FINDERS KEEPERS

When Congaree was retired to stud after a brilliant racing career Stonerside manager John Adger commissioned me to round up a few mares that would complement the stallion.

I went straightaway to Toronto and came back with three Canadian stakes winners with a capital outlay of roughly $l00,000 for the trio (perhaps a little less with the currency differential).

Early returns indicate that our knack for finding top value in mares continues unabated.
The threesome of Brattothecore, La Grande Mamma and Leading Role earned a composite $l million from 62 starts in their racing days.

Soundness was the dominant theme of our search on behalf of Bob and Janice McNair.
Congaree’s fore legs were suspect, to say the least, and one could only ferret out lively prospective mates and hope. Canadian racing is conducted without analgesic nostrums such as Bute so it stands to reason that horses capable of stakes wins have displayed sufficient rigor to overcome some limitations in the sire’s makeup. Pretty elementary reasoning but it had worked splendidly a few years before when we helped launch the career of Canadian stallion Archers Bay.

Bratttothecore got off the blocks first when her City Zip colt named City Style won a stakes in Louisiana and followed it up with a placing in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. He is now in Dubai with the Darley population which was included in the Stonerside sale of its entire Thoroughbred investment.

La Grande Mamma produced a Congaree colt named Kettle River who won back-to-back races at Santa Anita and Hollywood, in the process earning a berth in the weekend’s Sham Stakes. He faltered in that salty spot but is a horse that bears watching in the second tier three-year-old races.

Leading Role was placed in the Stonerside Texas program and has a couple of foals that are considered promising.

Our handiwork showed up in other venues from Los Angeles to Miami to Barbados in recent days. Sweet Vale is the dam of Sterwins who took the Barbados Gold Cup. I recommended the purchase of Sweet Vale who did not stand training after three starts.
She has outdone herself as a producer.

Bickerson has Canadian antecedents, too. Winner of Gulfstream Park’s Forward Gal stakes, her second dam is Lil Ol’ Gal who I happened to buy for a friend in my fledgling role as caretaker for the British Columbia stallion Bold Laddie.

Lil Ol’ Gal was about l4.2 hands, hence the name, but lightning fast. She broke the world record for 3 1/2 furlongs first time out. I bought her back for a healthy buck as a 4-year-old for John Franks and she went on to win the Ontario Fashion Stakes at Woodbine. The diminutive mare was a favorite of Franks’ broodmare band.
At Santa Anita, Harris Farm’s Red Sun ran his record to four wins in five starts. I bought her dam (by Affirmed) for Franks although she became one that got away during one of his periodic dispersals. Her four stakes horses have run out $1 million or so.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA

Everyone seems to have a Tiger Woods story nowadays. This one is PG-13 so you can tell it to your kids.

In the spring of 1982 I was living on a small ranch in Central California. I had just been hired by ESPN to do the first live show of 4 1/2 hours from Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby day.

Our producer was Scotty Connell, a NBC-Sports executive who had signed up with the fledgling cable network. Jim Simpson, Lou Palmer and I did the commentary.

Connell noted my California address and told me that he had signed up Sandy Koufax as a baseball announcer for NBC but it hadn’t worked out. Sandy was too private a person, he said, for network television.

Sandy lived a mile or so down River Road from my place near Templeton. Los Alamitos owner Ed Allred had a quarter horse ranch across the road from Rio Vista, a one time bustling stallion operation run by the Dollase family. Cardiff Stud was another neighbor.

Connell arranged an introduction to Sandy and we became fast friends who played late Sunday afternoon rounds at the Chalk Mountain muni in Atascadero. Sandy had recently left the Paso Robles country club, fed up with a wicked duck hook that shot his handicap up from scratch into double figures.

Chalk Mountain suited our purposes because we could play quickly and in complete privacy, a must for Sandy. We would have one beer afterward, never two, and baseball was not to be discussed.

One Sunday afternoon was different. The pro checked us in at the double-wide trailer that served as his shop.

“Take time to watch the kid on the practice tee,” he said. “You’ll be hearing from him one day.”

One swing was all it took for a 6-year-old to reveal himself as Tiger Woods, having a lesson with his father Earl. We watched him hit a few balls in silence and duly noted the

incipient talent which was already causing a buzz in California junior golf circles.

