Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies: Pope puts stock in Tap to It

A major player at the Kentucky horse sales, Mandy Pope will seek her first Grade 1 win as an owner at the upcoming Breeders’ Cup.

Since 2012, Pope’s breeding-stock purchases have included Horse of the Year Havre de Grace ($10 million), Kentucky Oaks winner Plum Pretty ($4.2 million), two-time champion female sprinter Groupie Doll ($3.1 million), and Betterbetterbetter ($5.2 million), a Galileo mare purchased in foal to War Front.

Pope’s Whisper Hill Farm also has been an annual patron at the Keeneland September yearling sale. Last month, she sold nine horses for $3.11 million, including Betterbetterbetter’s War Front filly for $1.45 million. She also bought three yearlings for a total of $3.55 million.

At the 2014 Keeneland auction, Pope bought four yearlings. The least expensive of the lot at $400,000 was Tap to It, who is among the favorites for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Keeneland on Oct. 31.

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“I’m very nervous,” Pope said. “This is the first time I’ll be entering a horse in the Breeders’ Cup. We’re kind of starting to get on pins and needles. So many different things can go wrong. I want to get out there and run the race.”

Since 2013, Todd Quast, the general manager and trainer at GoldMark Farm in Ocala, Fla., has advised Pope on her yearling buys.

“It’s an interesting dynamic,” he said. “Mandy studies pedigrees and makes her picks, and then I come in and look at them. Tap to It was a very special yearling. We bought two Tapits last year. She was the bigger, stretchier, growth-ier of the two. I was thinking we would have to pay a little more for her than we did since her dam, Leave Me Alone, is a Grade 1 winner.”

Following the sale, Pope’s yearlings are sent to GoldMark for a brief stay and then are freshened at Whisper Hill Farm in Citra, Fla., about 25 miles away. They are returned to GoldMark to be put into training. GoldMark has 160 stalls and a six-furlong Safetrack synthetic surface.

“We usually break 70 to 80 2-year-olds on the farm, and she was one of that bunch this year,” Quast said.

Tap to It was sent to trainer Ralph Nicks just prior to the Saratoga meet in July. She rallied from eighth to win a six-furlong maiden race Aug. 16, then returned three weeks later to be second, beaten one length by Rachel’s Valentina, in the Grade 1 Spinaway at seven furlongs.

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“She was well prepared, obviously, when she came to me,” Nicks said. “She’s a big, smooth mover, leggy, who in time should show a little more speed. If the racing gods smile on her, she should have a very successful career.”

Tap to It broke a step slowly in her debut and was steadied soon after the start. In the Spinaway, she was a bit restless in the gate before breaking last. Pope, Quast, and Nicks acknowledge that she can be a handful.

“She definitely has some of the Tapit attitude,” Pope said. “That’s why she wasn’t ready until Saratoga. I wanted her to grow up mentally.”

Quast put it this way: “The Tapits remind me of the Storm Cats. They have a similar temperament and attitude. They’re not uncontrollable, but you don’t want to pick a fight with them. Their personality is part of what makes them such good athletes.”

After the Sept. 5 Spinaway, Pope, Quast, and Nicks decided to train Tap to It up to the Breeders’ Cup.

“She was not at Saratoga very long, and she had two races pretty close together,” Nicks said. “It’s the right thing to do. I’m fine training her to the Breeders’ Cup.”

Nicks’s stable is based in Florida, but Tap to It is at Belmont Park with his smaller New York outfit. Nicks, whose father, Morris, trains in Louisiana, was a longtime assistant to Bill Mott before going out on his own in 2004.

Nicks gave Tap to It a stout seven-furlong work at Belmont on Oct. 7. He plans to breeze her again at Belmont on Saturday and van to Kentucky next Tuesday evening.

“We’ll get a work over the track there and see what schooling we have to do, at the paddock, or gate, her being a little quirky,” Nicks said.

Quast spent 10 years, beginning in 1991, with D. Wayne Lukas. During that time, he worked with a number of top fillies, including Serena’s Song, Flanders, and Golden Attraction. He sees the same potential in Tap to It.

“She’s just like them, does everything so easy, just floats,” he said. “It doesn’t look like she goes that fast, but if you put a clock on her, you’ll be surprised. When you step on the accelerator, you’d better be ready; she has gears that other horses don’t.”

◗ Nickname, the winner of the Frizette Stakes on Oct. 3 for trainer Steve Asmussen, worked five furlongs at Keeneland on Monday in company with Wild Man, a 2-year-old Pulpit colt. Nickname and Wild Man were timed in 1:01.80.

Nickname earned a fees-paid berth in the Juvenile Fillies by winning the Frizette for the LNJ Foxwoods stable of Larry, Nancy, and Jaime Roth.

◗ Nemoralia, the runner-up in the Frizette while making her first U.S. start for Newmarket-based trainer Jeremy Noseda, is expected to be pre-entered in both the Juvenile Fillies and Juvenile Fillies Turf on Monday.

◗ The undefeated Songbird, the best 2-year-old filly on the West Coast, worked five furlongs at Santa Anita on Monday in 1:00.20 for trainer Jerry Hollendorfer. Mike Smith was aboard.

Songbird has not been seriously challenged while winning a Del Mar maiden race, the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante, and the Grade 1 Chandelier at Santa Anita. The Chandelier was a Win and You’re In race for the Juvenile Fillies, but Songbird was not nominated to the Breeders’ Cup as a foal, and owner Rick Porter will have to make a $100,000 horses-of-racing-age nomination payment.

Songbird is scheduled to fly to Kentucky on Oct. 25.

◗ Ma Can Do It and Put Da Blame On Me, the third- and fourth-place finishers in the Oct. 2 Alcibiades for trainer Dale Romans, have both turned in recent workouts.

Ma Can Do It, a maiden, came back eight days after the Alcibiades to work a bullet four furlongs in 48 seconds at Churchill Downs. The work was the fastest of 89 at the distance that day.

Put Da Blame On Me worked a half-mile on Oct. 11 at Churchill in 49.80 seconds.