holy bull is an emblem of past greatness and great potential

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cairo prince, craig robertson, harvey clarke, paul braverman, racehorse selection, steve shahinian, terry murray

The following post first appeared at Paulick Report.

Twenty years ago, the most important gray 3-year-old colt in the world was a Florida-bred son of Great Above. Unbeaten in a conservative campaign at 2, the fleet gray went on to become champion of his division and to win the Eclipse Award as Horse of the Year in 1994 after victories in the Florida Derby, Blue Grass, Metropolitan Handicap, Haskell, Woodward Stakes, and Travers.

On Saturday at Gulfstream Park, they renewed the Grade 2 Holy Bull Stakes named in honor of that big gray champion, and the winner was a colt of immense potential, just like Holy Bull 20 years ago.

Cairo Prince won the Holy Bull convincingly and has been beaten only once, in the G2 Remsen Stakes last fall at Aqueduct by the highly regarded Honor Code (by A.P. Indy).

Both are leading prospects for the Classics, and Cairo Prince, from the first crop by Pioneerof the Nile, is out of a stakes-winning daughter of Holy Bull.

In addition to sharing Holy Bull’s gray coat, Cairo Prince shares some physical traits with his famous grandfather. Steve Shahinian, the bloodstock consultant who purchased Cairo Prince for the partnership that races the colt, said that, “like Holy Bull, this colt is a big horse. He is a fast horse with an elegant stride, has a really good mind, and has a monster ticker.”

When Shahinian evaluated this colt at the sale, “he was just what I look for at the sales, and he was so much that horse that I recommended him twice.”

The first time was at the 2012 Keeneland January sale where Shahinian went to buy a short yearling to pinhook for himself. He said, “I went through the first eight barns, and when I saw this colt, I stopped shopping for myself and went to work trying to find investors to buy him.”

Unfortunately, he did not succeed at that. But Shahinian did recommend the growthy gray to his friend Mike Chovanes, DVM, on behalf of Mandy Pope. She bought the colt in partnership with another outfit for $200,000, and the next time that Shahinian saw the Pioneerof the Nile colt was at the September sale that fall.

Shahinian really liked what he saw in the nine months older colt. He said, “I saw how much he had grown from January and how well he had developed. His cardio had progressed from January and was even better than it had been as a younger horse.”

Jay Kilgore from DataTrack International evaluated Cairo Prince and gave Shahinian a highly positive review of the colt. Kilgore said, “This colt possessed an outstanding cardio, and from what we’ve seen, a substantial cardio is a trait we’ve come to expect from Holy Bull and many of his descendants.”

Even more than in January, Shahinian was high on Cairo Prince, but there was a big difference this time.

This time, he had the financial firepower to back up his interest.

The group he put to together to purchase Cairo Prince was Namcook Stable (Terry Murray), Paul Braverman, Harvey Clarke, and Craig Robertson, and they succeeded in buying Cairo Prince at the September sale for $250,000. This group also owned Fountain of Youth Stakes winner Soldat (War Front) for most of his career.

Shahinian had selected Soldat for Clarke and Robertson.  Then, when the colt ran a big fig early in his 3-year-old season at Gulfstream, they began to get serious offers to purchase an interest in him. Shahinian said, “I thought it would be wise for the owners (Harvey and Craig) to take some money off the table, and I went to Kiaran McLaughlin for some additional investors who would be straightforward partners for that horse.”

The trainer recommended Terry Murray and Jake Conley, who raced as Namcook Stables, and Paul Braverman, who often partnered with them on other horses. Shahinian said, “They committed to purchase an interest in Soldat on a Wednesday and found themselves in the winner’s circle on Saturday; so we got off to a pretty good start. Then I got a chance to buy a couple of horses for them, and it was a natural fit to recommend that they partner again with Harvey Clarke and Craig Robertson on the Pioneerof the Nile colt at the 2012 Keeneland September sale.

“And that’s how they got involved with Cairo Prince,” Shahinian said. “This group gets along very well and brought an entourage of about 25 people to the winner’s circle of the Holy Bull. If you have a very good horse who has a chance in a graded stakes, it is exciting, but if you have a very good horse in a graded stakes who is expected to win, that gets a little nerve wracking.”

