretch, rolling home a six-length winner. He earned a 70 Beyer Speed Figure for the effort. Wit is currently being aimed at the GIII Sanford S. on opening weekend at Saratoga July 17.

The $575,000 Keeneland September sale purchase, the most expensive of 74 yearlings to switch hands from the first crop of the highly regarded Practical Joke, is campaigned in partnership with the Viola family's St. Elias Stable and Antony Beck's Gainesway Stable. He is trained by Todd Pletcher.

Bred in Kentucky by Rosilyn Polan, the half-brother to GIII Longacres Mile H. hero Barkley (Munnings) hails from the family of graded stakes winner and multiple Grade I-placed Ivy Bell (Archarcharch). His fourth dam is French champion 2-year-old Silver Cloud.

“He's just really special,” Repole said. “To see a first-time starter do that is incredibly impressive. We knew that he was talented. He was the best horse on the farm when he was at Stonestreet, and when Todd got in 20 or 30 2-year-olds, by far he separated himself. We loved him when we bought him. If he was by Uncle Mo or Curlin, he might've gone for $1.5 million. He was that good looking. He's done everything right so far and hasn't missed a step. You just cross your fingers and pray.”

Repole continued, “I've had horses like Uncle Mo break their maiden and win by 14 1/4 lengths wire to wire, and I thought that probably was one of the most impressive maiden wins I've had. But the way this horse just broke so slow, took dirt in his face, circled the field going 5 1/2 furlongs and pulled away… I wonder, what happens if he broke? What would've he done then?”

Repole and St. Elias, of course, also teamed up to campaign 2019 GI Breeders' Cup Classic hero, champion older dirt male and promising young Spendthrift Farm stallion Vino Rosso (Curlin). The high-powered axis of Repole, St. Elias, Gainesway, John Oxley and Grandview Equine joined forces on a $1.2-million Curlin colt out of MGISW Midnight Lucky (Midnight Lute) at last year's Keeneland September sale. At that same auction, on behalf of Repole and St. Elias, West Bloodstock also signed for an $875,000 Into Mischief colt, a $500,000 Quality Road colt, a $500,000 Nyquist colt, a $475,000 Curlin colt, a $450,000 Not This Time colt, a $450,000 Into Mischief colt, et al.

“To own this horse with Vinnie and Teresa [Viola] that we've had so much success with, we're really building on top of our incredible friendship, a great partnership,” Repole said. “We also decided to partner on a couple of horses at the September sale with Alex Solis II and Antony Beck at Gainesway. This is our first horse together and we met in the winner's circle. So there you go. It's a good start. We're all very excited.”

With an impressive roster of former Repole standouts turned stallions led by top sire Uncle Mo ($175,000 stud fee; Ashford Stud); Vino Rosso ($25,000; Spendthrift Farm); Outwork ($15,000; WinStar Farm); et al., is the co-founder of Glaceau (the company was sold to Coca-Cola for $4.1 billion in 2007) just minimizing some risk by taking on partners with his runners going forward?

“Some people say that,” Repole replied. “Are you looking to share your risk? I don't know. When I used to buy all my horses at 100%, I'd spend $4 million. Now at 50%, I'm spending $6 million. So I don't know if I increased or decreased my risk. Depends how you look at it. At the end of the day, the game has evolved a lot with partnerships. I try to be very selective of who I partner with. I want to partner with people that I enjoy and people that I like. People that after we win, we could go out to dinner or come back to my house. Vinnie and Teresa are family. I think we have 30 2-year-olds together–that is the most ever. Honestly, I think we love the friendship more than the partnership.

He continued, “I wouldn't say less risk. I would actually say, more chances. How's that sound? Instead of 30 at 100%, you have 60 at 50%. I think it's more fun. I also buy a lot of horses by myself and breed my own, too. And the stallion game, that's been interesting. The first great horse I owned turned out to be a great stallion. And I know that doesn't always happen. Just because you're a great horse doesn't mean that you're going to be a great producer. Now that I've been in the game at a high level for over 10 years, it's fun to have an Uncle Mo out of Nonna Mia (each raced by Repole) turn out be a Derby horse like Outwork. It gives it a great feeling. He's been doing pretty well [at stud], we have Vino Rosso with Spendthrift and I've also invested in City of Light, West Coast and Accelerate.”

The Phipps Stable-bred Dynamic One (Union Rags), a $725,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase and narrow GII Wood Memorial S. runner-up, brought together Repole and St. Elias with the Phipps family for a trip to this year's GI Kentucky Derby. Overtook (Curlin), a $1-million KEESEP graduate campaigned by Repole, St. Elias, Michael B. Tabor, Mrs. John Magnier and Derrick Smith, failed to build off his third-place finish in the GIII Peter Pan S. and was a well-beaten seventh in the Belmont. St. Elias homebred and GI Curlin Florida Derby winner Known Agenda (Curlin) was ninth in the Derby and fourth in the Belmont, respectively.

“It's really been great to have these friends and relationships,” Repole concluded. “I think you know how special it is for me to have 50 family members come to the track with me. It's like an extra holiday. Listen, I want to win these races, but if I can run a 50-1 shot and get 50 of my family and friends together at the track, I'm willing to do it. That part is just as special as winning one of those races. As I get a little older and I realize how tough these wins are, they just get more special.”

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