Ron Moquett - trainer of Champion Sprinter Whitmore
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By Bill Heller
Upon reaching the winner’s circle after the $2 million Gr1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint on November 7th at Keeneland, Laura Moquett hugged her seven-year-old gelding Whitmore, telling him, “You’re a total badass.”
Talking about that moment a week later, she added, “That applies to my husband, too.”
She says that with justifiable pride in both. She is the co-owner, assistant trainer and galloper of Whitmore, who was seeking his first victory in his fourth start in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
If there was an equine dictionary and you looked up the word “rogue,” Whitmore’s picture would probably be there. He is the poster horse of bad behavior.
ALL ABOUT MOQUETT
Laura’s 48-year-old husband Ron, co-owner and trainer of Whitmore, has survived three years with atypical sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease affecting the lungs. Think you were scared about COVID? Ron hasn’t missed a step training his stable of 38 horses. “This ain’t nothing,” he said. “A lot of people got through worse than I got. I get to go to the barn. I get to do my job. I was wearing a mask before it became a fad.”
There’s a third member of this Whitmore team—former jockey Greta Kuntzweiler, now Whitmore’s breeze rider and an assistant trainer. Ron calls her a hippy. Greta laughs when asked about it. “He thinks I’m a hippy because I’m a Democrat,” she said.
Together, the Moquetts and Kuntzweiler reached that remarkable Breeders’ Cup moment when Whitmore won the Sprint by 3 ¼ lengths, thanks to a perfect ride by Irad Ortiz, Jr. Whitmore had peaked as a seven-year-old in his 38th career start—a testament to Ron’s conviction that doing right by the horse allows you to maximize success. Ron defers credit to his horse. “He tells me everything,” Ron said. “Every day. He’s honest, very honest. He’s very forthcoming with information on what he needs.”
That only matters if his trainer listens. Ron has been listening to animals his entire life. At a young age, he preferred the company of animals rather than people.
His mother died when he was four-years-old. “We went from place to place for a while,” he said. “We ended up with our grandparents. I gravitated to animals—any kind of animals. I didn’t care—dogs, cats, horses, chickens. An animal will never lead you astray. An animal is very honest. For whatever reason, they respected me, and I respected them. Without cats, dogs, horses and chickens, I would need a lot of therapy. That’s what I used for therapy. It’s where I got comfort. I like people, but I’d rather be with my animals.”
He built his life with horses. “A horse never lies to you,” he said. “If he’s afraid, he shows it. If he’s hungry, he shows it.”
And if that horse is Whitmore, he’ll kick you to hell if you touch him in the wrong place. Or at the wrong time. Or just for kicks. His specialty was a double-barrel kick. Ron can live with that because Whitmore also has an incredible amount of talent.
Ron was born near Blue Ribbons Downs, a Quarter Horse track in Sallisaw, Okla. Ron pursued his interest in horses at bush tracks. “We used to go on Sundays,” he said. “They would have racing on a 400-yard strip. We’d have big-name riders come in.”
Ron couldn’t get enough. “I worked at the gate,” he said. “I would get the horses ready to run. I’d help the trainers pony horses. My friend rode—that was my first introduction. They were gambling and riding. I just wanted to be with the horses. I thought that was cool as hell. I was probably 13.”
Then came a sobering realization. “There was nobody making money doing this,” he said.
So he began supplementing his income with toughman fighting. “It was kind of like a predecessor to Ultimate Fighting,” he said. “There are three one-minute rounds with 16-ounce gloves. The winner moves on. If you win five or six, you’d get up to a money fight. I did all right from 18 to 24. I didn’t do it all the time. It got to the point where other people were getting better. It got to where I was making money with horses; I didn’t have to do it anymore.”
That happened at Oaklawn Park, where he started training. “I was 22,” Ron said. “I lived in a tack room probably the first six months. That’s no different than a lot of people today. I was nobody special.”
Ron caught a huge break, landing a job working for trainer Bernie Flint. “Bernie was the perfect guy for me,” Ron said. “He allowed me to do everything and taught me a lot about handling different situations. He was always kind to the animals. For a claiming trainer, he was very kind. He’s 6-3, 300 pounds, an ex-cop. Bernie was a natural horseman. I was with him less than two years, and he showed me so much more than if I had gone to a big operation.”
Ron was about as far removed from a big operation as possible when he started his own stable, posting only one second and one third in seven starts in 1997. “How bad do you want it?” Ron asked. “Everybody loves it when you’re doing well with a barn full of great horses. Try doing it whenever you got a barn full of other people’s cast-offs. You don’t have a lot of money to fall back on. Mike Tyson said, `Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.’”
He had been literally punched in the face when he was a toughman fighting for years. He was able to abandon his second career when his numbers improved in his first full year of training in 1998 with five victories from 82 starters and $80,354 in earnings. In 1999, he had 12 wins from 141 starts with $259,385 in money. He was on his way.
“I just wanted it too bad to not keep doing it,” Ron said. “How are you going to make it? First, you have to have a love for the animal. Second, you have to have a hatred of money, because you’re not going to get it for a long time. I’ve been doing this for 20-something years, and I finally wound up winning a couple of them. The third thing is you got to be where you don’t require sleep. If you don’t love money, and you love horses, and you don’t sleep, then you’ve got a shot at becoming a trainer. It’s so hard. The game is frustrating and so hard.”
Having a partner helps navigate the tough times, and Ron has a 24-7 partner in Laura. Raised in Lawton, a small town in Iowa, she discovered her passion for horses as a child “I had my own horses at my house,” she said. “I was 16 when I started galloping. There’s a different way to look at the world through their eyes. I speak horse. It’s like a second language. They communicate with you through their body language.”
Ron was working for Bernie Flint when Laura got a job with him. She saw a kindred spirit. “He cares about horses,” she said. “He’s not in a hurry. He cares to get to the bottom. A team aspect comes into play.”
They married. “Roughly, it was in 2014,” Laura said. “I’m guessing. We’re both terrible about the anniversary.”
Breeze rider and assistant trainer Greta Kuntzweiler with Whitmore.
They weren’t too good at weddings either. They both arrived late separately for their ceremony. “We kind of live in the moment, which is great for horses,” Laura said.
Having a talented exercise rider is great for horses, too, and they have one in Greta, who won 555 races and $12,248,599 before stopping in 2015. “My business was slowing down, and Ron asked me if I would break and gallop,” she said. “Then Laura began teaching me assistant trainer stuff. It’s a great job. I love horses. I’m happy.”
She, too, was impressed with Ron’s horsemanship. “He’s a really smart guy with a good memory,” Greta said. “He can remember a horse. When he watches training in the morning, he knows his horses and other people’s horses. It’s a huge advantage. He’s a really good horseman.
“He likes to get horses, walk them around the shed row and take them to graze, and try to get into their heads. He wants to spend time with them. I’ve seen him load difficult horses on a trailer. He knows how to ask them to do something they don’t want to do. His wife is really good at that, too. They’re great horse people that I want to be around.”
But suddenly, in the spring of 2018, there was a question if Ron could ever be around his horses. He was diagnosed with atypical sarcoidosis. “What happens is, it attacks your lungs,” Ron said. “My breathing is compromised by one lung, which is working at 40 percent. But I feel great now, between active spurts. I have to be very careful with the COVID. If somebody with my condition gets it, then it’s a big deal.”
For a while, he worked exclusively from home. Now he trains partially from home, subject to the pandemic numbers. “That takes a lot of up-to-the-minute tedious information,” he said. “I get a text from the night watchman at 4 a.m. on how everyone ate and if they’re doing all right. I get leg charts. My assistants tell me how the horses feel after racing. I get charts rating horses’ works, 1, 2 or 3. If there is a checkmark on the rider, it means there’s something I need to talk to him about.
“I’m able to go to the barn, just not be around people. I check legs. There’s nothing like hands-on. You have to have horsemen at every station with hands-on. I want a groom who knows the difference. And my exercise riders know the difference. We figured out how to get everything done.”
Asked if it gets wearing, Ron said, “It seems like I’ve been doing it forever.”
ALL ABOUT WHITMORE
Whitmore challenged him before he got sick. The son of Pleasantly Perfect out of Melody’s Spirit by Scat Daddy was bred by John Liviakis in Kentucky. Liviakis sold Whitmore to the Moquetts’ Southern Spring Stables.