Next time I saw Tiger he was winning the 1997 Masters by 12 shots. Sandy and I bumped into each other less frequently after moving farther south to Santa Barbara.

Sad to see his name listed a year ago among victims of swindler Bernie Madoff.

Into every life some rain must fall.

GONE WITH THE WINDFIELDS

Lost amidst the fuss about the Overbrook Farm dispersal at Keeneland was the whimpered final dissolution of the Windfields Farm of Ontario, Canada. There’s a certain irony in the fact that Overbrook owed its success to Storm Cat, a descendant of Windfields’ immortal Northern Dancer.

My one and only face-to-face meeting with Windfields founder E.P. Taylor came in the spring of 1970 during the annual convention of the Thoroughbred Racing Association in New Orleans. I was the a cub reporter for the local daily and set out to Fair Grounds to arrange an interview with the most powerful man in Canadian racing circles, and soon the world.

Taylor was a bit abrupt when I approached with my request.

“What do you want to talk to me about ?” he said somewhat gruffly.

“I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether Nijinsky can win the 2000 Guineas and perhaps the Triple Crown,” I said.

“Pull up a chair,” he commanded.

His demeanor shifted at once and he was at his voluble best for the next hour or so, extolling the virtues of his champion 2-year-old until he was called to a meeting.

Nijinsky went on to sweep the arduous English Triple Crown, a feat unmatched in the intervening four decades.

Meanwhile, I moved to the West Coast of Canada and was setting up shop for a bloodstock career, augmented with print and broadcast work.

Taylor had a friend in the whisky business in Vancouver who sought his counsel. Capt. Potter was his name and he needed someone to help run a training center which he had gotten stuck with by some shady characters.

Mr. Taylor told him to give me a call. I was flabberbgasted.

Soon thereafter I was track announcer for Capt. Potter at his hastily conceived quarter horse track called Meadow Creek Ranch. That and other Meadow Creek duties hastened my learning curve considerably.

Taylor and Northern Dancer went on to conquer the world. Taylor had a confidant in Joe Thomas who ran the Canadian operation, abetted by British agent George Blackwell.

Soon the entire Thoroughbred universe was awash in Northern Dancer blood. The Windfields team decided that they needed some new strains to infuse their broodmare band.

Chosen were two winners of the English Derby, Snow Knight and Master Willie. Both of them rolled “snake eyes”.

Snow Knight was an unfortunate choice in that he was a notorious rogue who needed a small army of assistant starters and a long buggy whip just to enter the starting gate. Horses that ill-mannered rarely succeed at stud.

Master Willie sired horses unsuitable for racing in North America and was soon forgotten.

The vagaries of Thoroughbred breeding were demonstrated anew at Windfields, only this time on a positive note. The full brothers Viceregal and Vice Regent entered stud at the Oshawa, Ontario nursery.

Viceregal bred books of mares that befit a juvenile champion. His brother had to content himself with the overflow.

Vice Regent became a leading sire, of course, while his illustrious kin was exiled to France where he faded into obscurity.

Over the years I have had the pleasure and privilege of seeing the great stallions in person. Except for Northern Dancer, more’s the pity

The Thoroughbred world lost a charming character with the passing in October of Pennsylvanian Bert Linder. He was 93.

We crossed paths first at Saratoga during the 1998 Fasig-Tipton sale. I had been contracted to buy some yearlings for a flashy new player from Canada. One of my tenets in helping a rookie get started safely was to buy well-made fillies from deep families. If the filly can’t run much you have a chance to get your money back if some kinfolk show up and flesh out a prominent family.

That’s why I was sitting ready when Bert’s Tabasco Cat filly entered the auction ring as Hip #1. She was a real beauty and I thought we had booted the opening kick-off in style, buying her for $330,000. Before I could sign the ticket Bert was right there thanking me for buying the chestnut filly. He had a one-horse consignment so the day’s work was successful and cause for celebration. He hied his way to the bar while I worked my way through the bidding list.

The Tabasco filly turned out to be not particularly athletic so trainer Todd Pletcher and I recommended that the filly (named Ellesmere) seek some black type at Fort Erie, across the Niagara River from Buffalo, NY. She placed in a stakes as expected and was soon after retired to be bred.

