As a barn and a business, September is the return from Saratoga to bringing everyone back under one roof at Belmont Park. This is one of my favourite times of the year. I’m not a fan of having horses in two different locations when I can’t be in both places at once.
Sadly, when we came back from Saratoga, we ended up with a sickness in the barn where a number of the horses had coughs. And as such, it meant that we basically had to shut down shop for the month. We ran very few horses. The barn was very cold.
When I say cold, I don’t mean in temperature, I mean in results, with only a couple of horses hitting the board. As a trainer, these are times of great anxiety because at the end of the day we are running a business. And when you’re not running horses, the financial side of things becomes more difficult. Luckily, after a couple of weeks of hit-and-miss results on the track, the horses began to get over their coughs and started to perform a little better.
During the month of September, I spend a good period of time away at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. With 4,400 yearlings for sale, it’s the biggest sale in the world. I equate it to the NFL draft.
We were lucky enough to buy horses all the way through from book one to book five, and I’m very pleased with the diversity and depth of the yearlings that we purchased. Huge amount of thanks to Larry Connolly and Keith Mason’s West Paces Racing, Rainbow’s End Racing, Santa Rey Stable, Kevin Snyder’s Ohonte Way Stables, as well as our other contributors and partners on many of the yearlings.
If you take into account that we average 18,000 steps a day for 12 days straight, you can imagine that it’s not only mentally taxing, but physically taxing also to work this sale. We would be totally lost without Conor Foley, Jim Hatchett, and Nick Esler’s help narrowing down the horses.
October saw the turnaround in form of our horses. On October 3rd, Donegal Momentum won the Gio Ponti stakes in his second go on grass. Javier Castellano, having not fully recovered from his wrist injury sustained in late August, was replaced by Kendrick Carmouche, who rode Donegal Momentum with the utmost of confidence.
This is a horse who’s done nothing but progress all year, and I’m very much looking forward to either running in the Hill Prince at Aqueduct or the Gr. 1 Hollywood Derby at Del Mar later this month. Donegal Momentum will then be given a freshening and his four-year-old campaign will be mapped out by Jerry Crawford and myself.
That same afternoon, Reteko finished second in a Maiden Special Weight going long on the turf. Having tried to get him on the grass at the end of Saratoga and being rained off, it was extremely pleasing to see him acquit himself so well. A couple of days later, Son of a Birch, who has been a fantastically progressive turf sprinter, took another step in the right direction by finishing fourth, beaten by just a length in the Gr. 3 Belmont Turf Sprint Stakes.
This is a Breeders’ Cup Win and You’re In, and although I didn’t expect him to be quite good enough to win the race, I thought he would run well, and we needed to find out where we fit in this division. As a mere four-year-old and coming to the end of a two-year campaign, I thought he ran absolutely fantastic. He’ll contest the Aqueduct Turf Sprint Championship on November the 9th before heading to Sandhurst Thoroughbreds for a 45-day vacation, and we’ll then start planning his five-year-old campaign.
West Point Thoroughbreds had a frustrating week when two of their two-year-olds got beat in very big efforts, ending up on the wrong side of head losses. Kyla’s Kause was a filly who showed a lot of promise in her debut at the end of Saratoga. She finished a gallant second at Aqueduct going six furlongs on the turf.
Creed’s Vision put up the most extraordinary performance in Maryland. As a Maryland-bred, he’s eligible to run in the waiver claiming, maiden, and waiver maiden claiming races in his home state. So he shipped down to run at Laurel Park under Ben Curtis. Drawing the one hole was always going to be a problem for this horse, but he stopped so badly when the dirt hit him in the face that I honestly thought he was going to finish last. He then proceeded to circle the whole field and come up just a head short of getting his photograph taken first time out.
Kyla’s Kause and Creed’s Vision are two very promising two-year-olds for West Point and I’m very much looking forward to seeing them carry on in their development.
Speaking of two-year-olds with much promise, I was delighted to see Pookie break her Maiden second time out. This is a filly we thought highly enough of to have entered in the Miss Grillo, although she did not draw into it.
Still, it was tremendous fun watching her break her maiden with 50 percent of her ownership group while we were in England for the Tattersalls Yearling Sale. Tattersalls put the most wonderful catalog of horses together for their book one yearling sale, which had 450 of the best bred, best looking, most athletic yearlings to be sold in Europe. This meant that Conor, Nick and I had our work cut out to select the horses that we thought would be best suited to come back home with us. We were very pleased to pick up two more yearlings here, including the three part sister to Modern Games for West Paces Racing and VinLaur Racing.
Special mention to Amanda Prior and GBRI. They did a wonderful job of ensuring our entire trip went incredibly smoothly, was extremely enjoyable, and very productive. We will definitely be back next year to try and buy more yearlings at Tattersalls.
On the weekend of October 18, Find Your Joy, Adam Newman’s beloved homebred, won her second race of the year under a masterful ride by Dylan Davis, getting there just at the end of her contest. Past Tense, given a super ride by Manny Franco, won first off the claim for Stuart Grant’s The Elkstone Group. And, in a strange way, possibly the highlight of the weekend was Curbstone running at Far Hills jump meet. Far Hills put on a $150,000 stakes race on the flat called the John Forbes Memorial. Unfortunately, Graham Motion—who decided not to take up his invitation to the Melbourne Cup with The Grey Wizard—was the one to defeat Curbstone by a neck in an absolutely thrilling edition of the race.
Far Hills is a sight to behold with a huge crowd on the side of a beautiful hill in New Jersey. The undulations and tight turns could either have suited Curbstone or not, but he’s been a wonderful servant so far, and really should have had a much bigger piece of the pie in the John’s Call at Saratoga.
Lastly, on Monday, October 24, Patty Brown Eyes gained the maiden victory that she so richly deserved. Having had three starts in Maiden Special Weights on the dirt and hit the board on all three occasions, I was thrilled to see her go down to Parx and break her Maiden in front of her wonderful ownership group. And, most importantly, Pat Veasey’s backyard, ten minutes from her office. A truly enjoyable day for all involved with Patty Brown Eyes.
While August brought tragedy on the track, October sadly brought tragedy at home. Maggie and I, Grace and Willow, sadly lost our beloved Jack Russell, George. George was the first thing that Maggie and I did together when we adopted him from the Pennsylvania Jack Russell Rescue. There’s never been a greater companion, brother, rat killer, or friend than this little man.
His favorite place in the world was at the barn. He was in charge of vermin control and putting smiles on everyone’s faces. He will be incredibly sadly missed by not only my children and my barn, but he takes a small piece of his mother Maggie and I with him to heaven.
Everyone recognized George. His tongue was too long for his mouth, and you could always hear one of his jingly collars coming. But he was the greatest at ambushing pigeons, digging up rats, and spending hours sunbathing against the garden fence. George was everything you could want in a companion. He was fiercely loyal, slightly obnoxious, and a dog that filled our hearts for many, many years. He will be very sadly missed.
Rest in peace, George. You may no longer be here with us, but your memory will live on in the shed rows of our barns at all the racetracks you visited, our home, and our hearts.