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!["It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…" so wrote Charles Dickens. For horse racing in 2020, it just wasn't where you would expect the best and worst, at least in a modern-day "Tale of Two Racetracks."To wit: Santa Anita began 2020 in the wake of a nightmare: 20 racing fatalities in 2019. The Fair Grounds in New Orleans, on the other hand, was on the cusp of two straight Januarys without a racetrack fatality. If you don't know the rest, you can probably guess what happened, 2020 being 2020: Santa Anita embarked on a record year in 2020 with zero fatalities on the dirt track and one less fatality in turf races than in 2019 [see sidebar]. Meanwhile, at the Fair Grounds—long known as having one of the best surfaces in America—six racetrack fatalities occurred in January, a number more than double the average for this month. Instantly, media attention focused on the Fair Grounds, interest made more acute, perhaps, by the highly publicized spate of fatalities at Santa Anita.Overlooked by a large portion of the media (perhaps conveniently, some would say) is the anomaly that January 2020 represented, not just for the Fair Grounds but also for Thoroughbred racing in America. In terms of catastrophic injury rate, the sport enjoyed the smallest rate of fatalities per 1,000 starts—1.53—in 2019. The Jockey Club created an Equine Injury Database (EID) in 2009, recording statistics and specifically compiling data from 14 leading tracks (including Santa Anita). In that first year, fatalities were 2.0 per 1,000 starts—the highest in the span of the 11-year-old EID. So what happened at the Fair Grounds? Dr. Michael "Mick" Peterson, executive director of the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, led a team of track management and, perhaps more critical, trainers with horses at the Fair Grounds to examine and analyze the track surface, particularly maintenance practices. Fatalities are multifactorial, and the intent was to address potential issues with the track surface. According to Peterson, unexpected and unpredicted rainfall during training hours occurred in January. Making matters worse, the rain—while amounting to maybe a half to three-quarters of an inch—fell for 45 minutes to an hour. Harrowed before training, the track surface was "open," as Peterson termed it, enabling water to penetrate the surface rather than run off. The result was a surface possibly over-saturated and potentially ripe for injuries and fatalities during races in the afternoon. Closing the door to this possibility meant closing the track if rain was expected or did fall during training and sealing or "floating it," which produces a flat surface for water to run off into the infield. If that sounds simple, it isn't. There are dozens of trainers with stalls full of horses each needing track time, either for leg-stretching gallops or, more importantly, workouts timed out a certain number of days before an upcoming race. Racehorses are athletes who absolutely have to get out of their stalls, and there are no days off. Weather can’t be a deterrent; they run in the rain, and they train in the rain. Stopping training to float and seal a racetrack—something commonly done between afternoon races—is uncommon during training hours and disruptive to trainers’ schedules. Simply put, trainers lose a hunk of training time if the track superintendent floats the surface during workout hours in the morning. Here is where, according to Peterson, the Fair Grounds achieved real success. A group of trainers met with Fair Grounds track manager Jason Boulet, track superintendent Pedro Zavala, and Peterson and basically said, "We're going to have to do that then," referring to track closure during training for surface sealing.For Peterson, Boulet and especially Zavala, this response from trainers with entries, races slated, and owners to whom they are accountable was as jaw-dropping as Santa Anita's zero dirt-track fatality statistic in 2020."It really was one of those perfect moments in interaction between track management and superintendent and trainers," said Peterson, who added, "It's hard to get up in the morning and not know which horses you can train. I was thoroughly impressed with the willingness of trainers to do that." Their only request was as much of a heads-up as possible to trainers if weather radar indicated rain looked likely. Track closure during training for floating was an option left on the table. It was part of “give and take,” as Peterson termed it, to enable trainers to send out horses needing a workout for an upcoming race ahead of a wet track. "If I'm a trainer, I know that I might lose the second half of training because they're going to shut it down and run the floats. Then I can train whatever horses I know I need to get out there in the first set."This is where the industry needs to go—the communication, being reasonable, recognizing the need for give and take at times."The cooperation of trainers at the Fair Grounds should not have been a surprise, given the history at the track. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 provides an anecdote that is very telling about the input of trainers into track conditions and management at this third oldest American racetrack.Katrina flooded the Fair Grounds and washed away the track surface. What replaced it was not nearly as good as pre-Katrina, according to regular Fair Grounds trainers. A group of them, principal among them Al Stall, provided a simple observation: "It was better with the darker sand," said Stall at the time, referring to reddish sand in the pre-Katrina surface.Peterson remembered Boulet calling him to report that trainers were convinced darker spillway sand from the nearby Mississippi River would bring the track back to what it was. "Jason said, 'I think they're crazy. I don't think the color matters,'" recalled Peterson with a laugh. "I said, ‘Jason what they are actually identifying is the little bit of iron oxide in the sand. It's hydrophilic and not hydrophobic, and you know what? I bet they're exactly right.’"In lay terms, hydrophilic means moisture-absorbing and not moisture-resistant (hydrophobic). Stall not only knew what the post-Katrina surface needed but where to find it. The New Orleans native drove Peterson and Boulet to different sand pits in the area, collecting samples of red sand. Peterson took it from there with something called X-ray diffraction testing to identify which source would be best.Sand, however, is far from the only reason for a Fair Grounds surface that was, arguably, the best and safest in America before last January. It is one part of many measures, initiatives and improvements implemented since the "Al Stall tour." And in what may be a shock to many in the media and public, those same measures are in place at other major U.S. racetracks. All account for the continuing decline in racetrack fatalities as recorded by The Jockey Club.The origin of the efforts was a safety initiative launched by Churchill Downs Incorporated in the wake of the breakdowns of Barbaro (2006) and then Eight Belles (2008) in Triple Crown races, according to Peterson. The initiative led to protocols for testing surface samples. At the Fair Grounds each year, testing takes place six weeks before the racing meet starts on Thanksgiving Day—the traditional opening day. "If the composition isn't right, by then we already have the material on-site to match target standards. Then what happens a few weeks before the race meet is we come in with ground-penetrating radar—the biomechanical surface tester—and go through every piece of equipment and test," said Peterson, who doubles as a professor of biosystems and agricultural engineering at the University of Kentucky. If the depth, literally and figuratively, of surface preparation and management is a surprise, a bigger one might be that 13 other leading tracks in America—again, including Santa Anita--perform the same testing to certify optimum track-surface composition. Separate from composition testing before a race meet is daily implementation of a Maintenance Quality System (MQS) with a breadth that is mind boggling. The Fair Grounds’ Zavala, as well as superintendents at the 13 other tracks, chart training times of all horses by workout length, make daily surface-depth or "cushion" measurements at as many as 16 different places on the racetrack and take moisture readings at 18 different spots. Data required in the MQS even calls for logging the speed of the tractors pulling harrows over the track and the direction they travel. The latest addition to the MQS arsenal for Peterson and racing is a new type of weather station that debuted at Keeneland during the fall meet and Breeders' Cup. It supplements daily reports summarizing data from the previous 24 hours of weather with improved real-time data. The objective is to counteract the effects of rapidly changing weather conditions like that experienced at the Fair Grounds last January. The benefits go beyond morning training with updates at, "say, the third race of a race day to enable adjustment for the fifth race by surface crews," said Peterson.The coronavirus, Peterson said, was a barrier to the expansion of MQS to new tracks but not expansion within racetracks already on board with the system. The new weather station is but one example. There is also a new integrated track tester that measures everything from all-important moisture content to something called dielectric constant. It provides improved real-time data to track superintendents on conditions at their specific track through a GPS.Can racing, through track surface improvements, continue to reduce catastrophic racetrack injuries beyond the 16% reduction over the last decade? Peterson is hopeful. "The endpoint I see on this is having in place a process for what they call in manufacturing continuous improvement where we don't just quit when we get a little better."The latest recorded racing fatality rate, again, represents the "best of times." With lessons learned at the Fair Grounds, protocols in the MQS and technology improvements in testing, there is potential that the best can become even better.[SIDEBAR"]A December 16, 2020, story in the Los Angeles Times attributed a reduction in the fatality statistics at Santa Anita Park in 2020 to a "combination of enhanced safety protocols and less racing because of shutdowns caused by the coronavirus.” The story added that "nearby fires could be considered factors [and track closures as a result] in cutting the death count by more than half."Here are the facts: 20 racing fatalities occurred at Santa Anita in 2019—13 on the dirt track and seven on the turf tracks--in 6,650 starts. In 2020, which saw 5,050 starters go to the post at Santa Anita, there were no fatalities on the dirt track and six on the turf surfaces. Averaging race fatalities for the number of starts per 1,000 starters, Santa Anita averaged .12 racing fatalities in 2020 and 3.01 in 2019. Averaging removes track closures due to COVID-19 and fires as criteria for the decrease. Also, the "death count" was reduced not by "more than half" but by almost two-thirds in racing fatalities in 2020 as compared to 2019. The numbers are conclusive: Safety protocols—and safety protocols alone—account for the reduction.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1614168160216-ZKX0BETIBU8P7PBBVWUG/Grandstand_morning.jpg)
