Ackerleys hope Bold Conquest can carry on winning tradition

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The ownership team of brothers Bob and Lee Ackerley of Houston started making some serious noise in racing decades ago, with horses like Jersey Girl, winner of the Acorn, Mother Goose, and Test in 1998. Their best also includes graded stakes winners Valid Expectations, Little Sister, and Snuck In.

Fast-forward to Sunday, and the Ackerleys will be back on a big stage, with a promising 3-year-old at Oaklawn Park. Bold Conquest is set to launch his sophomore season in the Grade 3, $300,000 Southwest, one of two major local preps for the Arkansas Derby and a points race for the Kentucky Derby. The Ackerleys know the drill, having won Oaklawn’s second prep, the Rebel, with Snuck In in 2000. Snuck In proceeded to finish second in the Arkansas Derby, then fifth in the Preakness, all under the tutelage of trainer Steve Asmussen.

Bold Conquest, also trained by Asmussen, will enter the Southwest off a third-place finish in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland. The horse has made four starts, his other notable efforts being a runner-up finish in the Grade 3 Iroquois at Churchill Downs and a maiden special weight win at Saratoga. He represents a special spark for the present-day breeding and racing operation of the Ackerleys, who compete under the nom-de-course Ackerley Brothers Farm.

“We’ve downsized a lot over the past 10 years or so,” Lee Ackerley, 54, said. “There was a point in the late 1990s we were at over 200 head [of horses] all combined, and now, all combined, we’re probably at about 25.

“He’s obviously the best thing we have going. We never had a horse in the big race that first Saturday in May. Not to even think about winning, just to have something worthy. It would be beyond exciting.”

But, Lee Ackerley was quick to add, he and his brother, Bob, 55, know it’s a long, tough road to the spring classic at Churchill.

“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Lee Ackerley said. “We’re happy that he’s come back for his 3-year-old year and he’s training well. We just hope for a competitive race, and that he comes back good. That’s pretty much all we ever hope.”

Bold Conquest has a host of ties linking his connections and some of their best horses. He’s a son of Curlin, the two-time Horse of the Year trained by Asmussen, who has worked with the Ackerleys since 1995. In addition, Bold Conquest’s third dam is Jersey Girl, who went on a Grade 1 tear in New York, where the Ackerleys grew up going to Belmont Park with their father.

“He’s the culmination of 20 years of being with Steve, and me and Bob being in the business,” Lee Ackerley said. “He’s also a great-grandson of Jersey Girl and his dam, One for Jim … Jim was our dad. She was named for our dad.”

Asmussen would like nothing more than to see Bold Conquest develop into a top prospect for the Ackerleys. In the decades since teaming with the brothers, he’s become the second-winningest trainer in history in North America.

“It’s really nice to have this horse for them, a nice homebred,” Asmussen said. “The Ackerleys always meant so much to the success that we’ve had.”

The men first met at Sam Houston Race Park.

“It’s actually a funny story,” Lee Ackerley said. “We hired a guy in our electronics business that had grown up best friends with Steve. He had been a horse trainer, decided he wanted to do something else, then he introduced us to Steve.”

The Ackerleys, who are in the technology industry, said Asmussen’s friend, James Sherwood, has become a top computer chip trader for their company. Asmussen, meanwhile, also saw his stock rise alongside the Ackerleys, as Valid Expectations became a key horse for his operation in the mid-1990s.

“He was my first graded stakes winner,” Asmussen said.

Asmussen added that the Ackerleys, through Valid Expectations, were responsible for his first stakes wins in such jurisdictions as Arkansas, Kentucky, and New York. Asmussen’s first Florida stakes winner came with another Ackerley runner, Little Sister, who captured the Grade 3 Azalea at Calder in 1997.

Asmussen’s stable also reached a notable milestone with the support of the Ackerleys.

“When Valid Expectations won the Sugar Bowl Handicap on Dec. 31 at Fair Grounds in 1995, it was the first year that the stable made $1 million,” Asmussen said. “If he wouldn’t have won it, we wouldn’t have gone over $1 million. He was our last starter of the year.”

Bold Conquest on Sunday begins what could be another memorable year for the Ackerleys and Asmussen, carrying the torch anew for the longtime team.

◗ Pangburn, the runner-up in the Grade 2 Pocahontas at Churchill Downs in her last start Sept. 6, launches her 3-year-old season in Friday’s ninth race. The first-level allowance race for 3-year-old fillies will be run at 1 1/16 miles, and it figures to produce starters for such local stakes as the Fantasy.