Recently we posted a piece on how to address European dignitaries often encountered in the course of our equine wanderings. Most such meetings are usually cursory and formal at best..
And then there's Charlie, the Duke of Richmond and master of Glorious Goodwood, in the family for seven centuries or so.
Charlie, you say? A bit cheeky, that.
Hardly.
Our Four Stars Sales team sent over a draft of yearlings in 2003 to try our luck in the Tattersalls lucrative Newmarket vendue. We were advised to put on a splashy show to make the toffs aware of our imminent arrival in the UK, sort of a Paul Revere ride in reverse.
Goodwood was chosen as the site for this soiree and we complied with champion jockey Steve Cauthen in tow as media bait. Our entourage was whisked to the Duke's private quarters for champagne after the running of the Duke of Richmond Stakes.
I asked the Duke what he liked to be called , not having quaffed bubbly with a real duke before.
"You might call me Duke, or even Your Grace or just plain Charlie. Just don't call me anything bad," he said with a chuckle. We had a high old time sipping on the Duke's good champagne while he regaled his visitors with tales of Goodwood.
Goodwood had been a sponsor along with Oak Tree at Santa Anita with a home-and-home stakes offering which is now in jeopardy with the Santa Anita turmoil.
I hope I can find my way back to Goodwood one day and look up my buddy Charlie.
Aug 27, 2010
Aug 14, 2010
MINDING THE STORE
Sharp Secretary continues to shine among Woodbine's 3-year-old fillies. She smartly scampered away from a good field to annex the $150,000 Duchess stakes on August 7.
Several television commentators have noted that she was bought for only $1,100.
True enough. But we paid out $25,000 last spring to acquire her as a 2-year-old.
She has made everybody look good.
Highly regarded juvenile Western Mood regressed in the Best Pal stakes at Del Mar, finishing third.
JUDDMONTE HONORS FRANKEL
Prince Khalid of Juddmonte Farm evidently picked out a good one to honor his longtime trainer, Bobby Frankel. The Galileo colt he named Frankel won decisively on the weekend at Newmarket.
Please excuse us if we throw out a couple more Frankel tales.
One concerns a horse named Mehmet, one of Bobby's first good stakes-winners to go to stud. When it came time to dole out a breeding right or a syndicate share as promised, Bobby hit the roof. He said that would never happen to him again and he included a clause in future training agreements granting him such perquisites.
One of those future stakes-winners was Missionary Ridge who won the inaugural Pacific Classic at Del Mar after being purchased from Robert Sangster by Canadian Peter Wall.
When Wall first signed on with Bobby he was told how he could expect to know when they would be running.
"You have lots of money," he said. "Buy a racing form".
Jul 27, 2010
A DEL MAR TALE
In the summer of 1983 the first horse I ever bred was ready to race at Hollywood Park.
My trainer of choice was Bobby Frankel. I was a little daunted by his gruff demeanor but I was looking for a trainer who was a consistent winner with any kind of horse. I wasn't even sure he'd want to take on a British Columbia-bred maiden claimer named Bold Runaway .
I had only one request of Frankel: Let me know if we can win a bet.
"Maybe, maybe not," he told me when we met in the paddock at Hollywood Park. I took that as a "no" and made only a modest wager of support rather than conviction.
We ran second.
Three weeks later we were at Del Mar where terse instructions told me "bet your money".
My life at that time was embroiled in an unpleasant and costly divorce. My two children joined me for the trek from Santa Barbara. I was so sure that Bold Runaway would win that I plunked down a four-figure win bet. Not very clever, I realize, to drive a horse's odds down to 6-t0-5 on the nose. But I had blind faith in Frankel at that time and I needed a winner to boost my morale as well as that of Shannon and Josh.
Bold Runaway walked her beat under Martin Pedroza and,
after cashing my tickets, we went back to the barn to bid her adieu before the long ride home. To my dismay what I saw was my filly walking lame.
On the way out of the barn I bumped into Bobby. "Did you see your filly?
" he said, smiling.
"I think she's gone lame," I said. "Please have the vet look her over."
He muttered something to himself that sounded like "everybody's a trainer these days" and strode away.
The next morning, however, Bobby was on the phone with news that Bold Runaway had indeed suffered a slab fracture of her knee. The news was not unexpected so I paused, wondering what to do next, when Bobby asked what I planned to do with her.