Before Cairo Prince ever ran, Shahinian gave his nerves a good twist by telling the “owners that this was the best horse I’d ever bought. Generally, I cannot buy the offspring of an established, successful sire. The best individuals by those sires bring a hefty premium. Instead, I buy really nice individuals by young sires like War Front and Pioneerof the Nile.”

Although Shahinian doesn’t buy many horses, he does buy good ones. He noted that he had purchased only two yearling colts in 2012 that are now 3-year-olds — Cairo Prince and a Candy Ride colt at Fasig-Tipton July who became a wobbler and then a single 2-year-old colt at last year’s in-training sales.  That horse’s name is Scotland (a colt by Horse Greeley who recently ran third in the G2 Jerome at Aqueduct and will run on Saturday in the Withers at Aqueduct). [Editor’s Note: Scotland ran third in the Withers.]

Just as he had with Cairo Prince a year before, Shahinian wanted to buy another 2-year-old colt at the 2013 OBS March sale. He said, “The only other 2-year-old I had hoped to buy at the sales was Conquest Titan, who brought $475,000, and I didn’t have that kind of backing.”

In the Holy Bull on Saturday, Conquest Titan (Birdstone) ran a solid second to Cairo Prince.

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i’ll have another: what might have been

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arch's gal edith, Belmont Stakes, Brookdale Farm, flower alley, freddie seitz, harvey clarke, i'll have another, steve shahinian, Triple Crown

The following post appeared earlier this week at Paulick Report. Today, trainer Doug O’Neill announced that I’ll Have Another will not race in the Belmont Stakes due to a tendon problem.

The odds are long against breeding a horse who wins the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, then gets to race for the Triple Crown. But Harvey Clarke has bucked the odds. He bred the talented chestnut colt I’ll Have Another, who will take the Test of the Champion on Saturday in an attempt to become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.

As the flags in the Belmont Park infield pop in the wind, as the O’Neill brothers’ hearts bang in their chests with excitement, and as jockey Mario Gutierrez listens to his horse among the thundering multitudes when I’ll Have Another heads down the stretch of the Belmont Stakes, their chance of a lifetime might never have existed if Clarke and others had made different decisions at any point along the process in producing the classic winner.

Like many other Thoroughbred breeders, Clarke is a successful businessman, and he uses seasoned advisers to help direct his horse breeding and racing stable. Clarke has Steve Shahinian to select racing stock for him and to help decide which of those Clarke breeds should be sold as surplus to the stable.

So Shahinian recommended that the breeder sell the immature-looking I’ll Have Another as a yearling. The other side of that coin is that Shahinian also had urged Clarke to buy the colt’s dam, the Arch mare Arch’s Gal Edith, for $80,000 at the OBS March sale of 2-year-olds in training in 2004.

The filly had ability and was unbeaten in a single start.

Shahinian said, “The fillies out of the racing stable are the ones that become broodmares if we think there’s anything there to work with. We retired Arch’s Gal Edith to stud because she was a really promising racehorse who fit our program. From mischance, she did not get to express what we thought she had the ability to do, but there was some genuine talent that the trainer, Kiaran McLaughlin, felt sure went untapped.

“Arch’s Gal Edith was always robust but more of a linebacker than an offensive lineman. She was strong in the same way that her son Those Wer the Days (by Thunder Gulch) is strong. But she also had enough leg and bone under her to do what she needed to do.

“One of the negatives with her is that she put a lot into her training. You never asked her to do anything and she wasn’t ready to do it. She was very forward physically and mentally in her attitude toward training and racing. She was also an impressive mover for a filly who wasn’t really big.”

[When I saw the mare at Brookdale Farm near Versailles, Ky., two weeks ago, I put her at 15.3 hands or just a touch more.]

She is big enough, strong enough, and appeared to have talent enough to be quite a good horse. It’s all the more disappointing that she didn’t get to show it.

Had Clarke let his disappointment get the better of him and sold Arch’s Gal Edith, she might have bred a classic winner from somebody else. Or not at all.