![For over a quarter of a century, there has been an air of inevitability within Japanese racing circles.Sunday Silence dominated the sire standings in Japan for 13 straight years from 1995 to 2007—his last championship arriving five years after his death. He was a true game changer for the Japanese industry, not only as a brilliant source of elite talent but as a key to the development of Japan as a respected racing nation. Any idea that his influence would abate in the years following his death was swiftly quashed by an array of successful sire sons and productive daughters. In his place, Deep Impact rose to become a titan of the domestic industry. Others such as Heart’s Cry, Stay Gold, Agnes Tachyon, Gold Allure and Daiwa Major also became significant sires in their own right. Added to that, Sunday Silence is also a multiple champion broodmare sire and credited as the damsire of 202 stakes winners and 17 champions.“Thoroughbreds can be bought or sold,” says Teruya Yoshida of Shadai Farm, which bought Sunday Silence out of America in late 1990 and cultivated him into a global force. “As Nasrullah sired Bold Ruler, who changed the world’s breeding capital from Europe to the U.S., one stallion can change the world. Sunday Silence is exactly such a stallion for the Japanese Thoroughbred industry.”Sunday Silence has been dead close to 20 years, yet the Japanese sires’ table remains an ode to his influence. In 2020, Deep Impact landed his ninth straight sires’ championship with Heart’s Cry and Stay Gold’s son Orfevre in third and fourth. Seven of the top 12 finishers were sons or grandsons of Sunday Silence. Another descendant, Deep Impact’s son Kizuna, was the nation’s leading second-crop sire. Deep Impact himself was the year’s top sire of two-year-olds.Against that, it is estimated that up to approximately 70% of the Japanese broodmare population possess Sunday Silence in their background. All the while, his influence remains on an upswing worldwide, notably via the respect held for Deep Impact. A horse who ably built on the international momentum set by Sunday Silence, his own sire sons today range from the European Classic winners Study Of Man and Saxon Warrior—who are based in Britain and Ireland—to a deep domestic bench headed by the proven sires Kizuna, Mikki Isle and Real Impact.In short, the Thoroughbred owes a lot to Sunday Silence.Inauspicious beginningsRoll back to 1988, however, and the mere idea of Sunday Silence as one of the great fathers of the breed would have been laughable.For starters, he almost died twice before he had even entered training.The colt was bred by Oak Cliff Thoroughbreds Ltd in Kentucky with appealing credentials as a son of Halo, then in his early seasons at Arthur Hancock’s Stone Farm.Halo had shifted to Kentucky in 1984 as a middle-aged stallion with a colourful existence already behind him. By Hail To Reason and closely related to Northern Dancer, Halo had been trained by Mack Miller to win the 1974 Gr1 United Nations Handicap.It was those bloodlines and latent talent that prompted film producer Irving Allen to offer owner Charles Englehard a bid of $600,000 for the horse midway through his career. Allen’s idea was to install Halo in England at his Derisley Wood Stud in Newmarket; and his bid was accepted only for it to be revealed that his new acquisition was a crib-biter. As such, the deal fell through, and Halo was returned to training, with that Gr1 triumph as due reward.Would Halo have thrived in England? It’s an interesting question. As it was, he retired to E. P. Taylor Windfields Farm in Maryland, threw champion Glorious Song in his first crop, Kentucky Derby winner Sunny’s Halo in his third and Devil’s Bag—a brilliant two-year-old of 1983—in his fourth. Devil’s Bag’s exploits were instrumental in Halo ending the year as North America’s champion sire, and within months, the stallion was ensconced at Stone Farm, having been sold in a deal that reportedly valued the 15-year-old at $36 million. Chief among the new ownership was Texas oilman Tom Tatham of Oak Cliff Thoroughbreds.In 1985, Tatham sent the hard-knocking Wishing Well, a Gr2-winning daughter of Understanding, to the stallion. The result was a near black colt born at Stone Farm on March 26, 1986.It is part of racing’s folklore how Sunday Silence failed to capture the imagination as a young horse—something that is today vividly recalled by Hancock.“My first recollection of him was as a young foal,” he recalls. “He was grey back then—he would later turn black. “I was driving through the farm and I looked into one of the fields and saw this grey colt running. The others were either nursing or sleeping, but there was this colt running and jumping through the mares. "We had a number of foals on the place at the time, and I wasn’t sure which one it was, so I rang Chester Williams, our broodmare manager. I said, ‘Hey Chester, who is this gray foal in 17?’ And he told me it was the Wishing Well colt. He was flying—he would turn at 45 degree angles and cut in and out of the mares. And I remember thinking even then, ‘well he can sure fly.’“Then on Thanksgiving Day later that year, he got this serious diarrhea. We had about 70 foals on the farm, and he was the only one that got it; we had no idea where he got it from. Anyway, it was very bad. I called our vet, Carl Morrison, and between 9 a.m. and midday, we must have given him 23 liters of fluids. “We really thought he was going to die, but Sunday Silence just wouldn’t give up. Obviously it set him back some; he was ribby for a few weeks. But I have never seen anything like it in a foal during 50 years at Stone Farm, and at Claiborne before then; and I remember thinking then that it was a spooky thing for him to get it and then to fight through it the way he did.”As Hancock outlines, Sunday Silence was very much Halo’s son—not just as a black colt with a thin white facial strip but as a tough animal with a streak of fire.Halo had arrived from Maryland with a muzzle and a warning. Confident that a muzzle was an overreaction, Stone Farm’s stallion men worked initially without it, albeit against Hancock’s advice. It wasn’t long until the muzzle went back on.Not long after his arrival, Halo ‘grabbed the stallion man Randy Mitchell in the stomach and threw him in the air like a rag doll.’“Halo then got on his knees on top of Randy,” recalls Hancock, “and began munching on his stomach. Virgil Jones, who was with Randy, starts yelling at Halo and hitting him with his fist. Halo let go, and they managed to get him off. “After that, the muzzle stayed on.”Sunday Silence possessed a similar toughness. Indeed, that mental hardiness is a trait that continues to manifest itself in the line today, although not quite to the danger level of Halo.“Sunday Silence had a lot of guts and courage, even then,” remembers Hancock. “I remember being down at the yearling barn before the sale and hearing this yell. It was from one of the yearling guys, Harvey. Sunday Silence had bitten him in the back—I’d never had a yearling do it before then and haven’t had one since.”He adds: “When he came back here after his racing days, we had a photographer come to take some shots of him. Sunday Silence was in his paddock, and we were trying to get him to raise his head. I went in there and shook a branch to get his attention. Well, he looked up, bared his teeth and started to come after me—he was moving at me, head down like a cat. And I said, ‘No you’re ok there boy; you just continue to graze’ and let him be.“He was Halo’s son, that’s for sure, because Wishing Well was a nice mare. Sunday Silence had a mind of his own, even as a yearling. I remember we couldn’t get him to walk well at the sales because he’d pull back against the bit all the time.”It was that mental toughness and the memory of Sunday Silence flying through the fields as a young foal that remained with Hancock when the colt headed to the Keeneland July Sale. Then an individual with suspect hocks—a trait that still sometimes manifests itself in his descendants today—he was bought back on a bid of $17,000.“I thought he’d bring between $30,000 and $50,000,” he says. “So when it was sitting at $10,000, I started bidding and bought him back at $17,000. I took the ticket to Tom Tatham out the back of the pavilion and said, ‘Here Tom, he was too cheap; I bought him back.’ And Tom said, ‘But Ted Keefer [Oak Cliff advisor] didn’t like him and we don’t want him.’ “I remember we had another one that was about to sell, so I just said, ‘Ok Tom,’ put the ticket in my shirt pocket, walked away and thought, ‘Well I just blew another $17,000.’ Another scrape with deathHancock then tried his luck at the two-year-old sales in partnership with Paul Sullivan. The colt was sent to Albert Yank in California and cataloged to the Californian March Two-Year-Old Sale at Hollywood Park, again failed to sell—this time falling to World Wide Bloodstock (aka Hancock)—on a bid of $32,000, well below his owner’s valuation of $50,000.“I told Paul and he said, ‘Well I’ll take my $16,000 then,’” recalls Hancock.So the colt was loaded up for a return trip to Kentucky. Then more ill luck intervened. The driver suffered a fatal heart attack while on a north Texas highway, and the van crashed, killing several of its load. Sunday Silence survived but was injured.“Sunday Silence was in the vets for about a week,” says Hancock. “He could hardly walk, and then Carl Morrison rings me and says, ‘Arthur, I think he’s a wobbler.’ I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ He said that all he could do was leave him in a paddock and see what happened. “So he left him out there, and about a week later, he rings me and says, ‘You need to come to barn 16 and see this Wishing Well colt.’ It was unbelievable. I went down there, and there he was, ripping and running around just like he was a foal. It was a miracle—a spooky thing.”Therefore Sunday Silence had already lived a pretty full life by the time he joined Charlie Whittingham in California. A true master of his profession, Whittingham handled over 250 stakes winners during his 49 years as a trainer, among them such champions as Ack Ack, Ferdinand and Cougar alongside the European imports Dahlia and Exceller. Appropriately, Cougar would go on to stand at Stone Farm, where he sired Hancock’s 1982 Kentucky Derby winner Gato Del Sol.“Charlie Whittingham had seen Sunday Silence in California and rang me to ask about him,” says Hancock. “I told him I’d sell him half to $25,000. And he said, ‘But you bought him back for $32,000.’ Well the year before, we’d had Risen Star [subsequent winner of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes] go through Keeneland for $250,000. Charlie had asked about taking half of him, but we had wanted $300,000, so said, ‘Sure you can buy half for $150,000.’ And he had declined. “I reminded him of that, and he chuckled and said, ‘Well I’d better take it this time.’”He adds: “Charlie was a brilliant horseman with a lot of experience. He was very smart. He had a sixth sense about horses. And he had great patience, like those great trainers do. Without Charlie, I don’t think Sunday Silence would have reached the level that he did. He just took his time with him.” Whittingham paid Hancock $25,000 for a half share in the colt and later sold half of that share to a friend, surgeon Ernest Galliard.Within no time, that looked a good bit of business. It is a fine reflection of the trainer and his staff, in particular work rider Pam Mabes, that Sunday Silence’s temperament was successfully honed. In Jay Hovdey’s biography of the trainer, the colt is likened to ‘Al Capone singing with the Vienna Boys Choir’—his morning exercise routinely punctuated by bad behavior.“They’d take him out every day before dawn,” recalls Hancock. “I remember he had a thing about gray lead horses. Every time he saw one, he’d just go after it. “Charlie called me one morning—4 a.m. his time; he’d always get to the barn at 4 a.m. I answered, thinking, What’s he doing calling me at this time? I said, ‘Hey Charlie, what you doing?’ He said, ‘Just waiting on the hill.’ I knew he had something on his mind. Then he said, ‘You know what, this big black son of a bitch can run a little’—Charlie was a master of the understatement.’” Brought along steadily by Whittingham, Sunday Silence romped to a 10-length win second time out at Hollywood Park in November 1988 and after running second in an allowance race, returned at three to win his first two races, an allowance and the San Felipe Handicap.While he was emerging as a potential Classic candidate on the West Coast, Ogden Phipps’ homebred Easy Goer was laying down the gauntlet in New York. A handsome red son of Alydar with regal Phipps bloodlines trained by Shug McGaughey, Easy Goer was evoking comparisons with Secretariat, capturing Gr1 Cowdin and Champagne Stakes at two before running out the 13-length winner of the Gotham Stakes in a record time early on at three. To many observers, he appealed as the likely winner of the Kentucky Derby, if not the Triple Crown.Indeed, theirs would become an East-West rivalry that would enthral racegoers during the 1989 season.The pair met for the first time in the Kentucky Derby. Sunday Silence, partnered by Pat Valenzuela, was fresh off an 11-length win in the Santa Anita Derby. Easy Goer, though, had won the Wood Memorial in impressive style and was therefore the crowd’s choice.Yet on a muddy track, Sunday Silence had the upper hand, winning with authority over an uncomfortable Easy Goer in second.“Of all his races, the Kentucky Derby stands out,” says Hancock. “We’d been fortunate enough to win it with Gato Del Sol and I’m a Kentuckian, so to win it again meant a lot.“It was an extremely cold day, it was spitting snow, and Sunday Silence was weaving all the way down the stretch. Yet he still won.” With many feeling that the track had not played to Easy Goer’s strengths, he was fancied to turn the tables in the Preakness Stakes. However, once again, Sunday Silence emerged as the superior, albeit following an iconic, eye-balling stretch duel.Easy Goer did gain his revenge in the Belmont Stakes, making the most of the 1m4f distance and Belmont Park’s sweeping turns to win by eight lengths. The Triple Crown was gone, but Sunday Silence would later turn the tables in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, where his ability to deploy tactical speed at a crucial moment turned out to be a winning move against his longer-striding rival.“The Breeders’ Cup just sealed everything—champion three-year-old and Horse of the Year,” says Hancock. “It was the great showdown. Chris McCarron was able to use him at just the right time and Easy Goer, with that long stride of his, was closing. It was a great race.”Crowned Horse of the Year, Sunday Silence underwent arthroscopic knee surgery which delayed his four-year-old return to June, when he won the Californian Stakes. A head second to Criminal Type in the Hollywood Gold Cup next time out brought the career down on a spectacular one.No takersPlans called for Sunday Silence to join his sire Halo at Stone Farm. A wonderful racehorse who danced every dance, there were grounds for thinking that Sunday Silence would be an asset to the Kentucky bloodstock landscape. But breeding racehorses even then also adhered to commercial restrictions, and as a cheap yearling with suspect hocks and an underwhelming female line, he did little to spark interest. This was in contrast to Easy Goer, who retired to much fanfare at Claiborne Farm.“We tried to syndicate him and called people everywhere—Kentucky, England, France, and the answer was always the same,” says Hancock. “It became apparent very quickly that people wouldn’t use him.“It was spread around the industry that he was a fluke, another Seabiscuit or Citation who could run but that would be no good at stud. It was said that he was crooked, which he wasn’t, and that he was sickled hocked, which he was as a young horse but grew out of. He was an ugly duckling that grew into a swan.“We had three people on the books to take shares and two that would send mares. Then I spoke to my brother Seth at Claiborne, and he had 40 contracts to send out for Easy Goer. “At the same time, Ronald Reagan changed the tax laws, and land suddenly became worth a lot less, as did shares in horses.”The Yoshidas had already bought into the horse and suddenly, Hancock was left with little choice.“At the same time, I got a call from a representative of Teruya Yoshida saying that Shadai would be interested in buying the whole horse,” he says. “They were offering $250,000 per share. I talked to a number of people about it—Bill Young at Overbrook Farm, Warner Jones, and they all said the same thing: that it was a no-brainer to sell. “At the end of the day, I had two contracts and three shares sold. I owed money. I had to sell.“The day he left, I loaded him up myself; and I don’t mind admitting that when that van went down the drive, I cried.”He adds: “Basically, the Japanese outsmarted everybody.” An immediate successOut of a first crop of 67 foals, Sunday Silence sired 53 winners. A total of 22 of 36 starters won at two, led by champion two-year-old Fuji Kiseki, whose success in the Gr1 Asahi Hai Futurity set the scene for events to come.A tendon injury restricted Fuji Kiseki to just one further start when successful in a Gr2 the following year. Yet that failed to stop the Sunday Silence juggernaut. Genuine and Tayasu Tsuyoshi ran first and second in the Japanese 2,000 Guineas and later dominated the Japanese Derby, with Tayasu Tsuyoshi turning the tables. Dance Partner also landed the Japanese Oaks. As such, Sunday Silence ended 1997 as Japan’s champion sire despite the presence of only two crops.That first crop would also come to include Marvelous Sunday, who led home a one-two for his sire in the 1997 Gr1 Takarazuka Kinen. In no time at all, Sunday Silence had sealed his place as a successor to earlier Shadai heavyweight Northern Taste.“I believe Sunday Silence was a stallion that possessed the potential to be very successful anywhere in the world,” reflects Teruya Yoshida. “We were just lucky to be able to introduce him to Japan as a stallion. “He changed the Japanese breeding industry completely, especially as he sired successful sons as race horses and stallions. Those sons have again sired successful grandsons.“It is extraordinary that one stallion had continued to produce good quality stallions over three generations. Today, it is said that approximately 60-70% of the Japanese broodmares have Sunday Silence in their female lines.”Another top two-year-old, Bubble Gum Fellow, emerged out of his second crop alongside a second 2,000 Guineas winner in Ishino Sunday and St Leger hero Dance In The Dark.Stay Gold, Sunday Silence’s first real international performer of note by virtue of his wins in the Hong Kong Vase and Dubai Sheema Classic, followed in his third while another Japanese Derby winner followed in his fourth in Special Week, also successful in the Japan Cup.And so it continued. In all, his stud career came to consist of six Japanese Derby winners (Tayasu Tsuyoshi, Special Week, Admire Vega, Agnes Flight, Neo Universe and Deep Impact), seven 2,000 Guineas winners (Genuine, Ishino Sunday, Air Shakur, Agnes Tachyon, Neo Universe, Daiwa Major and Deep Impact), four St Leger winners (Dance In The Dark, Air Shakur, Manhattan Cafe and Deep Impact) and three 1,000 Guineas winners (Cherry Grace, Still In Love and Dance In The Mood).While a number of those good Sunday Silence runners became fan favorites, there’s no doubt that the best arrived posthumously in the champion Deep Impact. A member of his penultimate crop and out of the Epsom Oaks runner-up Wind In Her Hair, Deep Impact swept the 2005 Japanese Triple Crown and another four Gr1 races, including the Japan Cup and Arima Kinen, at four. One of Japan’s most popular horses in history, he also ran third in the 2007 Arc.Fittingly, Deep Impact was also quick to fill the void left at Shadai by his sire’s death from laminitis in 2002.International acclaim The Japanese bloodstock industry during the mid-1990s was still relatively isolated from the rest of the world, better known certainly in Europe as the destination for a slew of Epsom Derby winners.Sunday Silence would change all that.As word of his dominance at stud grew, so did international interest. Teruya Yoshida was swift to capitalize. In 1998, he sent his homebred Sunday Silence filly, Sunday