oscar performance filly shows she is ready for the limelight with a victory in the forward gal at gulfstream

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bo bromagen, mill ridge farm, oscar performanc, price bell, red carpet ready

“We might never have known how good this filly was on dirt,” Price Bell pondered at Fasig-Tipton on Monday, where I quizzed him about the latest graded stakes winner for Mill Ridge Farm’s young sire Oscar Performance, “if only Churchill Downs had had a turf race for her.”

Oscar Performance is getting graded stakes winners from his first crop of racers, now 3, and he represents a branch of Sadler’s Wells and El Prado, through Kitten’s Joy, that is gaining new respect among breeders by showing versatility for quality performance on turf or dirt. (Photos by Z / courtesy of Mill Ridge Farm)

Sometimes you’re lucky; sometimes you’re good. The filly in question, Red Carpet Ready, is both.

Already the winner of the 2022 Fern Creek Stakes at Churchill on Nov. 26, Red Carpet Ready was making her 3-year-old debut in the Grade 3 Forward Gal at Gulfstream and is now unbeaten in three starts. The good-looking dark bay had won her first start by 10 last year, racing six furlongs on dirt at Churchill, then had come back in the 6 ½-furlong Fern Creek, and the seven furlongs of the Forward Gal posed no problem. After attending the pace to the half-mile, Red Carpet Ready punched away to a 2 ½-length lead and maintained her dominance while ridden out through the finish.

Lucky as Red Carpet Ready is, her owners – Glenn Bromagen and Patrick Lewis – may be even luckier. Bromagen had gone to the Saratoga select sale in 2021 with a plan: “I had identified the horses I wanted at Saratoga, and Oscar Performance was the level of sire power that I thought I could buy there. I thought $200,000 was enough to buy probably the best Oscar Performance, as opposed to being what you’d pay for a bottom-level yearling by a more established sire.”

Red Carpet Ready certainly qualified as a top yearling for her sire. Beautifully balanced and proportioned, she had a very good shoulder and hindquarters, as well as a lovely, athletic walk. Yet, “when she was in the ring,” Bromagen recalled, “from the pacing I felt I was bidding against the reserve. Then when I pulled up at $170,000, I thought she went RNA and was heading out to Mill Ridge to ask about buying her. And as I was going out, I saw Deuce Greathouse signing the ticket.

“That was a sinking feeling, but I went up to Deuce and asked who he was going to send her to. He said he wasn’t sure because he’d bought her on ‘spec,’ and I said I really liked her.

“He said, ‘Well, you can buy her from me.’ I asked how much he wanted: $190,000. You know, I was prepared to go to $200,000 for her; so I bought her, and she’s been a wonderful filly at every step of the way.”

The buyer noted that Greathouse went back and bought the full sister in last year’s Saratoga sale for $65,000. “He may be the smartest of us all,” Bromagen said. “My partner Patrick Lewis had been talking about getting into the game, called me up after I’d bought this filly, and this is his first flat-racing Thoroughbred. I’ve ruined him because now he thinks the game is easy” with an unbeaten filly who’s just won a graded stakes.

Bred in Kentucky by Lynn Schiff, Red Carpet Ready is the second winner from three foals to race out of Wild Silk, an unraced daughter of champion 2-year-old colt and Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense (by Street Cry) and the stakes-winning A.P. Indy mare Spun Silk.

Although no granddaughter of Arlington Million winner Kitten’s Joy (El Prado) and Street Sense would qualify as “sprint bred,” there is certainly plenty of speed in this filly’s heritage. The speed begins with her sire, who must have given his jockey a whiplash when racing a mile in record time of 1:31.23 to win the G3 Poker Stakes at Belmont.

The filly’s third dam is stakes winner Spunoutacontrol (Wild Again), a half-sister to leading sire Tale of the Cat (Storm Cat) and European highweight Minardi (Boundary), as well as to the dam of champion Johannesburg (Hennessy). The fourth dam of Red Carpet Ready is a full sister to G1 winner Preach (Mr. Prospector), the dam of leading sire Pulpit (A.P. Indy).

A G1 winner four times, Oscar Performance won three of his four starts at two, including the G3 Pilgrim and the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. He followed up with Grade 1 victories in the Belmont Derby, Secretariat, and Woodbine Mile, among other graded successes. The handsome bay out of the Theatrical mare Devine Actress earned $2.3 million for Amerman Racing LLC and retired to stud at Mill Ridge Farm, where he was syndicated into 40 shares and entered stud at a fee of $20,000 live foal.

