Greenhills' small broodmare band keeps producing winners

It’s rare that a trainer wins back-to-back $100,000 stakes on a single racing program – rarer still when that trainer also owns the horses. How about a trainer who owns the horses and bred them? And what if that trainer-owner-breeder had a broodmare band numbering a grand total of three?

That was the situation June 19 at Indiana Grand, where the 3-year-old gelding Toss of Fate won the $104,700 Hoosier Breeders Sophomore Stakes at 5:06 p.m. Eastern and the 3-year-old filly Moves Like Magic won a $104,800 filly-restricted division of the same race at 5:36. The pair was bred by Sherri Greenhill, is owned by Greenhill Racing, and is trained by Sherri’s husband, Jeff Greenhill.

The craziest thing of all? This remarkable piece of luck isn’t even all that remarkable for the operation we might call Team Greenhill.

Toss of Fate is the seventh foal to race produced by the Greenhills’ mare Pay the Toll. Jeff Greenhill trained her, too, and Pay the Toll, a foal of 2003, was retired after wining two races from 25 starts, her first victory coming in start No. 21, a $5,000 maiden-claiming race at the old River Downs. But Pay the Toll had a bit of pedigree behind her, and Greenhill decided to make her his first broodmare – a life-changing decision.

Pay the Toll’s first foal was Aint She a Saint, an Indiana-bred who won seven races, five of them stakes, and nearly a half-million dollars. All Pay the Toll’s foals to race are winners, and Needmore Cash and Derby Express are multiple stakes winners and earners of more than $300,000 each. Toss of Fate now has earned $134,000 while becoming Pay the Toll’s fourth stakes winner.

Pay the Toll has a yearling by Kantharos, a weanling by Tom’s Ready, and is in foal to Gormley, and now she has two Greenhill-owned stakes-producing broodmares boarded alongside her at Chip Muth’s Glendalough Farm in Georgetown, Ky.

One of them is Schefflera, the dam of Moves Like Magic. Greenhill, a retired chemical engineer, bought Schefflera privately for $2,500 from a trainer stabled in the same River Downs barn as him in 2012. Schefflera, by Mutakkdim, had some pedigree behind her, too, and after she won $4,000 and $5,000 claiming races for Greenhill, he retired her, and Schefflera has now produced four winners from four foals to race.

The Greenhills’ other mare, Damie’s Peanut, was acquired for $5,000 and has produced five foals to race, including stakes winners In a Jif and Son of a Nut.

“We’ve had some amazing luck – we really have,” Greenhill said.