Escape Clause a rare Manitoba-bred at the game's top level

Manitoba, at the longitudinal center of Canada, is often referred to as one of the country’s three “prairie provinces.” Its widely-varied landscape is not exactly an epicenter of Thoroughbred breeding.

Yet Manitoba-bred Escape Clause has emerged from the relative handful of foals produced in the province to become a graded stakes winner. Beaten a nose by multiple Grade 1 winner Midnight Bisou in the Apple Blossom Invitational at Oaklawn Park last out, she is expected to meet that foe again in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Stakes on the June 8 Belmont Stakes card.

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Escape Clause is a Grade 3 winner, and adding Grade 1 would raise her value prior to a trip through the public auction ring later this year.

“It’s what everyone shoots for; probably would mean more than anything in racing,” trainer Don Schnell, who owns the 5-year-old Going Commando mare with Barry Arnason and True North. “We’re going to sell her in Kentucky in the fall, so it would probably mean more dollars in the pocket, too.”

Manitoba produces fewer than 1 percent of the annual North American foal crop, and its number of foals has been shrinking. In 2003, 211 mares were bred to 22 stallions in Manitoba, according to statistics from The Jockey Club, resulting in a registered crop of 109 born the following year. In 2013, 104 mares were covered by 10 stallions. One of those mares was Danger Pay, who was bred to Going Commando and produced Escape Clause as one of 64 Manitoba-registered foals in 2014.

Going Commando, an Unbridled’s Song horse , is a full brother to graded stakes winner and former Pennsylvania leading sire Rockport Harbor. Going Commando stands in Manitoba for the partnership of the province’s leading breeder Cam Ziprick, who houses the stallion in the off-season, and Charlie Fouillard, who stands the stallion at his farm in St. Lazare during the breeding season. Ziprick and Arnason bred Escape Clause in partnership, with Arnason buying out his partner when the filly went through the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society Manitoba Division yearling sale in 2015, bringing $3,792.

Escape Clause has rewarded Arnason and his partners for their continued investment in her career, winning 20 of 31 starts with 18 stakes wins – most of those coming early in her career at Assiniboia Downs in her home province. She gained prominence last year by hitting the road to win nine straight races – at Assiniboia, Canterbury Park in Minnesota, Century Downs and Northlands Park in Alberta, and Del Mar, where she was awarded the win via disqualification in the Kathryn Crosby Stakes in November. Escape Clause then finished third in her graded stakes debut, the Grade 3 Red Carpet Handicap at Del Mar.

This season, Escape Clause has won twice from four outings, winning the Grade 3 La Canada at Santa Anita and rolling by 7 ¼ lengths in the Harry Henson Handicap at Sunland Park. On April 14, she led into the stretch of the Apple Blossom before being outdueled a nose by Midnight Bisou. Another multiple Grade 1 winner, Elate, finished third.

“She’s really and truly probably one of the best horses I’ve ever been on in my life,” said jockey Tyler Baze. “She gives it her all. She got beat a nose and I got slammed pretty hard going into the first turn. … She gave me everything.”