Picnic, to be trained in Chantilly by Andre Fabre. It was a successful endeavor as the filly won the Prix Cleopatre and ran fourth to Ramruma in the Oaks.By that stage, Shadai had also entered into a partnership with John Messara of Arrowfield Stud with the principal idea of breeding mares to Sunday Silence on southern hemisphere time. Again, the move proved to be a success. Out of a limited pool of Australian-bred runners, Sunday Silence threw the 2003 AJC Oaks heroine Sunday Joy, who would go on to produce eight-time Gp1 winner More Joyous, and Listed winner Keep The Faith, subsequently a Gp1 sire.Sheikh Mohammed also joined the fray, notably by sending a relation to Miesque, the Woodman mare Wood Vine, to Sunday Silence in 1998; the resulting foal, the Irish-bred Silent Honor, was trained by David Loder to win the 2001 Cherry Hinton Stakes at Newmarket.Silent Honor was the opening chapter of a successful association for the Sheikh with Sunday Silence that also came to include Godolphin’s 1,000 Guineas runner-up Sundrop, a JRHA Select Foal Sale purchase, and homebred Gp3 winner Layman.Layman was foaled in the same 2002 crop as the Wertheimer’s high-class miler Silent Name. Initially trained in France by Criquette Head-Maarek, Silent Name was a dual Listed winner before heading to the U.S., where he won Gr2 Commonwealth Breeders’ Cup for Gary Mandella.Similarly, patronage of Sunday Silence also reaped rewards for the Niarchos family as the sire of their influential producer Sun Is Up, subsequently the dam of their top miler Karakontie.At the same time, several Japanese-trained horses were advertising the stallion to good effect on a global scale, notably Zenno Rob Roy, who ran a close second in the 2005 Juddmonte International, and Heart’s Cry, who was third in the King George a year later.Sire of siresMeanwhile, it was becoming very apparent just how effective Sunday Silence was becoming as a sire of sires. Shadai was initially home to plenty of them, including the short-lived Agnes Tachyon, who left behind a real star in champion Daiwa Scarlet and Fuji Kiseki, the sire of champions Kinshasa No Kiseki and Sun Classique. Stay Gold’s successful stud career was led by the household names Orfevre, who ran placed in two Arcs and is now a popular stallion for Shadai and Gold Ship. Japan Dirt Derby winner Gold Allure became a leading dirt sire—his record led by champions Copano Rickey, Espoir City and Gold Dream. Manhattan Café is the sire of five Gp1 winners. As for Special Week, he sired champion Buena Vista and Gr1 winner Cesario, now regarded as something of a blue hen. Those sons still in production are entering the twilight years of their stud career, yet they remain a heavyweight group. Following the death of Deep Impact, the most popular is Shadai’s Heart’s Cry—an exceptional sire for whom an increasingly international profile consists of British Gp1 winner Deirdre, American Gr1 winner Yoshida and Japanese champion Lys Gracieux, the 2019 Cox Plate heroine. Fellow Shadai stallion Daiwa Major is well regarded as a fine source of two-year-olds and milers, and earned international recognition in 2019 as the sire of Hong Kong Mile winner Admire Mars. His stud record consists of six Gp1 winners.Neo Universe, best known as the sire of Dubai World Cup winner Victoire Pisa, and Zenno Rob Roy are also proven Gp1 sires as is Deep Impact’s brother Black Tide, the sire of champion Kitasan Black—himself also now based at Shadai.Without Deep Impact, Sunday Silence’s influence as a sire of sires would have been immense. Deep Impact, however, took matters to another level. To date, he is the sire of 47 Gp or Gr1 winners. They cover the spectrum, ranging from Horse of the Year Gentildonna to last year’s Triple Crown hero Contrail—one of six Japanese Derby winners by the stallion—and a host of top two-year-olds.Significantly, Deep Impact had been exposed to an international racing audience when third past the post in the 2007 Arc and that played out in a healthy level of outside support when he retired to Shadai for the 2008 season. For the Wildenstein family, that reaped major rewards in the form of their Poule d’Essai des Pouliches heroine Beauty Parlour, her Listed-winning brother Barocci and French Gp3 winner Aquamarine. That success, as well as his growing reputation in Japan, helped to pique the attention of Coolmore. The Irish powerhouse began sending mares in 2013 and were rewarded by 2,000 Guineas winner Saxon Warrior—last year’s Prix de Diane heroine Fancy Blue and the Gp 1-placed September out of a limited pool of foals. Similarly, the Niarchos family, who patronized him from the outset, bred Le Prix du Jockey Club hero Study Of Man and the Gp3-placed two-year-old Harajuku, a smart prospect for 2021.Indeed, Deep Impact was at the height of his international powers when succumbing to a neck injury at the age of 17 in the summer of 2019.Global exposureWhile Deep Impact would build on the global foundations laid by his sire, there was a determination during the intervening years between Sunday Silence’s death and Deep Impact’s own success to expose the blood to a global audience.Chief among them was French-based agent Patrick Barbe, who sourced a number of sons to stand in France, and Frank Stronach, who purchased Silent Name to stand at his Adena Springs Farm. Barbe was the force behind importing an eclectic group of Sunday Silence horses to stand at Haras de Lonray during the mid-2000s. They were invariably priced towards the lower end of the market, yet Barbe was rewarded for his foresight, in particular through the addition of Divine Light, whose first French crop yielded the 1,000 Guineas and Cheveley Park Stakes heroine Natagora.“I have worked with Shadai for 35 years,” he says, “and I thought it would be interesting to bring the Sunday Silence bloodline to Europe—it hadn’t been tried very much at the time. It can be difficult to educate breeders about different blood, but people had already had slight exposure to Sunday Silence, so it wasn’t too bad. “Rosen Kavalier was one of the first we brought over. Then we imported Divine Light. Teruya Yoshida had mentioned to me that he thought he was going to do well at stud, as he had been an extremely good sprinter. But he covered only nine mares in his first season in Japan. So we brought him to France, and in his first crop, he sired Natagora.”As fate would have it, Natagora’s true ability came to light in the months following his sale to the Jockey Club of Turkey. Divine Light left behind just under 100 foals from his time in France and went on to enjoy further success in Turkey as the sire of champion My Dear Son.“Divine Light was a good-looking horse,” says Barbe. “He was out of a Northern Taste mare and was compact—very similar to Northern Dancer.”He adds: “Sunday Silence was a phenomenal sire, but he also had a pedigree that was similar to Northern Dancer. I feel that was the reason that he did very well with Northern Taste, who was obviously also inbred to Lady Angela [the dam of Nearctic] himself.”Divine Light wasn’t the only success story out of the French Sunday Silence experiment. While Rosen Kavalier was compromised by fertility problems, Gp3 winner Great Journey sired several smart runners, while Gp2 winner Agnes Kamikaze left behind a clutch of winners.“Great Journey was a very good racehorse and became a consistent sire,” says Barbe. “He did well as the sire of Max Dynamite—a very good stayer—and Soleil d’Octobre, who won two Listed races.”Today, the sole son of Sunday Silence available in either Europe or North America is Silent Name. Now 19 years old, he has found his niche within the Canadian market as a source of durable, talented runners—in a nutshell, what we have come to expect from the sireline.Despite never standing for more than C$10,000, Canada’s three-time champion sire is responsible for 27 black-type winners, making him the nation’s leading sire of a lifetime of stakes winners. They include champion sprinter Summer Sunday, Brazilian Gp1 winner Jaspion Silent and last year’s Gp2 Nearctic Stakes winner Silent Poet. So although entering the veteran stage of his stud career, momentum behind the stallion continues to remain robust at a fee of C$7,500, as Adena Springs North manager Dermot Carty explains.“Silent Name started out with us in Kentucky, but in 2008, we decided to bring him to Canada along with Sligo Bay,” he says. “He got three good books off the bat. At the same time, he shuttled to Brazil, and then just as his first Kentucky crop hit, he was sent to New York [where he spent two seasons with McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds]. “I pleaded to bring him back to Canada. People were starting to buy them, they were liking them, and the smaller trainers were doing well with them. “He’s a really good-looking horse—strong, a little bit sickle-hocked but with good bone. And he’s a tough horse, as tough as they go.“When we bought him, he was really the only big horse in the pedigree, but it’s a typical Wertheimer family, and it’s improved a lot since then.” In fact, Silent Name is a half-brother to Galiway—a current rags-to-riches story of the French scene whose early crops include last year’s Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere winner Galilay.“He’s out of a Danehill mare who is out of a Blushing Groom mare who is out of a Raja Baba mare,” adds Carty. “They’re all big influences.“A lot of them can run on Polytrack, but they also excel on turf.“He’s been the leading sire in Canada for three years; the last horse to do that was Bold Executive. Frank has sent a pile of mares to him in recent years and done very well. He’s going to get you a tough horse—people who like to race like him.”Walmac Farm in Kentucky also made an early foray into Sunday Silence blood with the acquisition of Hong Kong Gp1 winner Hat Trick in 2008. Latterly based at Gainesway Farm, Hat Trick threw top French two-year-old Dabirsim in his first crop and in turn, that horse sired Albany Stakes winner Different League out of his own debut crop. Noted for siring stock that comes to hand quickly, Dabirsim remains popular at Haras de Grandcamp in Normandy, also home to Deep Impact’s talented son Martinborough.Hat Trick died last year and today, Kentucky representation of the Sunday Silence line relies on the young WinStar stallion Yoshida. A son of Heart’s Cry, he was sourced out of the JRHA Select Sale and went on to land the 2018 Woodward Stakes. He was popular in his first season at stud in 2020, covering 145 mares.Fruitful experimentMeanwhile, the retirements of Saxon Warrior to Coolmore in Ireland and Study Of Man to Lanwades Stud in Newmarket provide European breeders with quality access to Deep Impact blood. Saxon Warrior’s first crop sold for up to 280,000gns as foals last winter, while the first crop of Study Of Man are foals of 2021. As would be expected from a Niarchos homebred who has joined Kirsten Rausing’s Lanwades Stud, the latter is being well supported by his powerful connections.