Linder had gained an international reputation for raising top horses at his farm near Scranton. That’s coal country-anthracite or “hard” coal as opposed to the bituminous “soft” variety found in western PA where I spent my formative years. If a Pennsylvania school boy can spell both kinds of coal it is said that he can get into Penn State. Others end up at Slippery Rock.

Ellesmere’s second foal turned out to be a multiple stakes-winner and Keeneland track record holder. This fall she had out the Breeders’ Cup juvenile turf second in Bridgetown, who captured the Summer Stakes at Woodbine

Tabasco Cat proved to be less than North American breeders expected and he was shipped to Japan in short order.

These days Scranton is noted mainly for spawning Vice-President Joe Biden which may or may not be a good thing to know, depending on political persuasion. Secretary of State Clinton also claims Scranton relatives.

Be that as it may, the Linder legacy bred true to the very end.

PALSY WALSY 2.0

During one of my “writer’s block” episodes I was told by one of my few regular readers

to come up with some new material. “I’m tired of reading about Palsy Walsy,” said Padraig Campion, squire of Blandford Stud.

Sorry, Padraig, but I couldn,t help but notice that Palsy Walsy shows up prominently in the pedigree of that great Japanese mare Vodka, winner over colts in the recent Japan Cup.

Palsy Walsy is the second dam of Rousillon, sire of Tanino Sister, in turn the dam of Vodka.

Now that I’ve brought you up to date on one of my favorite mares I promise to generate some more lively fare during the grey wintry fortnight when the Thoroughbreds take their rest.

A REALLY WILD TALE

Vince Timphony was frantic. His exercise rider was nowhere to be found and the track would soon be closed to training. He needed a rider to give Wild Again a final stiff workout in the days leading up to the inaugural running of the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

He asked me to help him find a rider. I pointed down the shedrow of Barn 64 at Hollywood Park and told him that Jose Martinez might be his man. We all knew each other from our days at Fair Grounds in New Orleans.

Jose was galloping for Laz Barrera at the time and was glad to oblige an old acquaintance.

Vince told Jose that he needed to rouse Wild Again who was the type of horse who needed some handling.

“Give him a good seven-eighths”, said Vince. “But, for god’s sake don’t hit him with the whip. He hates it.”

I hung around to watch as part of my duties in the television department was to deliver as much fresh information as I could gather for use of the media hordes. It occured to me at that moment to wonder why Vince did not just take the whip away if it was not going to be utilized.

We took up an observation post on the balcony behind the track kitchen, opposite the five furlong pole. Jose broke Wild Again off at the seven-eighths pole and he went the first half mile in the most excruciating fractions I had ever witnessed. Jose did his best to shake him up, to no avail.

Wild Again and Jose trudged along until Jose ran out of patience. When they reached mid-stretch Jose reached down and smacked Wild Again. He practically skidded to a stop and came up short of a full seven furlongs. Luckily, I thought, there was nobody around to witness the debacle.

Surely that must have ended any chance that Wild Again’s camp would pony up a $360,000 fee to join the field in such a star-studded field. After all, his previous race was a feeble effort to be third in a Bay Meadows turf face.

With such a prohibitive buy in no sane player would risk it on what would return less than 4-to-1. Or would they?

Well, they would. The fee was paid and the Wild Again crew went to betting on race day. I kept looking for the guys in the little white coats to come and haul them to a sanitarium.

TVG showed reruns of the 1984 BC Classic the other day and it reminded me that Pat Day’s ride was one of the greatest horsebacking achievements of all time. Sent away at 32-to-1, Wild Again led virtually all the way. When accosted first by Slew O’ Gold and then Gate Dancer the champion qualities of horse and rider were revealed.

Wild Again was beneficiary of a trademark hand ride, Day keeping the whip uncocked the entire journey until the fateful joust in the shadow of the wire. At that critical juncture Day slapped him with a few backhand flicks of the whip and prevailed.

When I watched the tape again I noticed none other than Jose Martinez smiling at the cameras in the winner’s circle. He looked relieved that he was not tar-and-feathered after the incongruous “workout”.

