Nicole Martin extended a greeting as she slid open the heavy door of the main barn at St. Omer's Farm in Forest Hill, Md.
"So you've come to see The Queen," she smiled. "This is her son Beren," she said, pointing out the bay horse in the first stall on the left. "He's getting ready to go to stud."
A few doors down on the right, "That's her grandson, Star Man Bob."
With that, Emily Shiloh led a dark bay mare out of the stall across from the 2-year-old.
"And this," Martin said, "is Silmaril."
Silmaril understood the assignment. Ears pricked and head high, she paused and posed, allowing a visitor to fully appreciate her. With dapples shining through an incoming winter coat, she was the picture of robust health.
Still a specimen, she turned 24 this month. While respectful of Shiloh at the end of the shank, Silmaril crackled with controlled exuberance as she walked out of the barn to join owner Sue Quick for photos.
Bred by Quick's late husband Stephen and partner Christopher Feifarek, Silmaril has always called St. Omer's home. Stephen Quick purchased the 120-acre former dairy and apple orchard in 1976, growing it into one of Maryland's foremost Thoroughbred nurseries.
As they did with the property, the Quicks developed and nurtured Silmaril's family.
"We had her dam and grandddam," Sue Quick said. "It started out in 1978, we bought a mare [First Landing's daughter Pilgrim's Pride] at a Fasig-Tipton sale. My husband wanted to breed her to Northern Dancer. He didn't know anything about breeding. So he wanted to find a horse bred like Northern Dancer, and North Sea was. So he bred her to him."
The resulting foal, Kattegat's Pride, won 19 races and earned $511,812. Kattegat's Pride won seven in a row from Oct. 12, 1982 to Feb. 19, 1983, including the Silver Ice and Alma North Stakes and the What a Summer, Anne Arundel and Conniver Handicaps. Her biggest of 10 stakes wins came in the 1984 Gallorette Handicap-G3 at Pimlico.
As a broodmare, Kattegat's Pride produced four foals, three winners. Her only daughter was her second foal, by 1985 Kentucky Derby-G1 winner and Horse of the Year Spend a Buck. Named Kattebuck, the filly won just one race -- a maiden special at Delaware Park in 1992.
The Quicks were great supporters of the Maryland breeding industry, preferring to go to local stallions. All nine of her foals conceived in Maryland. In 2000, Kattebuck went to Diamond, a stakes-winning son of Mr. Prospector standing at Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City.
On March 31, 2001, Kattebuck foaled a dark bay filly eventually named Silmaril for one of the three fictional brilliant jewels in author J.R.R. Tolkien's books. The horse didn't live up to her name, at first. As a young horse, she was completely nondescript.
"You'd never have picked her out," she said. "But [trainer]Chris Grove knew as soon as she got to him."
Grove still remembers.
"She just had that look in her eye," he said. "You could look at her and you just knew."
The day the filly arrived, Grove called Susan Quick.
"Hey, she's here, she's in her stall, she's safe and she's good to go," he said. "And I can tell you right now, she's a racehorse."
From that day, Silmaril occupied Stall 18 at Grove's Bowie barn.
"She never left that one," Grove said. "When she went home to the farm and would come back in, whoever was in Stall 18 had to move."
Silmaril's career lit up the Mid-Atlantic from her debut as a 2-year-old at Laurel Park Oct. 16, 2003 until her final outing -- and win -- in the What a Summer Stakes at the same track Jan. 12, 2008.
Grove credited the mare's versatility and heart as major factors in her longevity and success. She traveled to eight racetracks and won races from 51⁄2 furlongs to 11⁄8 miles. Like her granddam, she strung together win streaks. As a 3-year-old in 2004, she won four consecutive starts from Feb. 15 to Oct. 9, beginning with the Jameela Stakes at Laurel and culminating with the Maryland Million Oaks at Pimlico. She capped that season with a score in Pimlico's Geisha Handicap.
In 2005 Silmaril achieved what Quick and Grove consider her -- and their -- greatest accomplishment. On a sloppy track on Black-Eyed Susan Day, Silmaril conquered champion and future Hall of Famer Ashado in the Pimlico Breeders' Cup Distaff-G3.
"Leading up to the race with Ashado," Grove said, "Silmaril was training so well that I didn't think there was a horse in the country that could beat her."
A week before the race, jockey Ryan Fogelsonger and Silmaril returned to the barn and the trainer deadpanned, "Ashado who?"
He told everybody his filly was ready to go. He got mostly scoffs.
"Yeah, OK," they said. "All right. . ."
Grove remembers Ashado's trainer Todd Pletcher being relaxed and jovial in the paddock as he saddled the favorite. Grove and Susan Quick stood together.
"He doesn't know he's getting ready to get beat," Grove told the owner.
"Chris," Susan replied, "you know you're crazy."
Bet down to 3-10, Ashado led to the stretch but couldn't hold off Silmaril's late push. She won by three-quarters of a length.
“She still goes frantic
over peppermint wrappers.
I never taught her that as a baby; she learned that at the racetrack.”
– Owner/breeder Sue Quick
about 24-year-old Silmaril
Silmaril finished 2005 as the Maryland-bred champion older female and went on to reward her connections with plenty of highwater marks afterward. Another Maryland Million victory came in 2006 in the Distaff. In 2007 she won Delaware Park's Endine Handicap-G3.
A trip to Belmont Park that year provided Grove with an unforgettable encounter. There for the First Flight Handicap-G2, he was headed to the track from the paddock after saddling Silmaril when Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens stopped him and shook his hand.
"You've done a great job with this Maryland-bred," Jerkens said. "Congratulations."
Silmaril finished fourth but Grove, whose father Phil rode in the Mid-Atlantic for decades, felt like a winner.
"I grew up reading the Racing Form," he said. "I was the only kid in kindergarten who knew how to read, and that was from going to the track, so I knew who he was when I was a kid."
Sue Quick recalled Silmaril's summer breaks on the farm. All racehorse, she preferred the racetrack but put up with farm life for a month or so.
"My husband would go up and turn her out while it was still dark before the employees got here," Sue said. "But as soon as that sun was up and those flies were out, she was done. She was always a lady, except coming back in from her gallops at the track every morning. She would buck and squeal and dump her rider. Chris would have to meet her at the gap to walk her back to the barn."
Grove backed up the memory.
"Every day she would walk out to the track with her head down; it was like you were dragging her out there," he said. "She'd gallop 2 miles and would come off the track on her toes. One time I was walking her back and she jumped up and cow-kicked me square in the thigh. She was just playing. I had to call somebody to come get her because I couldn't walk."
Silmaril made just one start as a 7-year-old in 2008, a second consecutive score in Laurel Park's What a Summer. She won the January race by 2 lengths and headed to retirement. Her resume still holds up. Thirty-six starts, 16 wins, 12 in stakes company, seven seconds, three thirds and earnings of $1,032,973.
As a broodmare, Silmaril produced nine foals, eight to race, six winners. All were bred and campaigned by St. Omer's, most in partnership with Feifarek. Her best, Beren, enters stud in 2025 at Wyn Oaks Farm owned by Sue Quick's son Chip Wheeler and his wife Barbara in Delta, Pa. Winner of the 2022 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash, Beren won 12 of 35 starts and earned $944,890. He will stand alongside his sire, millionaire and multiple graded stakes winner Weigelia.
Silmaril is pensioned at St. Omer's and doted on daily by Sue Quick and the staff.
"She still goes frantic over peppermint wrappers," Sue said. "I never taught her that as a baby; she learned that at the racetrack. We still have maybe 30 horses here. And she's happy running her little herd. But it's been a fun game."