“The relationship between the Niarchos family and Shadai dates back to when they bought Hector Protector from us,” recalls Alan Cooper, racing manager to the Niarchos family. “We had breeding rights in the horse, and we said, well we better send some mares to Japan and use him, which worked out well as we went on to breed [champion] Shiva. “And that led us to using Sunday Silence. “The Sunday Silence adventure was very fruitful. It was lovely to get some fillies by him, and we’re still benefitting today from them.”Among the mares sent to Sunday Silence was Miesque’s Listed-winning daughter Moon Is Up. The resulting foal, Sun Is Up, never ran but went on to throw Karakontie, whose three Gp1 victories included the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Breeders’ Cup Mile. Another mare, Metaphor, foaled the Listed-placed Celestial Lagoon, in turn the dam of last year’s Dante Stakes runner-up Highest Ground.“We also obviously had a lot of success breeding from Deep Impact through Study Of Man,” says Cooper. “We also have a filly named Harajuku, who showed smart form in France last year. We have kept her Heart’s Cry sister in training as well since Andre Fabre thinks there’s more to come (they’re out of a Galileo mare Phaenomena). Another Deep Impact that we bred, Dowsing, is now at stud in Indiana. “It’s been a very good experience breeding in Japan. The Sunday Silence line seems to have a bit of character, but I think as with anything to do with Halo, if they’re good, they’re very, very good.”The Niarchos family are also in the privileged position of owning a yearling from the final, small crop of Deep Impact. The filly in question is out of the Listed-placed Malicieuse, a Galileo half-sister to Arc hero Bago.In Kentucky, the Niarchos family have also thrown their weight behind Karakontie at Gainesway Farm in Kentucky. The son of Bernstein has made a bright start at stud as the sire of six stakes winners in two crops, including British Gp3 winner Kenzai Warrior. However, interestingly his best horse, recent Gr2 Mrs Revere Stakes heroine Princess Grace, is the product of a Silent Name mare, meaning that she is inbred to Sunday Silence. Indeed, she is the first stakes winner outside of Japan to carry his inbreeding.Too much of a good thing?Can there be too much of a good thing? In Sunday Silence, the Japanese racing scene has been dominated to such a degree—through both his sons and daughters—that outcrosses aren’t always easily available. And when such an animal does retire to stud in Japan, quite often their success is a reflection of their ability to cross effectively with Sunday Silence-line mares—the likes of Lord Kanaloa and Harbinger being notable examples.In addition, successful inbreeding to Sunday Silence has taken time to gain momentum. However, in recent years, the tide has started to change.Aside from Princess Grace, there was a major flag bearer last year in the Japanese Fillies Triple Crown heroine Daring Tact. Recent Gr2-winning three-year-old Fine Rouge is another advert among a group of 14 stakes winners from a pool of close to 3,000 named foals. One of the greatestSunday Silence might be receding in pedigrees, but his influence has never been stronger. Many of the line remain easily distinguishable with their dark coat and rangy stature; for the most part, they are hardy runners with a physical and mental toughness to them. “All these horses, they ran forever,” says Barbe. “They’re tough, train on and they’re sound. Whatever their level, they are consistent horses with a longevity to them.”Granted, those descendants of Sunday Silence now coming through at stud in Japan aren’t always helped by having to compete with each other. But at the same time, the omens remain good, particularly in relation to Deep Impact’s own legacy as a sire of sires, which already includes the successful Shadai sires Kizuna and Real Impact. The latter became the first son of his sire to be represented by a Gp1 winner when Lauda Sion won last year’s NHK Mile Cup.The presence of Saxon Warrior and Study Of Man in Europe and other Gp1 performers such as Satono Aladdin, Staphanos and Tosen Stardom in Australasia fuels the idea that this branch of the line is only going to become more powerful on an international scale.In short, international respect for the sireline is also at an all time high.“Thanks to Sunday Silence, the Japanese racehorses earn respect from horsemen around the world today,” says Yoshida. “In return, breeders tend to find good broodmares to send to good stallions—Japanese breeders today buy a lot of good broodmares in the international markets. “This enables Japanese breeding to keep developing. So you can imagine how strong Sunday’s impact is to our industry.”](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1614240369120-9TQ4MVNWVEPICMUGOFKS/2002_SUNDAY_SILENCE_UDA.jpg)
![Incentives to breedNorth America provides breeder and owner incentive programs to reward horsemen for producing quality bloodstock.Article by Annie LambertBreeding Thoroughbred racehorses takes a passion for the animals and the racing industry as a whole. State incentive programs can enhance horsemen’s intense feelings toward their livestock and the efforts to direct and improve their individual breeding programs. Many states and Canadian provinces in North America have helped horsemen reap rewards for breeding better bloodstock.In some cases, incentives have helped save or resuscitate state racing programs and bolstered racing toward increasing rewards to those supporting their state programs. It becomes a win-win for states/provinces, racetracks, breeders and owners—success for a joint venture, if you will.Not everyone can agree with the Rules of Engagement within each state’s program, but that is human nature. As a whole, most breeders are ultimately looking to protect the value of their livestock and preserve racing in North America.The Kentucky BrandFor all its legendary history in the Thoroughbred racing industry, Kentucky is not known to have the strongest incentive program. It does, however, still provide a home to some of the best stallions and breeding farms in the world. According to Duncan Taylor, President of Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Ky., by having the best horses, his home state also has the best infrastructure.“Kentucky is blessed with the best stallions, therefore we have the best infrastructure—veterinary care, nutrition, blacksmith—all the ancillary businesses that support the Thoroughbred business,” Taylor opined. “We have a weaker program when it comes to breeder incentives. The breeding program we do have is basically paid for by the tax on stallion seasons. There’s a six-percent sales tax on stallion fees, and that money goes into the Kentucky Breeders’ Incentive Fund.”Taylor pointed out that over time Kentucky, as most business does, has developed a brand. If a breeder aspires to be the best, it pays to go to Kentucky.“You can breed to horses in your own state,” Taylor said, “but if you’re trying to sell the most expensive horse at the Keeneland Sale, it’s going to be a Kentucky-bred.” “Wealthy people that are buying horses think the best horses come from Kentucky.”Taylor Made participates in several programs outside of Kentucky. They have bred and raced New York breds, for example, to “cover the downside.”“Let’s say my horse is just an allowance-winning horse versus a graded stakes-winning horse,” he explained. “If that [New York-bred] horse is an allowance winner at Churchill Downs or even Santa Anita or Gulfstream, but they can’t win a stake or graded stake, that same horse, with the same ability, could probably win a New York-bred stake. You would probably get a $100,000 to $150,000 purse. That’s what I’m talking about—protecting the downside. You can have less horse and still earn purse money.“I’ve bred and foaled horses in New York to get a New York-bred. If it does run good, I’m going to get some large breeder’s awards. Let’s say I have a New York-bred by our stallion Not This Time (half-brother to Liam’s Map and by Giant’s Causeway) that could win a Gr2 in New York. If you win a $300,000 purse, the winning share is $180,000. I’m going to get $18,000 for being the breeder—10 percent for being a New York-bred.”Taylor is not planning on moving out of Kentucky, but the government in his state, in his words, “keeps opting to take the horse business for granted.” With the best stallions, Taylor feels he could cut a good deal, load the vans and move out of Kentucky tomorrow, which would not be his first choice.His frustration comes mostly from the problems Kentucky is having with their slot machine-like Historical Horse Racing gambling machines. The Historical Horse Racing machines have been a huge moneymaker for Kentucky racing as well as where used in other states. The problem comes from other states legalizing the usage of those machines through their state legislatures, where Kentucky approved them through the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. Now, Kentucky is facing opposition for their use from opposing groups and is in the process of having legislative approval to continue their cash flow to racing.Fortunately, Kentucky legislators did vote to approve Senate Bill 120, after clarification of what constitutes pari-mutuel wagering. The bill now goes to Governor Andy Beshear, who has expressed his support for it.B. Wayne Hughes, owner of Spendthrift Farm, in Lexington, Ky, has said, “The breeders are the backbone of our industry.” It is hard to argue that point. Most horses bred by Spendthrift Farm go to auction, although they do keep some to race, according to General Manager Ned Toffey.“These breeders’ incentives are very good programs,” Toffey offered. “Into Mischief had a number of Louisiana-breds when he was getting started, which was useful. We’ve also used the Pennsylvania and New York programs. Normally, if we’re going to use one of those programs, it’s because we have a stallion standing in those states. We may drop a foal by one of our first-year stallions standing here in Kentucky, then breed the mare back to our stallion standing in that state.”Toffey mentioned they have found it tough to find the types and numbers of mares they look for in the regional programs. Current Spendthrift stallions are able to get a good, solid book of mares at home.