Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Sprint: Groupie Doll's win closes fun era for Bradleys

ARCADIA, Calif. – Buff Bradley thought he was having a good time all week in California, but he didn’t know for sure. Only a big effort from Groupie Doll in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint would allow him to look back and say: “That was a lot of fun.”

One evening early in the week, out on the Arcadia town, Bradley was reminiscing about one of the first times he ever won a graded stakes and how it was going to allow him to live out a fantasy. It was at the Grade 2 Indiana Derby at Hoosier Park in October 2004.

“I kept saying, ‘If we win this race, I’m going to buy a truck full of Corona,’ ” he said with a laugh. “I mean, the whole truck, with the trailer full of beer.”

After Bradley and his father, Fred, watched their homebred Brass Hat win the Indiana Derby by 1 3/4 lengths, they went out and enjoyed themselves in suburban Indianapolis. When they woke up the next morning, “I looked out the window at the hotel, and right outside the door was this huge Corona truck,” said Bradley. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I yelled out to my dad, ‘What in the world did we do?!’ ”

Now that Groupie Doll has repeated as champion in the Filly and Mare Sprint and is likely to be a divisional champion for a second straight year, the nostalgia is even funnier – and more meaningful.

Unlike last year, when he was here to revel in reaching the pinnacle of a sport he has loved since childhood, Fred Bradley, 82, wasn’t feeling well enough this time to travel to California for the Breeders’ Cup, and so he watched the race with family and friends in Kentucky.

Moreover, Groupie Doll is headed to the Keeneland sales ring on Wednesday and will never carry the red, white, and blue Bradley silks again.

Buff Bradley, whose 14 graded stakes wins in more than two decades of training horses have all come through Groupie Doll (8) and Brass Hat (6), fully knows he might not ever pass this way again. He does not have anything close to the resources of a Baffert or Pletcher; what those two horses accomplished after being born and raised in the humble surroundings of Indian Ridge Farm in Frankfort, Ky., is basically an equine equivalent to lightning striking twice.

So in the immediate aftermath of Groupie Doll digging in gamely to prevail again, the gravity of the moment was just too much. On the NBC victory stand, tears filled Bradley’s eyes, his voice faltered, and he politely asked for a few moments to gather himself.

Yes, he had a very good time.