Clarke has plenty of experience in racing, however, and he plays the game for the long term. As a result, he held onto the mare and bred her to good horses. Her third mate was Travers winner Flower Alley (Distorted Humor), who was suggested to Clarke by Freddie Seitz of Brookdale Farm, where Clarke keeps Arch’s Gal Edith and her foals.

Freddie Seitz wears different hats at different times of the year at Brookdale, but in advising Clarke about his mares, Seitz suggested Flower Alley because “of really liking him as a racehorse. He had speed and carried it in his Travers victory and in the Breeders’ Cup to be second. He seemed like a typical Distorted Humor, who puts speed into his offspring but also gets a lot who can carry it. That’s why I liked Flower Alley as a stallion prospect, and we tried to get him as a stallion for Brookdale. That did not happen, but we liked him, used him, and bred his stakes winner Bouquet Booth.”

Clarke agreed, and the mating produced I’ll Have Another, by far the best offspring of his sire and the leading colt of 2012.

But nobody knew what destiny awaited the chestnut son of Arch’s Gal Edith when he was a young colt frolicking in the fields of Brookdale.

As Brookdale’s yearling manager, Seitz was very familiar with the colt and said that I’ll Have Another was the “most middle-of-the-road type yearling you could have. He was medium-sized, no real issues, very mellow personality. He was a good mover and walker, but we have a lot of nice movers who don’t go on to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Compared to how immature he had been, he looked like a different horse by sales time, had improved from what he had been earlier in prep, but still he wasn’t the type who really wowed buyers in September.”

Bought for a song ($11,000) in September, I’ll Have Another was much stronger when presented for resale at the OBS April last year. But even there, the quick chestnut found few friends in the buying public aside from Dennis O’Neill, who picked him up at $35,000 for the account of Paul Reddam.

The karmic connections of so many people who made so many independent decisions will converge on the racetrack at Belmont Park this Saturday afternoon. As tempting as it might be for us to wonder “what if?” there is every reason to believe that changing the steps along this stairway to stardom would mean that Bodemeister would be racing for the Triple Crown instead.

kentucky derby winner shows it’s ‘all in the family’

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arch, arch's gal edith, claiborne farm, classic winner, distorted humor, economics of breeding, flower alley, harvey clarke, i'll have another, Kentucky Derby, Rob Whiteley, steve shahinian, three chimneys farm

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

Winning a classic puts the shine on any pedigree, but the luster from I’ll Have Another’s success in Saturday’s Grade 1 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs could not have come at a more opportune time for the colt’s sire, the young stallion Flower Alley, whose second crop are now 3-year-olds.

From the third crop by leading sire Distorted Humor, Flower Alley followed his sire’s classic winner, champion Funny Cide, and second-crop star, multiple G1-winner Commentator, but was the first top-class son of Distorted Humor who was a colt and could go to stud. Now, Flower Alley is the first son of Distorted Humor to sire a classic winner.

The chestnut son of Distorted Humor hit his greatest stroke on the racetrack with victory in the G1 Travers Stakes, and on the basis of that and other good form, he went to stud at Three Chimneys Farm for an initial stud fee of $25,000 live foal.

I’ll Have Another was one of 73 live foals bred on that stud fee from covers of 2008 (in the midst of the world economic crash) that were born in 2009, and the economic nail through Flower Alley’s coffin came the following year at the 2010 yearling sales when 39 yearlings – more than half his second crop – sold for an average of $15,674 and a median price of $11,000.

In one of the ironies of sales statistics and racing lore, I’ll Have Another was the median Flower Alley yearling at the sales. On the track, he has proven something entirely different.

So, for many breeders and observers, it’s a puzzle why Flower Alley’s stock was not better received at the sales.

