Claim of Justify's half-sister proves a smart investment

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Trainer Neil Pessin dropped a claim slip before the second race Jan. 1 at Fair Grounds on a 4-year-old filly named Holiday Music. Pessin and the group of owners that ponied up $30,000 for the claim were the only ones in for the horse. Holiday Music won, but that hardly was the point. The filly resided at Pessin’s Fair Grounds barn for one day before being shipped off the racetrack and on to Kentucky. Then the waiting game began.

Holiday Music is by Harlan’s Holiday and out of Stage Magic, by Ghostzapper, which means she is the older half-sister to a colt named Justify. By Jan. 1 the word had leaked out, at least through small cracks in the foundation, that trainer Bob Baffert was high on an unraced colt named Justify. Someone in Pessin’s group had heard the talk, and that was the nature of the claim – a play on her brother’s talent.

“We knew Justify was a nice horse,” said Pessin, who is based during the summer at Arlington. “But it was six weeks before he even ran. Oh yeah, we were watching for him.”

Justify’s name finally showed up in the entries and he debuted Feb. 18 at Santa Anita. The colt was a talking horse, a star of morning training, an odds-on favorite first time out, and a supremely impressive winner of his debut. The plan with the Holiday Music claim had kicked fully into gear.

“We had her two weeks after he ran and we had offers from everywhere – every state, every country,” said Pessin. “I started answering my phone, ‘Holiday Music!’”

Pessin has been in the racing game his whole life and the group that claimed Holiday Music had a plan from the start: Sell the filly as soon as Justify showed what he might be worth. And so, a couple weeks after Justify’s first race, Summer Wind Farm privately purchased the filly for an undisclosed sum. Now Holiday Music is in foal to Pioneerof the Nile and is worth considerably more than the price her current owners paid.

But Pessin is going about his business this summer in Chicago, he said, with no regrets, no thoughts about what might have been had he and his partners held out until June instead of jumping in March.

“We got an offer that was what we thought she’d be worth if Justify won the Santa Anita Derby,” Pessin said. “Am I sad that we sold her? Absolutely not. People who need money sell, and people who have money can wait. Everybody made money and everyone’s happy.”

Everyone, perhaps, except the owners who ran Holiday Music for the $30,000, unaware, evidently, that a monster, her brother, was training out in California.