With five graded stakes performers from his first crop so far, Oscar Performance is booked full with a limit of 140 mares for 2023 and stands for the same fee ($17,500 to those who have previously bred to the horse).

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keep up brings the story home for another generation at mill ridge

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headley bell, mill ridge farm, unbridled's son

The following post first appeared at Paulick Report.

Horses and stories go together. So it’s natural that most of the stallion prospects coming to Kentucky would have a back story. These range from the homespun charm of General Quarters, who was owned and trained by former educator Tom McCarthy, to the historic significance of Orb, who became the first Kentucky Derby winner for the Phipps and Janney families after decades of breeding and racing Thoroughbreds.

With a horse like Orb, he comes to stud as one of the highest-profile horses of the year, sporting a high-class race record with the gleaming Kentucky Derby trophy as its centerpiece. Furthermore, he is by one of A.P. Indy’s best sons in Malibu Moon out of a quality daughter of Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled. So the story is icing on the cake.

For horses who don’t have websites or fan clubs but are considered significant enough racehorses to merit a chance at stud, the story can be critical.

One of the most interesting stories is the history of Keep Up, a 6-year-old son of leading sire Unbridled’s Song out of multiple Grade 1 winner Keeper Hill, a daughter of top broodmare sire Deputy Minister. Winner of the G1 Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs and Spinster Stakes at Keeneland, Keeper Hill was a star performer for co-breeder Mill Ridge Farm, which brought her home as a broodmare, and Keep Up is her fourth foal.

Born April 29, Keep Up was a good-sized foal, a robust weanling, and then an increasingly promising yearling. With his size, looks, and conformation, Keep Up would have been a premium yearling, but disaster struck.

When the grooms at Mill Ridge went to bring up the yearlings, the strapping bay was lame, and the veterinarians who examined him found the colt to have a fracture to the accessory carpal bone in his left knee.

It was an odd fracture, disheartening to those accustomed to handling the lively colt, and it should have spelled the end to an athletic career for the colt, perhaps an end to his life.

Headley Bell recalled that the “vets told us he had about a 10 percent chance to recover and race. But we took the chance, had the vet insert a screw to hold the fracture, and gave Keep Up seven months of stall rest.”

That Keep Up had the constitution to cope with the injury and the character to prosper during his stall rest is a tribute to the colt’s quality heritage and to the care he received from the staff at Mill Ridge.

The big bay was the house horse, from the farm’s great racemare, and his close association with the grooms and yearling staff made him a farm favorite. So when Mill Ridge sent the youngster into training, he carried a legion of hopes.

As often happens, the hopes took time to bear fruit.

Keep Up kept growing, and that, in addition to concern over his earlier injury, delayed his racing till the end of his 3-year-old season. The colt won a maiden special at Gulfstream the following year in his third start, continued to improve, and by the end of his 5-year-old season, he won three races in a row, including the Grade 3 River City Handicap at Churchill Downs.

The horse won another stakes this season at Arlington Park, and he retires with seven victories in 18 starts, with lifetime earnings of $300,545. That’s a good race record but not one that is good enough to earn a place at stud in Kentucky.

Unless there’s a reason to believe the horse possesses hidden potential.

In explaining the decision to keep the horse and stand him at Mill Ridge, Headley Bell said that personal considerations played a role, and “considering his pedigree, heart, class and imposing good looks, we wanted to give him a chance at stud.”

Bell noted that “this is also a practical business. As a result, we needed to find an approach that gave Keep Up a worthy opportunity, and after a good deal of consideration we decided that we would use the “Share the Upside” incentive program introduced by Spendthrift and successful with their stallion Into Mischief. This program allows the small breeder an opportunity to participate in a stallion and dream. We invite breeders to come to Mill Ridge and inspect Keep Up. They will like what they see.”

Keep Up enters stud for a fee of $5,000 live foal. Breeders who participate in the Share the Upside program with him will agree to breed a mare to the horse for two years at $4,000 on a live-foal contract and will earn a lifetime breeding right in the horse.

The stories we tell about horses have some themes in common, and one is that the next decision might result in the “chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance.”

broodmare of the week: keeper hill

Tags

deputy minister, keeper hill, mill ridge farm, production success in broodmares

When I think of “hard-luck” broodmares, the name of Keeper Hill immediately comes to mind. There were few mares of comparable talent in the 1998 crop of 3-year-old fillies and maybe a handful as well-bred.