Rob Whiteley of Liberation Farm bred a number of mares to the stallion from the beginning of his stud career and confesses to being puzzled also. He said, “The sales market is a mysterious thing and is often disconnected from the racetrack and from racing performance. The sales market is driven by word of mouth and hearsay from opinion-makers who often have their own agendas, and rather than cherishing a commitment to facts, seem to look through lenses that do not reflect reality. The one fact about the market that I’ve observed over 40 years is that it’s usually wrong. And breeders and buyers that didn’t line up for Flower Alley sure missed the boat. He earned my full respect when he defeated Grade 1 racehorses like Bellamy Road and Roman Ruler in the Travers, then ran second to Saint Liam in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Now he looks ready to take off with G1 winner Lilacs and Lace in his first crop and with the Kentucky Derby winner in his second crop.”

In contrast to the later reception of his yearlings at auction, the tall and scopy stallion found interest from breeders in his initial books, and among the promising young mares attracted to Flower Alley’s second season at stud was the dam of I’ll Have Another, Arch’s Gal Edith, a reference to the wife of television character Archie Bunker.

Steve Shahinian, adviser to breeder Harvey Clarke, said that “Freddie Seitz from Brookdale Farm suggested the mating of Flower Alley for Arch’s Gal Edith that produced I’ll Have Another. If you couldn’t breed to Distorted Humor, you could breed to Flower Alley, and he’s a horse who could go a classic distance, which we wanted.”

The dam of I’ll Have Another was always a well-intended young prospect. By the good sire Arch, whose most famous offspring is champion Blame, Arch’s Gal Edith made only one start, winning a maiden special at Belmont by three-quarters of a length in 1:11.58 for six furlongs.

Said Shahinian: “We thought a lot of this filly. I believed she was stakes caliber, and she trained like it.”

She had been lightly raced by chance, but not precisely from unsoundness. The filly showed enough ability at the sales of 2-year-olds in training to sell for $80,000 but, once sent to the trainer, fractured a hock from kicking the wall of her stall. Then after winning her maiden, she developed a small chip in an ankle, and the surgery to clean it out did not resolve smoothly, necessitating retirement.

Although the oddities of chance intervened in what promised to be a good racing career, Arch’s Gal Edith has produced three good winners from her first three foals, and the Kentucky Derby winner is her first black-type horse.

Breeder Clarke still has the mare and has a 2-year-old Tapit filly out of the mare named Gloria S, a reference to the daughter of Archie and Edith Bunker. Arch’s Gal Edith was given the following year off after foaling the Tapit, and earlier this year had a Midnight Lute foal that did not survive a difficult delivery. The mare was bred back to champion Gio Ponti about a week ago.

The sire of Arch’s Gal Edith is the Claiborne Farm stallion Arch, and stepping back a generation on the bottom and two generations on the top, this is a very Claiborne pedigree, as both champion juvenile Forty Niner (sire of Distorted Humor), second in the 1988 Kentucky Derby, and major winner Arch raced for the Hancock family’s Bourbon County operation.

Whereas Forty Niner was a homebred who became a champion and leading sire, Arch was purchased by Seth Hancock at the Keeneland July select yearling sale as a racing and stallion prospect who could offer some bloodlines and aptitude that would suit Claiborne well if the robust colt proved himself the real thing on the racetrack.

Arch was more than capable as a racer, winning the G1 Super Derby at 10 furlongs, and he has been increasingly successful as a sire. From the rather stout male line of Hail to Reason, English Derby winner Roberto, and his son leading sire Kris S., Arch tends to get stock that mature well and show their best form going a mile or more. In amongst ’em, however, Arch will get some speedier animals, such as the European G1 sprint winner Les Arcs, as well as the more typical Alabama winner Pine Island, Donn Handicap winner Hymn Book, Pan American winner Newsdad, and Arkansas Derby winner Archarcharch.

This mating, in general terms, is a matching of speed with stamina, sturdiness with brilliance, and natural athleticism with perseverance. As I’ll Have Another showed through the stretch of the Derby on Saturday, he came to play with the right stuff.

i’ll have another showing continuing improvement

Tags

dennis o'neill, harvey clarke, i'll have another, paul reddam, racehorse selection, robert lewis stakes, steve shahinian

The following article appeared last week in Paulick Report.