It was not a happy ending for me. I felt that Gate Dancer could not lose and I would have doubled my wager coming past the eighth pole. Gate Dancer was a notorious bad actor who liked to lug in. He had the perfect partner in Laffit Pincay Jr. who, it was said, could “keep an elephant from a peanut”.

I plunked down my $2000 announcing fee on the nose. It serves me right for betting on a nutcase who needs earmuffs to compete.

While I was licking my wounds the Wild Again party celebrated long into the night. Tales of a trunk full of cash won at the windows grew into the stuff of legend as years went by.

If you told me a tale like that I wouldn’t believe it. Certain things in life we are just not meant to understand

AWOL

Let’s see now, where were we? One disgruntled patron said he was sick of reading about Palsy Walsy. Other members of my entourage were less gentle in demanding some more product. Oh well, if you think this is easy, try it sometime. I can handle the literary, grammar and spelling departments but the damnable technology required is often more than I can bear. Taj Mahal sang about his face in a ” permanent frown” which he cured with a “cakewalk into town”. Me, I’m just plain grumpy. Maybe it’s because I have the only teenagers in town who can’t solve my tech woes in a matter of seconds.

Breeders’ Cup week seems a likely place to resume. First, though, let me shamelessly tout the upcoming sales.

Weanlings has never been my game in a big way but I am compelled to tell your that the last three freshmen I purchased earned $l.2 million after being acquired for $5l,500.

Bernie Madoff should hang up such numbers! A horse named Paradise Dancer led the way, earning some $600,000 from a $l0,000 purchase at Keeneland. And he’s still

winning down in Florida.

Fourth Floor was another overachiever, raking in $341,000 while plying the Chicago circuit. He was a son of the rather obscure California sire Robannier which is why we were able to buy him for a paltry $3,700.

Buy the individual, not the page, has long been our motto. Cat’s Career disappointed in the main, showing once again that even a speedy son of Mr. Prospector is vulnerable to the vagaries of the stallion business. His daughter Galatea Cat was so good looking that I just had to have her. Methinks it was the Storm Cat dam Sambra who supplied the competitive zeal as Galatea Cat won some $280,000 on a $38,000 buy in.

Oh yeah, both Galatea Cat and Fourth Floor were raced in partnership with a Chicago outfit named Bank-Katz Stable. The Katz partner paid his bills on time but Sandy Bank still owes me a healthy amount. Beware if you happen to meet this lowlife.

Now I’m grumpy again. The Breeders’ Cup stuff will have to wait.

BIG BROTHER, BIG SISTER

Generally speaking it not a good idea to go back and buy a  sibling to a good horse you have had in your stable.  Remember that Mrs. Sullivan had 12 sons but only one John L.

But sometimes you just have to be right for the wrong season, in the words of Edward G. Robinson to Steve McQueen’s Cincinnati Kid in the great poker movie of the same name.

I struck paydirt when I spent $52,000 of Jerry Hollendorfer’s money to purchase Trickey Trevor who went on to win more than $700,000 as a Grade 2 performer.

A few years later his half-sister appeared in the March Sale at OBS (Ocala).  She turned in a sparkling work, was by the very good stallion Montbrook and bred by a trustworthy outfit in Mike Farrell’s Ocala Stud.

The price seemed right at $95,000 and we bought her.  Not long ago she won the Alameda Handicap at Pleasant and boosted her earnings past $180,000 and perhaps that sum again in breeding value.

On another occasion our flexible approach paid off handsomely.  Graeme Hall cost $200,000 at Keeneland September and proved himself by winning the Arkansas Derby and Jim Dandy at three.  The son of Dehere made seven figures at the races with Todd Pletcher and is standing with some success in Florida.

Graeme Hall was followed by a robust chestnut filly who was offered for sale at the Calder 2-year-old sale.  The filly was a daughter of Hennessy and her breezes at Calder made us determined to buy her.

We weren’t the only ones watching, of course, and went to $l,650,000 to secure the eventual Grade 1 winner  her for the Melnyk Stable who raced Graeme Hall, fighting off an equally determined Demi O’Byrne.

Demi accosted Pletcher and I after that bidding duel and said, only half kidding, that “you’ll not outbid me again”.  He was right but not without a heroic effort on our part.

