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Honor Roll Presented By Virginia Thoroughbred Association: Zonda, Tass Show Early Dividends For Schera’s Pilot Project

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Matt Schera learned about the Virginia Thoroughbred Association’s Virginia-certified program two years ago, and that season he sent his first several yearlings to be started at the Braeburn Training Center located in the foothills of the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains.

In order to qualify for the Certified program, horses must spend a six-month residency at a Virginia farm or training center prior to Dec. 31st of their 2-year-old year.

Now 3-year-olds trained by James “Chuck” Lawrence, both Zonda and Tass have earned a 25 percent bonus for their wins at tracks in the Mid-Atlantic region.

“The 25 percent win bonus is obviously amazing,” Schera said. “Pat Nuesch does a great job starting them, and the training center is really lovely.”

Zonda, a Maryland-bred by Scat Daddy, won her first start by 11 3/4 lengths at Laurel Park. The filly then tried a pair of stakes races at Delaware Park, but Schera said she didn’t seem to take to the surface.

Zonda then ran second in a Laurel allowance and won an allowance at Colonial Downs. She finished fourth in Colonial’s Virginia Oaks. The filly’s earned $85,419 on the track, plus an additional $14,000 for her two wins from the Virginia-certified program.

“I’m just loving the fact that Colonial Downs is back,” Schera added. “I hope they can sustain their momentum and keep going next year.”

Tass, a Kentucky-bred by Temple City, won at second asking at Delaware Park and was most recently third in a Saratoga starter allowance. She’s earned $34,530 on the racetrack, plus an extra $5,000 from the VTA.

Last year, Schera sent another four yearlings to the Braeburn Training Center, and he plans to send at least that many this season as well.

“For me, the weather is decent enough in the winter,” said Schera. “It’s not Ocala, but it’s also not Maryland or Delaware. I think it’s definitely worth it in terms of what you can win.”

The post Honor Roll Presented By Virginia Thoroughbred Association: Zonda, Tass Show Early Dividends For Schera’s Pilot Project appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Baffert Trainees Game Winner, Marley’s Freedom To Miss Breeders’ Cup

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Last year’s juvenile champion Game Winner will skip the Breeders’ Cup and possibly point for a 4-year-old campaign, trainer Bob Baffert told the Daily Racing Form Monday.

Game Winner will remain on the track but only for light training. Another Baffert runner who had been pointed toward the Breeders’ Cup, filly sprinter Marley’s Freedom, will also miss the Breeders’ Cup, having been turned out for the rest of the year.

“He got real sick, and then he got real light on me again,” Baffert said of Game Winner. “I said, let’s pull the plug. The Breeders’ Cup is out. I’d like to run him as a 4-year-old. It’s up to [owner] Gary West.”

Following a 4-for-4 unbeaten 2-year-old campaign which culminated with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Game Winner came back this year with a pair of runner-up finishes on the Kentucky Derby trail and had a sixth-place result on the first Saturday in May. He returned in July to win the Los Alamitos Derby

Marley’s Freedom has six graded stakes wins on her resume and finished fourth as the favorite in last year’s Filly & Mare Sprint.  She also raced in July at Los Alamitos, winning the Great Lady M Stakes.

Meanwhile, the current top choice for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, breezed five furlongs in 59.80 Monday. Improbable, who is pointing for Saturday’s Pennsylvania Derby, also worked five furlongs, clocking in at 1:00.20.

Read more at the Daily Racing Form

The post Baffert Trainees Game Winner, Marley’s Freedom To Miss Breeders’ Cup appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Opinions on the Cap: Arthur Hancock

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Editor’s Note: The Jockey Club has asked for public comment on their proposal to cap at 140 the number of mares a stallion can breed annually. In this ongoing series, we will publish the perspectives of breeders, stallion farms and others on the proposal.

Arthur Hancock, Stone Farm
I’m all for the proposal. I used to stand stallions; we had Halo, Bold Forbes, Northern Baby, and Cougar, the sire of Gato del Sol, but I got out of it because in order to buy a stallion prospect, you had to go out and breed so many mares. My father, Bull Hancock, everyone knows, was a top stallion man. I asked him, `Why don’t you take a few more mares to Bold Ruler?’ He told me in his own words: overbreeding a stallion compromises the quality of the offspring. And I agree with my father. And he told me back then if you had a son of Bold Ruler, even if he didn’t race, you could sell him for $50,000 to Argentina or Turkey, or somewhere. In the old days, you could get $25,000-$50,000 for the top 10-15 colts in all kinds of countries. If you’re the 10th best three-year-old colt in America now, it doesn’t mean a damn thing. If you’re the 10th best colt in the sale, maybe you’ll make two or three times your stud fee, maybe not. Now if you’ve got a son of Tapit, or any of these other good stallions, you can’t get anything for him unless he wins a graded stakes, and unless he wins a Grade I, you’re still out of the ballgame. If a stallion doesn’t hit, and most of them don’t, you pollute the gene pool with mediocre stock.

