Creative Minister carries Winchell blood while bidding to upset Epicenter in Preakness

Creative Minister was a 2 3/4-length winner of a salty allowance race at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, some seven hours before Epicenter carried the Winchell Thoroughbreds colors to a game second in the Kentucky Derby. The two colts will converge in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. Ironically, Creative Minister, who races for Fern Circle Stables, Back Racing, and trainer Kenny McPeek, is from a Winchell foundation family and will now seek to upset their star colt in the Preakness.

Creative Minister’s fourth dam is Carols Christmas, who the operation’s late patriarch Verne Winchell claimed for $25,000 in 1981. The Whitesburg mare went on to produce eight winners from as many starters, including Grade 1-winning millionaire Olympio and Grade 2 winner Call Now. Several of her daughters and granddaughters became prominent producers, most notably her Grade 2-winning granddaughter Fun House, Broodmare of the Year after producing Eclipse Award champion Untapable and Grade 1 winner Paddy O’Prado. Other branches of this family have produced Grade 1 winners Pyro and Cuvee, among others.

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Call Now, by Wild Again, scored her biggest win in the Grade 2 Del Mar Debutante as a juvenile; she also was Grade 1-placed and was a stakes performer every season she raced. She went on to produce four winners from as many starters, including the Deputy Minister mare Winning Call. Winning Call produced multiple graded stakes winner Tapizar, winner of the 2012 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile for Ron Winchell.

Tamboz, from the first crop of the Winchells’ leading sire Tapit and out of Winning Call, is an older full sister to Tapizar. She was bred by Winchell Thoroughbreds, but sold as a yearling and changed hands several times before eventually selling to her current owner, Dell Ridge Farm, for $440,000 at the 2012 Keeneland November breeding stock sale, shortly after Tapizar’s Breeders’ Cup victory.

“We were pretty cautious about not letting go much of that family,” said David Fiske, racing and farm manager for Winchell Thoroughbreds. “Obviously, we sold a few that we didn’t regret, and we kept many that we did. The whole family was ‘Don’t give up on them just because they didn’t run.’ We kept as many as we could, and greatly benefited over the years.”

Tamboz has proven another successful broodmare from the family launched by Carols Christmas. She is already the dam of Grade 1-placed Dolder Grand, graded stakes-placed Battalion Runner and Oceanwave, and stakes-placed Late Nite Mischief and Tiznoble; Oceanwave is already the dam of graded stakes-placed Ocean Breeze.

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Creative Minister, by Creative Cause and out of Tamboz, was bred by Dell Ridge and sold for $180,000 to his current connections at the Keeneland September yearling sale. He has won twice from three outings, and the Preakness will be his stakes debut.