As a racer, Keeper Hill won three G1 races and was second or third in eight more. She had a very high level of talent, courage, and consistency to show form like that. Her sire is the important sire and broodmare sire Deputy Minister; her dam is a multiple graded stakes producer, and the second dam is a stakes-winning half-sister to leading sire Fappiano.

With all this going for her, Keeper Hill also was blessed with outstanding connections, being foaled and raised at Mill Ridge Farm, then trained through much of her career by Bobby Frankel.

To say that high hopes were held for this big, scopy, good-looking mare when she went to stud is a significant understatement. She was the goods.

A look at her produce record below shows how much in a mare’s life, in particular, depends on things no breeder or animal can control. Those first three years listed as “barren” were not, at least not in the more usual sense of the word in relation to fertility. Instead, those were the MRLS years that blighted the production of many mares, and Keeper Hill was one of those.

Once past the toxic destruction that swept through the Bluegrass, Keeper Hill produced four foals in succession, and the last of the quartet is Keep Up, who won the G3 River City Handicap at Churchill Downs on Sunday.

Before he could deliver on some of the promise associated with his celebrated dam, Keep Up had to overcome an obstacle of his own. While in sales prep as a yearling, the bay fractured his left knee, then spent long months on stall rest recuperating.

As credit to the care he received and the colt’s own character, Keep Up did heal and go into training, and now he is fulfilling some of his potential as a racehorse.

Due to the lengthy recuperation, the bay son of Unbridled’s Song took some time coming to his form, but he has progressed notably this season and even this fall, marching upward in class to win his first stakes in this graded event.

After Keep Up, Keeper Hill produced her first and only filly, a daughter by Bernardini who is a good winner and has prospects for the future, and the mare has a 2yo colt by Smart Strike and a yearling colt by Pulpit.

Earlier this year, Keeper Hill had a dead foal, and due to the trauma related to that, she was given the year off, will be bred in 2013.

The complete produce record is below:

1st Dam: KEEPER HILL, b, 1995. Bred by Chadds Ford Stable, et al (KY). Raced 4 yrs in NA, 21 sts, 4 wins, $1,661,281 (ssi = 37.14). Won Kentucky Oaks (G1), Las Virgenes S. (G1), Spinster S. (G1); 2nd Coaching Club American Oaks (G1), Santa Anita Oaks (G1), Gazelle Handicap (G1), Mother Goose S. (G1), Delaware Handicap (gr. 3); 3rd Breeders’ Cup Distaff (G1), Personal Ensign Handicap (G1), Beverly Hills Handicap (G1), Ruffian Handicap (G1). ($250,000, 1997, KEEAPR, 2yo)
	2001:   Barren. 2002:   Barren. 2003:   Barren. 2004:   Shaami, ch g, by Gone West. Raced 3 yrs in NA, 17 sts, 1 wins, $30,004. 2005:   Empire Keeper, b c, by Empire Maker.  Unraced in NA, Eng and Fr. 2006:   Valerian, b c, by Empire Maker. Raced 1 yr in NA, 1 sts, 0 wins, $197. 2007:   KEEP UP. b h, by Unbridled’s Song. Raced 3 yrs in NA, winner at 4 and 5, 11 starts, 5 wins, $213,623.     At 5: Won River City H. (G3). 2008:   Barren. 2009:   Milania, b f, by Bernardini. Raced 2 yrs in NA, 8 sts, 2 wins, $72,350. 2010:   Platinum Proof, dk b/ c, by Smart Strike.  2011:   Motivating, b c, by Pulpit.  2012:   Dead Foal.
	Broodmare sire: DEPUTY MINISTER, dkbbr, 1979-2004. Sire of 519 dams of 2797 foals, 2140 rnrs (77%), 1534 wnrs (55%), 421 2yo wnrs (15%), 204 sw (7%).
	2nd Dam: Fineza, dkbbr, 1985-2011. Bred by John Nerud Revocable Trust (FL). Raced 3 yrs in NA, 28 sts, 4 wins, $128,239 (ssi = 4.42). 3rd Cape May County S. Dam of GOLDEN GEAR, bay horse, Gulch, $634,009. Won Commonwealth Breeders’ Cup Handicap (G2), Equipoise Mile Handicap (G3), Kentuckiana S., Phoenix S., Silver Bullet Centennial Handicap, Centennial Handicap, Teleprompter S.; 2nd Fort Springs S.; 3rd Essex Handicap (G3) and Chasm, bay mare, Gulch, $96,669. 3rd Cicada S. (G3).

havre de grace shines brightly for porter and jones

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alice chandler, amerigo, barbaro, bc classic, beldame, bernardini, breeding the racehorse, cacti, churchill downs, desert love, diesis, diminuendo, early life of havre de grace, enjoyment of sport, equine management, famous broodmares, famous families, havre de grace, headley bell, larry jones, louisville, mill ridge farm, missy baba, nancy dillman, rick porter, saint liam, sale of havre de grace, sale topper, saratoga select sale, sharpen up, sire success, stonegate farm, successful breeder, toll booth, toll fee, woodward stakes

The following post first appeared earlier this week at Paulick Report.