Another wise old saying that my father used to say is that a good bull is half your herd and a bad bull is all of it. So a lot of bad bulls that you don’t know are going to be bad bulls go to stud and that downgrades the American bloodstock registry.

Also, I think it’s unfair if you’re out here at the sales and you’ve got a yearling by a really good stallion, and you’re one of 60 or 70. There will be a few that hit big or do great, but talk to the others. I always felt it was unfair as a person who stood stallions to my customers who had bred to them, because if I did that, they’re going come out here and be one of 50 yearlings.

So I think it’s the best thing for the future of the bloodstock industry. I think it’s the best thing for your customers. I agree with my father, because overbreeding stallions compromises the quality of the offspring.

How many Secretariats have you seen lately? I haven’t seen any track records broken the past few years. When I was a boy, if you owned a racehorse, you could expect 45 lifetime starts. Now it’s nine or 10. Maybe that’s part of the reason. It compromises the quality of the offspring.

I think the stallion people would b a lot better instead of breeding 200 mares to breed 100 to 130 and charge double or one-and-a-half times the current stud fee, and you can make your money back that way. I don’t know how stallions can breed that many mares. In the old days, my dad wouldn’t double a stallion two days in a row. Now, they breed four mares a day, every day.
If you’ve got 100,000 Cadillacs to sell, each one is going to be worth less money than if you old had 1,000. It’s the old law of supply and demand. So we’re saturating the supply and it’s costing us all, I think, in the long run.

We’d all be better off if we did this. The industry would, the breeders would, the people who buy would. I think it’s a win-win situation across the board.

Want to share your opinion? Email suefinley@thetdn.com

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Competitive Bidding As Book 3 Opens at Keeneland

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LEXINGTON, KY – The Keeneland September Yearling Sale’s Book 3 section opened with a day of competitive bidding Sunday in Lexington as 256 yearlings changed hands for a total of $30,025,000. The sixth session average was $117,285 and the median was $85,000. Of the 366 horses offered, 110 failed to reach their reserves for a buy-back rate of 30.05%.

A pair of yearlings topped the $500,000 mark Sunday, with a colt by Quality Road attracting the session’s highest bid of $510,000. The session topper was consigned by Select Sales and WinStar Farm’s Elliott Walden made the winning bid on behalf of a partnership with the farm and China Horse Club International.

WinStar has been active as both buyers and sellers this week at Keeneland.

“It’s been solid on both sides,” Walden said. “It’s tough to buy and conversely, it’s good when you sell. I think it’s a healthy market. Looking at the dynamics of everything in the industry, there is not a better time that I can remember to be an owner in the industry because of the purses. You’re running for $130,000 at Kentucky Downs, $90,000 at Saratoga. The expenses had to go up a decade ago, just because hay, feed, labor, everything’s gone up. But now the purses are catching up. It’s a good time to be in the horse business, I think. Just from an economic standpoint.”

Select Sales sold 19 yearlings Sunday, including the session-topping Quality Road colt, for a gross of $2,850,000.

“The great thing about Book 3 is that the horses that hit the target are selling and the horses that don’t hit the target are also selling,” Select Sales’ Carrie Brogden said. “There is more depth of buyers and also my owners are being more realistic in selling their horses. If I say, ‘This horse has this, this and this,’ we are adjusting the reserves. People are wanting to trade.”

Following a competitive opening week of bidding, pinhookers became a more obvious presence on the results sheets Sunday.

“We have bought 10 so far and we got most of them on the first two days, which I am delighted about,” said Ocala horseman Eddie Woods. “But we’ve been scrambling ever since. We got three today and one yesterday.”

Of the increased participation from pinhookers, Woods said, “That the way it’s supposed to be. The quality kind of drops off, the big planes have left. It’s always been the time when the tide has turned. It won’t be a great sale if you have pinhookers in there the first two days just banging away any time they want. Then it’s not good. But it’s been a great sale so far and for the better horses, it’s going to hold all the way through.”

The Keeneland September sale continues through next Sunday with sessions beginning daily at 10 a.m.