One of the most selective owners of racehorses, Harvey Clarke, is the breeder of I’ll Have Another, the winner of the Grade 2 Robert Lewis Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday. Clarke raced four graded stakes winners in 2010 from seven starters: Soldat, Yankee Fortune, Eye of Taurus, and Krypton. Last year, his stable’s star was Fountain of Youth Stakes winner Soldat, but Clarke bred and sold I’ll Have Another.

Clearly a believer in quality over quantity, Clarke has “five broodmares in Kentucky and is co-owner of a sixth with Fred Seitz,” according to Steve Shahinian, who selects racing prospects for Clarke.

Shahinian also is the man responsible for kicking I’ll Have Another out of the stable. He said, “As a yearling, I considered him immature and weak behind, and I recommended selling him because I didn’t think he’d improve enough.”

The chestnut son of Travers winner Flower Alley and the mare Arch’s Gal Edith (by Arch) improved so much by the following April, however, that Shahinian put him back on the radar for Clarke at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales April auction of 2-year-olds in training.

Shahinian said, “I liked the colt at the 2-year-old sales, and out of 1,200 horses, he still made my short list. I spoke to Harvey about him, told him that I might have made a mistake with this one, but at the end of the day, I made another one and let him slip off.”

In fairness, there weren’t a lot of buyers with an itch for this colt. He sold for only $11,000 as a yearling, when most buyers agreed with Shahinian that he wasn’t the “sales type” with the precocious development of mass that guarantees some speed. At the 2-year-old sales, the colt went a sharp furlong in :10.2 seconds, but even there he didn’t catch too many eyes. He wasn’t truly a 2-year-old sales type who wanted to sprint, even though he went fast.

Without Shahinian in the bidding on the colt for Clarke, the price for I’ll Have Another was only $35,000, and the winning bidder was Dennis O’Neill, brother to trainer Doug O’Neill and agent for owner J. Paul Reddam. Dennis O’Neill said that I’ll Have Another “trained like a really good horse, trained like a two-turn horse, from day one.”

The Flower Alley colt won a sharp-looking maiden special last summer, then ran second to Creative Cause in the Best Pal, before finishing off the board in the Hopeful at Saratoga, where he reportedly came out of the race with sore shins.

The Lewis was his first start since, and I’ll Have Another has made the transition from interesting prospect to major stakes winner very nicely.

And despite his early perception of I’ll Have Another, Shahinian was one of those least surprised that this colt’s dam, Arch’s Gal Edith, could produce a high-class racer.

Shahinian said, “Everyone, including trainer Kiaran McLaughlin, liked the mare. She was a really nice 2-year-old that we got at the OBS March sale for $80,000 but didn’t get to the races early because she fractured a hock from kicking a stall wall. We gave her the time, she came back fine, and won a good maiden special at Belmont at 3. Then, she came up with a P1 chip in an ankle following a workout, we did surgery, and it didn’t work out well. We had a high opinion of her as a racehorse and thought she’d make a good broodmare.”

Unbeaten in a single start, Arch’s Gal Edith has made a good start as a producer. Shahinian said, “Her first foal [the Thunder Gulch gelding Those Wer the Days] had soundness issues but has ability, with four wins and a second in five starts [and earnings of $116,860]. The second foal was a Soto colt that I recommended to sell, and that was the right call. The third is I’ll Have Another.”

Clarke hasn’t caught any breaks with this mare, and Shahinian noted that she “just had a red-bag delivery of a Midnight Lute filly which did not survive.”

But the owner-breeder does have a 2-year-old Tapit filly out of Arch’s Gal Edith “with Darin Lamoureux in Ocala,” Shahinian said. “Darin’s a good hand. From 15 horses in the last three years, he has broken and supervised the early training of 2010 Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver and last year’s Derby runner Soldat.”

Another factor in favor of the Tapit filly is her strength and maturity. Shahinian said that the “Thunder Gulch was refined and good-looking, while the Tapit is a rugged, very robust filly, especially for a June foal. The mare is a linebacker herself, standing right at 16 hands and weighing 1,150 in training. Since the Tapit filly was a June foal, we took a year off, lost the Midnight Lute, and the mare will be going to Gio Ponti later this year.”