"I'm not sure," I said. "Try to find her a good home."
"Would you take fifteen for her?" he said.
By that time I did not know if he meant fifteen hundred, fifteen thousand or fifteen cents. I knew enough about horse dealing to not make the first bid.
"I have a season to the top quarter horse stallion in America,"he explained. "I'll give you $15,000 for your filly and breed her."
Since I figured she was worth $1000, tops, I jumped at the offer while, at the same time, wondering which of us was loco. The sharpest guy in racing overpaying tenfold for a filly with no pedigree and a broken knee.
Bobby knew of my domestic disorder and seemed charmed by Shannon and Josh as only 5 and 10-year-olds can do. For years I wondered what his motive for that gesture represented. I didn't bring it up, perhaps in fear that he might want the money back.
Many years later I was in a group of horsemen, Frankel among them,
kibitzing at a Saratoga charity function. A couple glasses of wine loosened my tongue and I told the story for the first time outside my immediate family.
"Why, Bobby, why"? I asked.
He just smiled.
Jul 26, 2010
SPEIGHTS TO THE HEIGHTS
Somebody had to be second last Saturday in the Lady's Secret at Monmouth Park.
Queen Martha didn't scare Rachel Alexandra much but a tidy sum of $80,000 was more than worth the effort. The dam of Queen Martha was the good stakes producer' Cryptoqueen which I had purchased for John Franks some years back. She was a well-made yearling but a touch on the small side. I paid $22,000 for her but she was one of those fillies who did not grow much and thus had a modest racing career.Bred to the home stallion Lucky North, Cryptoqueen produced the very good stakes mare Clearly A Queen.
Our handiwork was evident in various quarters of late. Two brilliant juveniles surfaced, Wine Police and Roxy Gap, both by the surging third-year stallion Speightstown which yours truly bought as a $2million yearling. Furthermore, I purchased the dam of Roxy Gap (the stakes-placed Harts Gap) and sold the dam of Wine Police under the Four Star Sales banner.
Another Speightstown rising star is Jersey-based Spiteful Gypsy. I sold the dam, SW Leo's Gypsy Dancer for the Purse Strings Stable, a conglomerate of 17 women from Louisville. I earned my 5 % on that occasion I can assure you.
If this sounds a bit self-serving that's because it is. Remember: it's not bragging if you can do it. When you are ready to step back into the fray keep that in mind.
STRAWBERRY FIELDS
Canadians consider Strawberry Morn as one of the finest racemares ever seen in the Western province of British Columbia. The benchmark for greatness in that remote locale is to head South to take on the high class mares at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar.
I played a cameo role in arranging Strawberry Morn's transfer to the barn of Jenine Sahadi. She placed in a few starts, including a stakes at Hollywood, but she was clearly over the top by then and was sent to be bred to Awesome Again
and sold in the November Sale at Keeneland.
Strawberry Morn's run of success ran out the very night before she was due to be sold.
I received a call at 3 a.m. from a night watchman that the mare was in the process of aborting her foal. A bitter blow to be sure.
There was further melodrama in Strawberry Morn's life which we need not elaborate at this time (a partnership gone sour). Like many hard raced mares, Strawberry Morn needed a bit of time to reproduce her best foals.
The mare wended her way to Europe and gained international notice when her daughter Strawberrydaiquiri won a Group race at Royal Ascot for trainer Sir Michael Stoute.
Jul 24, 2010
"I SAW THE LIGHT"
There's an undefeated 3-year-old in Northern California named Goggles McCoy who will move into California-bred stakes soon at Del Mar for trainer Steve Sherman. Another Goggles McCoy rode races in the 1930s. A journeyman rider of no great distinction, McCoy will be remembered, if at all, as the jockey who invented goggles.
I met the two-legged "Goggles" when assigned to do a story on him when I covered the races for a New Orleans daily in 1968.
"It was a matter of self-preservation," I recall him saying. "I got tired of getting whacked in the face on muddy days at Fair Grounds. You just couldn't see through the mud and neither could the other riders. It was plumb dangerous.
"The other jocks were skeptical at first but it wasn't long before they were all wearing them, too".
Sometimes it's the little things that matter.
Jul 22, 2010
MAKING THE GRADE
A flurry of victory has a number of my clients smiling in a dreary horse environment.
