Two weeks before the most important timber race in the world, while still enjoying the My Lady’s Manor victory by his horse Vintage Vinnie (Ire), trainer Joe Davies contemplated the next step.
For five glorious weeks in the spring of 1971 – 50 years ago now – an unlikely trio of men from Venezuela chased the Triple Crown and almost won it with a horse hardly anyone had heard of on Kentucky Derby Day.
Where do you want to start with Street Lute? Winning seven of her first eight starts? Her eye injury? Her owner, a guy who probably doesn’t quite understand how lucky he is? Her unraced dam’s path from the auction ring to riding horse to a date with a champion?
Matt Dorman’s best day as a handicapper came at the 2015 Breeders’ Cup, when he hit the pick four. Found (Ire), 6-1 winner of the Turf-G1, helped fuel the big payout and Dorman remembered that day as he signed for a $300,000 yearling filly out of Found’s full-sister at Keeneland September last year.
You might as well start at the beginning. A conversation about West Virginia-based stallions starts with Fiber Sonde.
The 16-year-old will stand his 13th season at John McKee and Cyndy O’Bannon’s Beau Ridge Farm in Kearneysville, and will no doubt be in demand again given that he led pretty much every statistical category in 2020 and held his own in the region and beyond with 53 individual winners from 96 starters. The half-brother to $90,000 Kentucky stallion Speightstown will stand for $1,000. McKee knows that’s a bargain, but also manages his stallion’s book carefully.
First, it’s 65 pages. Second, it’s full of formal, legal and otherwise long-winded language that will test even an English teacher’s inner voice, but United States Senate Bill 4547 – the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 – brings vast change to the country’s racing industry.
Twenty-four hours after talking up his new stallion Wicked Strong and the possibilities of big crops of Kentucky-sired racehorses coming along to bolster interest, Dr. Bill Solomon made a phone call.
“How about that?”
Rodney Eckenrode considers Equistar Training and Breeding a work in progress.
The full-service operation in the southeastern Pennsylvania township of Annville not far from Penn National Race Course opened its doors in 2004 and heads into the 2021 breeding season as one of the Keystone State’s top stud farms. Equistar stands five stallions, including Pennsylvania legend Smarty Jones, and offers a multitude of services from foaling and boarding to breaking, training and layups.
The unraced Imagining 2-year-old in the barn trained so well last fall that trainer Butch Reid called Grace Merryman at Anchor and Hope Farm. “Have I got good news for you,” Reid said. “This horse can run. Don’t give up on that stallion.”