We locked horns later that day over who would own Yonaguska.  Once again price reached the stratosphere whenever a combination of looks, speed and pedigree showed up in the sales ring.  We made a $1,950,000 bid on Yonaguska only to be topped by a $25,000 bid.  

PALSY WALSY

Sharp Cat 
In Neon

Sharp Cat was in the news again the other day when her 3-year-old son Extra Sharp won by many lengths in his second start at Monmouth.

That unlocked another bank of memories regarding Broodmare of the Year In Neon, who was the dam of Sharp Cat, who won l5 races, seven of them Grade 1 events.

It is a twice told tale by now how I came to successfully lobby John Franks to purchase In Neon who was carrying the Storm Cat filly in utero.  There are other angles to the purchase and subsequent dispersal of Sharp Cat that have not been revealed.

The saga began way back in the 1960s when a claimer named Palsy Walsy was fast becoming my favorite horse.  It was a wet summer and the caddy yard was filled with ambitious lads with time on their hands hoping to “catch a loop” when the Sunnybrook Golf Club in suburban Philadelphia eventually dried out enough to play.

In the meantime, some of the older fellows studied the racing entries for Atlantic City Racecourse. Palsy Walsy caught my eye because he loved the mud and won repeatedly.  My racing bankroll began to surpass what the caddy yard could produce.

Fast forward a decade or so and I am a budding racetracker plying my trade in “Beautiful British Columbia” as the license plates would have it.  Exhibition Park was a long way from Atlantic City but there was no finer city than Vancouver and there was not a lot of competition among bloodstock agents. I was pretty much it, largely due to some national exposure commenting on CBC-TV shows coast-to-coast.

A sportsman named Pat Ballentine asked for my assistance in securing a 3-year-old colt to run in stakes at Ex Park, now known as Hastings Park.  He had been approached to buy a prospect named Captain’s Party and my job was to analyze his Woodbine form and pedigree.

And what do you know? Captain’s Party is none other than a son of Palsy Walsy.  Talk about your “no brainers”! Palsy Walsy and mud in a town with 40 inches of rain a year.

Sign me up.

Captain’s Party did his job and won a number of stakes for Ballentine.

Palsy Walsy was doing her job, too. She produced a good California stakes-winner in Shamara and she, in turn,  produced In Neon.

A few years later another Vancouver owner named Peter Redekop sent me to the May 2-year-old sale at Barretts in Pomona, CA with instructions to “buy the fastest in the sale.”

The fastest horse is easy to spot.  He’s another son of In Neon, by Al Nasr.  He works brilliantly but there’s a catch...he has a club foot.  I report that fact and the potential buyer asks “what’s a club foot”?

I tell him what I know, that it’s not a big deal if managed properly.  My man is gunshy and decides to pass.

The consignor is Lev Fanning who touts his brother Jerry on the horse who goes on to win $807,000 named Star Recruit.

I moved to Kentucky in 1993 and go to the November Keeneland Sale to check out In Neon once again.  I do not have a buyer because I think she is going to bring half a million and don’t try to hustle up a buyer. 

In Neon leaves the ring unsold with a last price of $l60,000.  Quickly I seek out Californian Meryl Ann Tanz and ask what is her bottom dollar.

“Two hundred thousand and not a penny less,” she avers.  Agents hover about trying to make a deal while I head straight to the telephone exchange and ring up Franks.

He demands to know why I expect him to pay $200,000 when the market has rejected the mare at under $l60,000.

“ I know this family,” I tell him.  “This has already produced a major stakes-winner by a failed sire.  What if you get a good looking Storm Cat foal.  This mare would then be worth a fortune.”

“OK, go buy her,” he said.

What I did not tell him is that In Neon is perhaps the ugliest mare I have ever seen.

That’s why no one would bid high on her in the ring.  I was quite likely the only person in that Keeneland sale ring who had been closely involved in the evolution of a successful family for thirty years.

The Storm Cat filly arrives and I am full of anticipation as I venture out to see her in her first week of life.  Not too bad, I think. Plenty of leg and length, well muscled.  But her right knee is rotated out pretty good.  She’ll need time.

The following summer Franks decides to cull back hundreds of his horses.  In general, we tried to cut from the bottom and keep the better stock.