In recent weeks there's been the continued progress made by juvenile colt Western Mood. He overcame a tardy break from the gate to register at first asking at Hollywood Park. Then he staged a ferocious battle against odds-on J. J.'s Gusto before dropping a neck decision in the Grade 3 Hollywood Juvenile. Western Mood has worked well in the weeks since and figures to battle J.J.'s Gusto in Del Mar juvenile stakes. What irony in the fact that our Four Star Sales company is the seller of J. J.'s Gusto. So let's root for a dead-heat!
He was a $50,000 2-year-old plucked from the March OBS sale in Florida.
Another OBS March aquisition in top form is the 3-year-old Lion's Story who made good in allowance company at Del Mark. The son of Wildcat Heir moved his career earnings to $116,220 and kept clean his record of never missing a check while paying a handsome dividend on his $50,000 price tag.
Softly Singing, yet another OBS graduate, won three of her first four starts and might have added another had the rider not dropped the ship at a pivotal juncture. The Holy Bull filly acts as if there's a stakes in her future.
Another good Canadian-bred winner is Audzeezee who has a developmental pattern that shows never worse than third in seven starts. I found her at a sale in Washington for a measly $18,000 and bought her as agent for Canuck Ted Smith who raced the brilliant Santa Anita sprinter Remarkably Easy some years back.
.
On the other end of the spectrum is the blazing fast Woodbine 3-year-old filly Sharp Secretary. She passed through a Kentucky sales ring for a paltry $1,100 yearling price.
Eight months later I forked over $25,000 of my best friend's money to acquire the daughter of Cactus Ridge. She whipped her Canadian foes in 1.09.10 under a Patrick Husbands hand ride. She'll be tackling stakes company in her next engagement, having already banked some $134,000.
Juveniles who won first out, in addition to Western Mood, are Given Episode and Ammunition. Given Episode appears the most forward at this time, having whipped Hollywood opposition in :58 flat.
Jul 7, 2010
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
The recent running of the Queen's Plate brought to mind my first appearance as a commentator for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on that nation's richest and most coveted event.
On that occasion the royal family was represented by the Queen Mother. The TV team was briefed on protocol should we be spoken to by the Queen Mother.
The producer assumed that I was a Canadian citizen. She was surprised to learn that I was an American in Canada that allowed me to work. I told her that I was not entirely comfortable with the bowing and curtsying that Canadians love to shower on what are called "The Royals'.
I decided to behave myself, figuring the odds were pretty high that she would wish to come and speak to me in Woodbine's leafy walking ring. During a two-minute commercial break I began to sweat as the Queen Mother headed in my direction.
Just in time she stopped to chat with jockey Ken Skinner who had the mount on longshot Market Control for Kinghaven Farm. "I'm going to back your horse," she told Skinner and ambled off to watch him win at boxcars.
This year it was the reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II who attended and received vigorous applause from her subjects. Another head of state that I encountered in a happy winner's circle was Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. He had just won the Irish Derby with the great filly Balanchine.He was known around the world as simply Sheik Mohammed who can play the game in blue jeans and a T-shirt in Kentucky or a morning suit and top hat at Royal Ascot.
As I exited the Curragh I noticed a tall woman, regal in bearing, and greeted her as a fellow American-Mrs. Jean Kennedy Smith, the US ambassador to Ireland and sister to President John F. Kennedy. I couldn't help but think that high station in life doesn't grant immunity from life's woes.
The Aga Khan (make that H.H. Aga Khan as in His Highness) races with great success wherever he goes but he keeps a low profile when when he wins a big race. His breeding operation is second to none and I would love to talk breeding patterns with him. But I'm still not sure about this HH business.
The late Joe Taylor once drove me through a field of about 50 mares owned by the Aga Khan, boarded at Taylor Made farm, most of them grey as I remember.
On this side of the Atlantic, I was questioned from time to time why I addressed my main client, John Franks, simply as John while most called him Mr. Franks. I said that I was 47-years-old when we met, hardly a novice at this game and that we had terrific success right from the start. There were camp followers aplenty around him who adopted an obsequious demeanor with an eye on his pocket book more than proper etiquette.
And then there was the ecumenical duo of Prince Khalid of Juddmonte and Bobby Frankel. "Bobby called him Prince Khalid" said Juddmonte manager Garrett O'Rourke. "But not very often. They spoke about twice a year."
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