Fear the Cowboy graduates to Oklahoma
It’s college basketball season, and everything in Lexington, Ky., is wallpapered in Wildcat blue. But students from the University of Kentucky could be forgiven for having fond thoughts about an adopted Oklahoma Sooner. Multiple Grade 3 winner Fear the Cowboy, bred and raised by the University of Kentucky’s Maine Chance Farm, which employs students as part of the curriculum, enters stud this season at Glasses Creek Ranch near Madill, Okla.
Maine Chance Farm was formerly owned by cosmetics magnate and Thoroughbred owner Elizabeth Arden. After her death, the property was put up for sale by the executors of her estate, and the University of Kentucky, which owned neighboring land as research farms, purchased the property in 1967.
The farm now operates as a research and teaching facility under the auspices of the University’s Department of Animal and Food Sciences, with broodmares and stallion seasons donated by industry participants. Students work on the farm handling the broodmares, doing foal watch and delivery, handling farm chores and maintenance, and eventually prepping and selling the yearlings. Maine Chance consigns to Fasig-Tipton, both because it’s near the farm and because its shorter sales work best with student schedules. This year, students had a 13-horse consignment of short yearlings at the Fasig-Tipton February mixed sale and a dozen yearlings consigned to the company’s October yearling sale.
Fear the Cowboy, by Cowboy Cal, was a $1,500 purchase by Alexandro Centofanti from the Maine Chance consignment out of the 2013 Fasig-Tipton February sale. A millionaire, Fear the Cowboy won stakes in three consecutive seasons – the Three Chopt Road Stakes at Gulfstream in 2015; the Evangeline Mile in 2016; and the Grade 3 Skip Away Stakes and Grade 3 Harlan’s Holiday Stakes, both at Gulfstream Park, as well as the West Virginia Governor’s Stakes at Mountaineer in 2017. Fear the Cowboy finished fourth in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream in 2018 and went on to finish third on the opposite coast in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap. He placed in two other graded stakes that season.
Fear the Cowboy is from the extended female family of Kentucky sires First Samurai and Kantharos.