We have a meeting in his Shreveport office with the Fasig-Tipton staff. They want to sell the Storm Cat filly and I am adamant that he keep her to race.  He tells us that he can enter the filly and keep her if she doesn’t sell well.

Come dispersal day and another meeting is held with the auctioneers to set reserves. I suggest a reserve of $l50,000: Franks lowers it to $125,000.  I am disappointed but the worse was yet to come.

I am on the auction stand reading the pedigrees.  Sharp Cat is in the ring and the bidding is sluggish.  The phone rings.  From a back office Franks asks if the $82,000 bid is live money.

“Yes sir, it is,” I tell him. “ Mr. and Mrs. Rogers made the bid from the right side of the ring”.

“I’m in a selling mood”, he says.  “Sell her”’.

The rest, as they say, is history.

At a post-sale meeting the mood is flat.  Franks asked how I thought we made out.

“Not too bad,” I said.  “But I’m afraid that you will one day wish you had not sold the In Neon filly.”

The Rogers turned $82K into $400,000 when they sold her at Saragota to Rick Porter.

Porter sold her as a 2-year-old for $900,000.  Thoroughbred Corporation won $2 million at the races.  Darley bought her for millions more.

GOOD THINKING

Sometimes common sense plus a little deductive reasoning  can be enough in making a satisfactory horse deal.

An acquaintance of mine landed a stakes filly just that way some years ago.  Spectacular Bid was terrorizing Flying Paster and all comers at Santa Anita in the winter of Bid’s 4-year-old career.

Buddy Delp trained Bid along with the rest of a string sent West from his Maryland home.  Dr. Ken Walters was a Vancouver dentist who dabbled with a few runners at Exhibition Park.

He had a hunch that Delp might not be too fussy about his other horses while he tended to the media circus surrounding the “best horse ever to look through a bridle”.

So he was ready to pounce when he spotted a filly by Silent Screen in the entries for a paltry $20,000 maiden claimer at Santa Anita.  The filly’s name was Happy Feet, out of a Northern Dancer mare named Danceful.  Danceful was out of a half-sister to the dam 

five-time Horse of the Year Kelso.  That’s a lot of pedigree muscle for twenty grand!

Happy Feet won that afternoon and became a stakes-winner in Canada later on and became a distinguished producer with15 foals and 14 of them raced and won.

Some years later Dr. Walters ran afoul of Canada’s tax department and had to sell his horses pronto to satisfy the authorities.  A package deal of five horses was on offer and I jumped on the first plane to look them over.  The price was right and I took all five, hoping to resell four and keep Happy Feet out of admiration for her ability and soundness.

I sold three horses in short order and made a reasonable profit.  The one remaining was a smallish filly by an unheralded sire named Brunswick.  I knew this one might be a tough sale because she had one pretty crooked leg to go along with her petite body.

But I got behind this filly, having observed her combative nature-a trait she inherited from Happy Feet- and a way of outrunning a paddock full of yearlings.

My sales pitch failed and we were packing up to bring the Brunswick filly back home when John Franks rang and asked if we had any RNAs he should consider.

I mentioned the Happy Feet filly and said that I would take $5,000 for her. He readily agreed on the deal and he sent her off to Woodbine-based trainer David Bell.  David is a patient trainer of the old school and he was fired more than once by Franks for being too slow bringing them to the races.

Not this time.  The filly named Screen Happy won $337,805 from 2 to 5.  I got a pat on the back from the boss.

I got one foal for myself out of Happy Feet, a robust colt by Skip Away that I named Chipper Skipper (get it?).  Trainer Bobby Barnett called from Churchill Downs one stormy fall day and said that we had a real shot to win in a maiden route race under the Twin Spires.

The late Luke Kruytbosch and I were friends from having worked televised races together in Western Canada.  I mentioned he horse to him and we each cashed when Chipper Skipper closed about 20 lengths to get up in the last stride at 20-to-1.  Luke's call of the race rivalled the way he would announce the Kentucky Derby.

 

Wednesday at Belmont trainer Tom Bush unveiled a first time starter named Screen Saviour a daughter of Screen Happy who won impressively.  I sat in the Keeneland Equestrian Room and pondered whether to bet at nearly 9-to-1.  Instead I stood pat.

Reverie can be expensive sometimes.

Happy Feet, may your tribe continue to increase!