“If we have just the right horse for a regional program, we’re happy to utilize them, but with the horses we’ve brought in, in recent years, we’ve been able to get the numbers we felt they needed here for the most part.”Change Concerns & ImprovementsLouisiana has changed their state-bred rules beginning with foals of 2021. Babies out of resident mares, sired by Louisiana-domiciled stallions will receive full breeder awards per the schedule established by the Louisiana Thoroughbred Breeders Association Board of Directors.Foals out of resident mares, sired by out-of-state stallions and bred back to Louisiana stallions will collect 90 percent. Foals out of Louisiana-residing mares, sired by out-of-state stallions and bred back to out-of-state stallions will receive 50 percent of full breeder awards. Previously, breeders could send a mare to an out-of-state stallion, but that foal could not be an accredited Louisiana-bred unless the mare was bred back to a Louisiana-based stallion.Not all Louisiana stallion owners are happy with the new schedule. Jay Adcock, owner of Red River Farm in Coushatta, La., stands multiple stallions and feels the new rules will send the better mares out of state, causing a drop in the annual foal crop in his state.“In my opinion, the better mares in Louisiana will be going out of state now,” said Adcock, who sits on the LTBA Board. “Someone like myself and others standing stallions in the state had thought they at least had a chance at someone’s better mares every other year. I keep mares for myself and for other commercial breeders. They have already told me I have no chance of breeding those mares. It’s really going to penalize somebody with a young stallion. This is my opinion, but there’s a bunch of us that actually think that.” “I’m a mare proponent,” Adcock added. “Yes, I want a nice stallion, but I do believe it is the mares that prove a horse.”Adcock has concerns about the Louisiana foal crop shrinking due to the new rules. Commercial breeders sending a mare to Kentucky will most likely return that baby to the larger Kentucky market to sell. It doesn’t seem a reach to assume those auctions would bring a better price than in Louisiana.“I think the actual numbers in our foal crops are going to go down,” Adcock opined. “If you’re breeding in 2021, foaling in 2022, yearling sales in 2023...so it’s going to take a few years to prove me right or wrong. I just don’t see how this is going to help the Louisiana program.”“In Louisiana, to have a racino—where you have a casino at your track—the state law says you have to run an 80-day meet in 20 weeks or you don’t have your license,” Adcock pointed out. “The money is not necessarily commingled, but the licenses are commingled. The last seven years we’ve been running about a 1,000 foals a year in Louisiana. I do not believe the number of new foals coming into the state is going to outweigh the numbers of people that are going to get out. How are we going to fill those 80 days in 20 weeks?”Adcock believes Louisiana is being overly optimistic to think out-of-state breeders will send mares to their stallions year after year just to race in restricted races. He thought, because Mississippi has no racing, those mare owners may come to Louisiana; but Texans, who used to ship in mares, have grown their game and would probably opt to stay home.Politics Loom LargeTexas definitely has its game together in recent years. It has been a long road for horse racing in the Lone Star state.The Texas Racing Commission and pari-mutuel gambling were established in 1933. It was hoped pari-mutuel wagering would create revenue during the Great Depression. Sadly, pari-mutuel wagering was rejected in 1937 and was not revived until 1987. The Yankee Bet—a multiple selection wager—was activated about the same time and helped track handle.“Once pari-mutuel was reestablished in the late 1980s, we did have a good incentive program until about the 2000s,” explained Mary Ruhle, Executive Director of the Texas Thoroughbred Association. “Then our numbers began to decline as far as handle, purses and so on. That came about because our surrounding states were able to offer much better purses and incentives. They had additional forms of gaming that supported their purses, which Texas does not.”In 2019, House Bill 2468 was passed, which has been greatly beneficial to Texas racing. The bill authorizes up to $25 million per year to benefit the Texas equine industry. Seventy-percent of that sum is set aside for purses and 30 percent goes to various breed registries for implementation of their programs and to support the Texas horse industry as a whole. “The funds come from sales tax on equine goods and products,” Ruhle pointed out. “We are taking money out of the horse industry and putting it into a different form and multiplying it back into the horse industry.”With Texas foal crop numbers coming out of a slump, Ruhle doesn’t expect to see those numbers rising for a couple more years, due to breeders waiting to see how the program works. Ruhle does expect to see a generous increase in the mares bred in Texas this year.“As far as racing,” Ruhle said, “the additional funds have vastly improved our purses, our handle and our number of participants in horse racing. We are very happy about horses coming in to race from out of state, which improves our racing product. It enables our Texas breeders to aspire to breed a better racehorse.”The Massachusetts Thoroughbred Breeders Association (MTBA) is working hard to improve their incentive program and hopefully bring racing back to their state. Since Suffolk Downs closed about four years ago, they have had no in-state racing.To be a Mass-bred currently, a foal must be born in Massachusetts to a mare in residence since October 15 of the previous year, or the mare must be bred back to a stallion domiciled in the state.The MTBA has legislation pending, working its way through government bureaucracy during a pandemic and making it an uphill grind, according to Arlene Brown, secretary for the association and a longtime breeder.“The pending legislation introduces a program where, if you bring a foal into Massachusetts to live for six months before its second birthday, it becomes Massachusetts-accredited and is eligible for the incentive award as a Mass-bred would be,” Brown explained. “The accredited horses will be eligible for the same awards but will be second choice in Massachusetts-bred races. In other words, the rewards would be the same; the only difference would be that they could go into Massachusetts restricted races if [those races] are not already filled by Mass-bred and registered horses.”Also for this year, the MTBA is adding a $10,000 bonus to any winning purse won by a Mass-bred at any racetrack. Because there is no racing in Massachusetts presently, awards count toward earnings at any track in the country. The $10,000 bonus will be part of the program on a year-to-year basis until they build up their equine population enough to run their own restricted Mass-bred races.The new legislation, introduced last year, has not made it through committee but was reintroduced this year. Between government red tape and pandemic restrictions, there is no estimate of when the bill may be taken up. Brown remains optimistic.“We’ve got some very good backing in the House,” Brown, the owner of Briar Hill Farm, said. “Several of the members have been to my farm a few times. The big push is trying to preserve green space and farms, so breeding farms are a push in that direction. A lot of the legislators are on board with maintaining the green space.“The Senate is going to be a little bit more of a fight, but the Senator from my district has been to the farm several times and is behind the push in the Senate for us.”There are seemingly several reasons for optimism among Massachusetts breeders. In addition to their pending program changes, there are two proposals to build new racetracks in their state. “Both of them are very viable, very nice looking designs,” offered Brown. “Now it is just waiting for approval—you know, all the things you have to go through with towns and counties for approvals, but they are both moving along.” Dermot Carty, director of sales at Adena Springs in Aurora, Ont. and Paris, Ky., believes incentive programs can be helpful.“It helps the ups and downs,” Carty noted. “If the horse can run a little bit, you make some money back, which covers the cost of promotion. At the end of the day, they do help out the small breeder.”Carty has worked for Frank Stronach, owner of Adena Springs, a total of 46 years. He feels the Ontario breeding business is in a bit of limbo at the moment. Thoroughbred breeders, he believes, are not being represented properly.“They tried to go out and establish a voice for all breeds, and it doesn’t take into account that Thoroughbreds are a completely different animal altogether,” he said. “The Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society took out any representation of Ontario racing.”“There are a lot of people up here committed to breeding horses, but a little break from Ontario Racing to allow their elected representatives to get a true pulse of what is going on would make a big difference,” Carty added.Coast to CoastMary Ellen Locke, who handles registrations and incentives for the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association, feels they have one of the best programs in the country—with good reason.“Other associations have copied our program,” Locke offered. “We get calls often from other states trying to do a program and explain to them how ours works. I think Louisiana was the last one that called me. I don’t know if they copied it exactly; but I think they have slots now, and they are doing better on foal crops, so they are trying to reward their breeders program.”Locke often receives inquiries from out-of-state owners because you can breed out-of-state and still have a Cal-bred. “We can have a Nyquist Cal-bred,” Locke explained. “He stands in Kentucky, but if the mare foals here and is bred back to a California stallion, then the foal dropped here is a Cal-bred. It has been this way for quite a few years.” The CTBA rules have not changed in quite a while, and Locke has no knowledge of any changes in the near future.Henry Williamson is a California breeder who also raises some Kentucky breds. Williamson’s love of the Thoroughbred industry grew from his late father, Warren Williamson’s passion for the horses.Williamson Racing bred their mare Nashoba to the Kentucky stallion Silver Hawk in 2002 before moving the mare to Harris Farm in California for the prime purpose of having a Cal-bred. The resulting filly, Nashoba’s Key, went undefeated in her first seven Southern California starts before placing fourth in the 2007 Breeder’s Cup Filly & Mare Turf.