Owner Rick Porter and trainer Larry Jones aren’t hiding their light under a bushel basket. The Saint Liam filly Havre de Grace is their bright and shining light, and they have mapped out an ambitious and exciting program that they hope will earn their bay filly a national championship over the next couple of months.

Already a Grade 1 winner, Havre de Grace took the next step up the ladder with her impressive victory over colts in the G1 Woodward Stakes at Saratoga on Saturday. The expected next steps are the Beldame at Belmont Park, where Havre de Grace could cement domination over fillies, and then the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs, where victory would bring a likely selection as Horse of the Year.

Whether Havre de Grace races for all the marbles in the BC Classic on Saturday or in the event restricted to fillies and mares on Friday, she will be performing on the biggest stage near the home of breeder Nancy Dillman, whose Stonegate Farm is in Jefferson County, Ky., like Louisville and Churchill Downs.

When Dillman got into Thoroughbred breeding in the 1970s, one of her early broodmares was the Tom Rolfe daughter Cacti. A chestnut out of Vanity Handicap winner Desert Love (by Amerigo), Cacti produced European classic winner Diminuendo as her second foal.

Winner of the English Oaks, Irish Oaks, and Yorkshire Oaks, Diminuendo was sired by the Sharpen Up horse Diesis, who stood his entire career at Mill Ridge Farm outside Lexington. The breeder said, “And that’s when I developed my relationship with Alice Chandler. We’ve been with Mill Ridge many a year. Diminuendo was such a lovely, classy filly, and, my, she was a tough filly too.”

Even though Dillman had produced a major racehorse from her breeding program almost immediately, she did not try to expand and produce 10.

Dillman does not want to overproduce. She said, “I don’t like to have more than four or five mares. That’s a good number for us. We only have 45 acres here, and it is easy to accumulate horses. We reseed every year, and we have good pastures because we work at it every year.”

On good pastures, a breeder can grow strong and athletic horses, and the point of living on a beautiful farm is not to have a factory.

Instead, Dillman said, “I run a nursery. The mares go to Mill Ridge months before their due dates, and they stay there to be bred and 60 days after they are declared in foal before I move them the hour drive back to Louisville. We have the mares and foals, wean the foals, and sell yearlings through Mill Ridge at the sales. Depending on my numbers, if I have a lone colt, like the Bernardini this year, he gets sent to Mill Ridge in December. He runs with the young men and gets strong there. The fillies stay here. The year Havre de Grace was born, I had three fillies: a Medaglia d’Oro, a Kitten’s Joy, and the Saint Liam.”

They were all nice yearlings, Dillman said, but the bay daughter of Horse of the Year Saint Liam was the leader of the pack.

All three went through the September sale, and Porter acquired the Saint Liam filly, later named Havre de Grace, for $380,000. Dillman put the two other fillies in training and has the multiple winner Megadream (by Medaglia d’Oro) training at Belmont.

The Bernardini colt mentioned above is a half-brother to Havre de Grace, and he sold at last month’s Saratoga select sale for $1.2 million to John Ferguson, agent for Godolphin. He and Havre de Grace are out of the Carson City mare Easter Bunnette, whom Dillman acquired at the sales through Mill Ridge.

Dillman recalled a conversation she had at the 2003 Keeneland November sale with Alice Chandler and her son, Headley, who now runs Mill Ridge. “I was talking to Alice and also to Headley about the mares in the consignment, and this one was out of such a grand family,” she said. “One of the families you cannot get into. But Easter Bunnette is not a great big strong mare, and she didn’t walk well at all. It was going to turn a lot of people off. So I just kept bidding, and eventually they let me have her.”

Dillman purchased Easter Bunnette for $450,000 as a 5-year-old, carrying her first foal to a cover by Dynaformer. This is the same cross (Dynaformer over Carson City) that produced Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, who had been born earlier that year and was a weanling at Mill Ridge at the time of the sale.