Quality Sells at Keeneland Sunday

A colt by Quality Road (hip 1385) shot to the top of the leaderboard early in Sunday’s session of the Keeneland September sale when bringing a session-topping final bid of $510,000 from WinStar Farm CEO Elliott Walden. WinStar purchased the yearling in partnership with China Horse Club International.

“He’s a nice athletic colt by Quality Road,” Walden said of the yearling’s appeal. “We felt like he was one of the better ones on the day.”

Hip 1385, bred by Machmer Hall and consigned by Select Sales, is out of Spring Storm (Unbridled’s Song). He is a half-brother to multiple graded placed Stainless (Flatter).

Spring Storm, in foal to Proud Citizen, sold for $29,000 at the 2016 Keeneland November sale. The 12-year-old mare, whose second dam produced champion Countess Diana, has a weanling colt by Malibu Moon and was bred back to West Coast.

“We bought her before Stainless was graded placed,” explained Select Sales and Machmer Hall’s Carrie Brogden. “This colt jumped through all of the hoops. He had great vetting. He was very uncomplicated and he was just one of those horses that got better and better as he got older.”

Brogden said Machmer Hall has built its brand at the sales and on the racetrack.

“This if the first sale where people have specifically said to me, ‘Ah. This is a Machmer Hall horse. We know you’ve raised it as a runner,’” Brogden said. “That makes me feel really good.”

Frosted Filly to McPeek

A filly from the first crop of Grade I winner Frosted will be joining the barn of Ken McPeek after the trainer bid $500,000 to acquire the youngster on behalf of Scott and Dana Leeds’s Walking L Thoroughbreds Sunday at Keeneland.

“She was the best filly of the day, in my opinion,” McPeek said as he watched on his phone while one of his charge’s headed into the gate at Churchill Downs. “We got one early, as well, and I’m really thrilled to take her home.”

The yearling was McPeek’s seventh purchase of the September sale. He also purchased a colt by Frosted (hip 1487) Sunday for $180,000.

Walking L Thoroughbreds campaigns recent GIII With Anticipation S. winner Fighting Seabee (Summer Front) and graded winner Cairo Cat (Cairo Prince).

Hip 1578 was bred by Runnymede Farm, Peter Callahan, Manlius Stable and Bill Oppenheim, and was consigned to the sale by Runnymede Farm. She is out of Dream to Dream (Scat Daddy), who is a full-sister to group winner Daddy Long Legs.

“She was a very well-balanced individual with a great walk and a great mind,” said Runnymede vice president and general manager Romain Malhouitre. “She came here and never put a step wrong along the way. She was very busy in the barn. Did we expect that? No. But we liked her all the way.”

The breeding partnership purchased Dream to Dream for $60,000 at the 2016 Keeneland November sale.

Malhouitre agreed 2011 G2 Royal Lodge S. winner Daddy Long Legs’s presence in the pedigree was part of the mare’s appeal, but added, “It was the individual as well. And being by Scat Daddy. Our partner Bill Oppenheim just pointed out to us that she was in the sale and we went to see her and we liked her. She is a compact, well-made Scat Daddy.”

Dream to Dream RNA’d with this now-yearling in utero for $120,000 at the 2017 Keeneland November sale.

“In the beginning, we didn’t know what we wanted to do,” Malhouitre explained. “Frosted was quite popular, so we tried to see if we could flip her and make money, but the market was not having it. So we were happy to just keep her.”

Dream to Dream produced a filly by Animal Kingdom this year and was bred back to Will Take Charge.

Runnymede Farm had further success Sunday, selling a filly by Liam’s Map for $300,000 to Team Casse. The yearling (hip 1619) is out of multiple stakes winner Half Heaven (Regal Classic). Bred by Dixiana Farms, she RNA’d for $70,000 at last year’s Keeneland November sale.

“I raised her half-sister Highestmaintenance (Macho Uno) when I was at Dixiana and bought her from Mr. [William] Shively at the November sales,” Malhouitre said. “He was very kind to sell her to me. She’s another one with a great walk and a great mind. Those two fillies have been unbelievable the last three days at the sales.”

Both Runnymede fillies were by first-crop sires.

“We have to balance things,” Malhouitre said. “With young mares, we do different things. We go unproven, proven, unproven, proven. We would like to breed everything on the top, but value wise, it’s not possible for all the mares. So we are trying to have good balance between proven sires, the ones on the bubble, and the freshmen. We think it’s good for all of us. We have the land and the team at Runnymede who help us to develop some very good horses. So, it works.”

Runnymede chief executive officer Brutus Clay, III, standing nearby as Malhouitre spoke, added, “We also have to thank our general manager and the whole team at the farm, as well as the bidders and underbidders.”

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