“There was a process we had in place, because of the Cal-bred incentives, and we wanted to benefit from that,” Williamson said. “I also think that it opens up some opportunity for the horses to build confidence, where they are not running right off the bat against million-dollar Keeneland graduates. It opened the door, and we took advantage of the California incentives being there and the purses being comfortably strong.”Williamson currently has five broodmares in Kentucky—some of which will be moved to his new farm, Arroyo Vista in Valley Center, Calif., where they will join six California-based mares. Williamson is standing his Curlin stallion, Texas Ryano, at Arroyo Vista as well.“I’m a big believer in Cal-bred racing,” said Williamson, who resides in Pasadena, Calif. “We kind of got away from it for a while, but we want to take advantage of it now—even more than Kentucky-breds.”“It is interesting, starting a new business during a pandemic when the [California] race tracks have been struggling; I think I need my head examined,” Williamson laughed. “When you’re passionate about it and you believe in the horses and what you think they’re going to be able to do, you follow your heart.”Arizona horsemen and breeders have struggled with the pandemic and political issues for more than a year. But, there might be light at the end of their scuffles.According to Berdette Felipe at the Arizona Thoroughbred Breeders Association, their program is doing well, with owners and breeders incentives awarded from one-percent of the in-state handle.“Because we don’t have a lot of stallions in Arizona,” Felipe said, “our program allows a mare to be bred anywhere with the resulting foal being an Arizona-bred, providing it is foaled in Arizona and spends six months of their first year in our state.”Another big boost to Arizona racing may come from proposed legislation that will authorize Historical Horse Racing. If approved, Senate Bill 1794 could generate up to $140 million in tax revenues.Arizona Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association President Bob Hutton believes HHR would provide much-needed support to all aspects of the state’s racing entities, revitalizing Arizona racing. Virginia passed Historical Horse Racing legislation in 2019, according to Debbie Easter, executive director of the Virginia Thoroughbred Association (VTA). Easter noted that the new pari-mutuel legislation has started to make a difference during the past six months.“Our [incentive] programs are growing due to the HHR money we are receiving,” she noted. “The awards are getting to be quite hefty; we are starting to pay a lot of awards out in both the certified owners program and the breeders program and the Virginia-bred owners program—our three different incentive programs. The awards are starting to amount to serious money.”Although it may be too early to say that the foal crop numbers have also been boosted, breeders are paying attention.“We’re fairly unique because we don’t have year-around racing like most states,” acknowledged Easter. “We’ve tried in the last few years to build our programs so they help our farms and owners year-around.”The VTA pays breeders for wins anywhere in North America. During the current year, due to increased wagering on Advanced Deposit Wagering and HHR, breeders received a 40-percent purse bonus for each of their offspring wins. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Virginia was still in the top 5 so far as the number of Thoroughbreds bred in the country.“Unfortunately, we’ve dropped down near the bottom of the list,” Easter explained. “In order to help those farms and breeders, we started a Virginia Certified Program about three years ago. That program allows people to come in and board and train for six month in Virginia; then if that horse wins in the mid-Atlantic region, the owners get 25 percent of the winning purse.“That has drawn a lot of horses into Virginia. It has filled up our farms, they are hiring people, investing in capital projects—it is doing everything it is supposed to do.”In addition, according to Easter, Colonial Downs has been resurrected over the past three years and it looks like they will be having seven weeks of racing with purses “at least” near $500,000. “The program is rounding out to be very beneficial for those that want to play in Virginia,” Easter added. “Eventually, our goal is to get 10 weeks of racing and the purses to go up substantially more. There will not only be good quality racing, but we’ll have restricted racing for the certified horses and Virginia-bred horses. There are a lot of reasons to come to Virginia right now.”New Age RacingWith the expense of owning a racehorse rising expeditiously, partnerships have become popular. In 2018, Michael Behrens founded MyRacehorse.com in California. The company sells micro-shares in horses so owners might own a very small piece of a Thoroughbred with an equally low investment—a micro of the normal expense—while still enjoying the thrills of racing. As of 2021, the company has horses across the country. “We started out in California the first year; we wanted to test the response of the industry to our micro share program concept,” said Joe Mishak, Racing Operations Manager. “July of 2019 was our first national expansion into a majority of the states.”MyRacehorse has purchased about 70 horses since their inception, including 2020 Kentucky Derby Champion and Horse of the Year, Authentic and now standing at Spendthrift Farm. Although the company is not in the business of breeding horses, they do pay attention to and value incentive programs.“We absolutely look at incentive programs,” said Mishak. “Kentucky is going through the HHR debate now, but it was phenomenal over the past few years. You have allowance races with $100,000 purses. If you go to Kentucky Downs, the purses are huge also. Of course, the level of competition you’re going to compete against is greater. The [breeder’s] programs come into play. There are lots of variables that go into the purchasing process.”While no incentive program will please all of the breeders all of the time, there seems to be some effective policies in North America for horsemen to take advantage of and reap just rewards. CAPTIONS:#DuncanTaylor (credit Taylor Made Farm)> Taylor Made Farm President, Duncan Taylor, has bred horses outside of Kentucky to “cover the downside” when horses fit better in a different situation. #BeholderHead (credit Annie Lambert)> Kentucky-bred Beholder, owned by B. Wayne Hughes’ Spendthrift Farm, enjoyed annual R&R on pastures in California where she earned most of her $6 million.# (credit Williamson Racing)> Henry Williamson’s Williamson Racing breeds and races homebreds in Kentucky and California. His stallion, Texas Ryano, stands at his Arroyo Vista Farm near San Diego. #Colonial Downs, Debbie Easter/Headshot (inset) (credit VTA)> Even though Virginia does not enjoy year-around racing, Debbie Easter noted improved incentive programs have greatly expanded opportunities for horsemen.#>#>#>#>#>POSSIBLE PULL QUOTES:](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1614248711277-556GVKV52YS9BBO6K09V/Screenshot+2021-02-25+at+10.24.09.png)
![“On, no,” you’re saying to yourself, “not more politics!”But stop and think: American racing is and has been since the 1930s essentially political, since it’s a state-regulated industry. It’s about to add another layer of government regulation, now that in their mutual wisdom The Jockey Club, United States Congress, and former President of the United States have just enacted new legislation to elaborate racing regulation still further. And complicate it?The last time I wrote about subjects I’m going to raise again here, I was accused by one of our most prominent readers of being a “socialist,” and that sprang to mind when I was assailed the same way very recently by another prominent personage. I know that one of them is a strong supporter of the new “Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act,” or HISA.My former students at Harvard College would get a serious jolt out of that accusation; they used to call the classes in Government I taught “Firing Line,” after William F. Buckley’s right-wing conservative television program of the day. I once read aloud to them paragraphs from a Lincoln Day speech delivered by a prominent politician, and largely written by one of my academic mentors who had been showered in infamy for his work with Barry Goldwater. I didn’t tell them that, of course. And then I asked them who they believed delivered those ringing sentiments.“JFK,” came shouted back. “FDR. Justice [Hugo] Black. Justice Douglas.” Liberal lions all. Then I read another famous line from the same speech, about the “nattering nabobs of negativism,” and they all realized the parts of the speech they loved had also been delivered by one Spiro T. Agnew, former Vice President of the United States. Labels, like stereotypes, are diversions from objective analysis. As we assess what ails our sport, and ideas to improve it, labeling a person or an idea “socialist” (or anything else) is just plain counterproductive. We have to confront objective reality and consider all possible corrective means.A hundred years ago – when this really was the Sport of Kings -- it relied then as it still does now on all the commoners. Both kings and commoners love to bet, but there are way more of the latter than the former, and now a great many owners are commoners, too. Back then, virtually everyone recognized that a sport so afflicted with temptations to dishonesty and corruption needed serious governmental oversight if it was to survive and prosper. Yet our racing forefathers were hardly “socialists”! So were born pari-mutuel wagering, the totalizator, and testing for forbidden substances, among countless rules across dozens of American states to build and retain public confidence in the integrity of our sport. Does such government intrusion and oversight smack of “socialism”? To some or many, yes. And they bring with them their own problems of potential misconduct and unfairness in administration. Whether king or commoner, whether citizen or government official, we all share one thing: human nature.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/517636f8e4b0cb4f8c8697ba/1614067756732-WVVFHYY68RO0IB43Z9OE/Adam+Smith+-+author+of+_The+Theory+of+Moral+Sentiments_.png)