Out of stakes winner Toll Fee, Easter Bunnette was a winner on the racetrack, like Dillman’s other star producer Cacti. Of greater import is that Easter Bunnette’s second and third dams were both named Broodmare of the Year. Second dam Toll Booth (Buckpasser) produced seven stakes winners, and third dam Missy Baba (My Babu) produced six.

The great production records took a skip with Toll Fee, but her daughters are breeding on, with The Bink (Seeking the Gold) having produced G1 winner Riskaverse, two other daughters have produced G3 winners, and now Easter Bunnette has her star in the firmament.

Dillman recalled Havre de Grace as a yearling: “She was a big, strong, good-looking filly. She was always very smart, always very alert, and the leader of her group. She was a big, strong, stand-up yearling, but I believe she’s grown into something more than I expected.”

on balance, a grand yearling to open keeneland september

Tags

a.p. indy, amerman racing, balance, benjamin leon, jj pletcher, keeneland september sale, lane's end farm, mill ridge farm, sale-topping yearling, todd pletcher, zenyatta

The following article first appeared in Paulick Report earlier this week.

Q: What happens if you breed America’s leading classic sire to the Grade 1-winning half-sister to the best racemare in the country?

A: You get the sale-topping yearling at Keeneland September.

That, at least, is what happened to John and Jerry Amerman, who bred and sold the $4.2-million colt by A.P. Indy out of Balance (click here for pedigree), the high-class half-sister to Zenyatta, who brought the highest price at the opening session of the 2010 Keeneland September yearling sale.

A new high-end auction buyer named Benjamin Leon, the owner of Leon Medical Centers, purchased the top-priced colt and said that he was buying only the most select prospects at the top of the market because he wanted to create a “first-class racing stable.”

A buyer at the Saratoga select yearling sale last month, Leon had purchased a yearling colt by A.P. Indy out of Maryfield (from Southern Equine) for $1.2 million to top the Saratoga auction.

At Keeneland, Leon signed the ticket in the name of Besilu Stables. He was seated in the Keeneland pavilion with J.J. Pletcher, who operates a training center in Ocala, Fla., and is the father of leading trainer Todd Pletcher.

Leon said the colt has “the depth of pedigree to become a superstar. We’re thrilled we were able to get him.”

A.P. Indy has become the most important classic sire in America and is establishing a male line through the prominent sires Pulpit, Malibu Moon, and the emerging freshman stallion Bernardini, who won the Preakness Stakes in 2006.

When Balance concluded her racing career in 2007, what better match could the Amermans find for their multiple Grade 1 stakes winner than A.P. Indy?

The leading lot at the Keeneland September sale is the first foal of Balance, a half-sister to the undefeated champion Zenyatta, and the Amermans consigned their handsome bay colt through Mill Ridge Sales.

The Amermans had purchased the colt’s dam, the Thunder Gulch mare Balance, at the 2004 Keeneland September sale for $260,000. For them, Balance won three times at the premier level and earned more than $1 million.

A pretty and very well-conformed mare, Balance brought the fourth-highest price for a yearling by her sire in 2004, and that was before either her younger or elder sibling (Zenyatta and Where’s Bailey) became stakes winners.

In fact, at the time of purchase, there wasn’t anything happening on the page, although it was quite a good pedigree, and the mare’s dam, Vertigineux, wasn’t even a stakes winner herself.

Balance generated a serious sales price because she was that good-looking, and she has passed along the qualities of athleticism and presence to her son.

John Amerman said that the high-priced lot was “really the first horse we’ve sold. We normally race everything, but the people that advise us” encouraged the breeders to sell, especially since the colt is his dam’s first foal and the family couldn’t become any hotter, with Zenyatta taking her place among racing’s legends.

The big, well-grown bay colt was born Jan. 18 and is marked like his famous sire, who was the highest-priced yearling at the Keeneland July sale in 1990.

The success of sons by A.P. Indy, the prestige of the female family, the timing of this horse in a soft sales market, and the strong desire of a new buyer in the sales arena created a dramatic tussle in the Keeneland sale pavilion.

Leon entered the bidding only after it had gone well into seven figures, then began swapping bids with Kaleem Shah, seated inside the sales pavilion, and John Magnier, who was bidding from the holding area behind the auctioneer’s stand.

Shah bowed out of the fracas at $3.8 million, leaving Magnier as the underbidder to Leon.

All agreed the bay colt was a special individual with excellence written on him. Leon, in particular, seemed overjoyed with his acquisition. “We, my family and the Pletcher family, thought he was the very best horse in the sale and did not want to let him go, ” said Leon, a Miami businessman who owns a 600-acre farm north of Ocala that was once part of the former Silverleaf Farm.