Moonlight Song, Notacatbutallama done racing
ELMONT, N.Y. – Entries for Saturday’s Empire Showcase Day program, an 11-race card of all New York-bred races, will be drawn on Wednesday. Two familiar names, Moonlight Song and Notacatbutallama, will not be among those entered this year because both have been retired.
Moonlight Song, a 9-year-old gelding who won the 2014 Hudson Stakes on Showcase Day, came out of his last work with an issue, according to trainer Charlton Baker.
“I didn’t like the way one of his legs was looking,” Baker said. “He’s 9 years old; we don’t want to break him down. He’s been a great horse. We’ll call it a career.”
Moonlight Song, owned and bred by Al Fried, had a record of 9-2-1 from 18 starts and earned $534,294.
Notacatbutallama, the champion New York-bred 3-year-old male of 2013, had run in the last three editions of the Mohawk Stakes, one of the Showcase Day races. He was recently retired by owner Mike Repole following a sixth-place finish in the West Point at Saratoga.
Repole gave the horse to Alysse Jacobs, who works as an assistant in the New York Racing Association’s horsemen’s relations office.
Jacobs became a big fan of Notacatbutallama and has him at a private stable in Dix Hills, N.Y., where she hopes to train him to be a hunter/jumper. Eventually, Jacobs said, she hopes to find somebody who would make Notacatbutallama a show horse.
Jacobs said her affinity for Notacatbutallama “started with his name, and then I had to look at him, and he was the cutest.
“More time I spent watching him, I admired him for being a hard-trying little New York-bred who didn’t know he was little,” she said.
Jacobs was a frequent visitor to trainer Todd Pletcher’s barn, often bypassing the Grade 1 winners in the shed row just to see Notacatbutallama.
Repole said Jacobs “loves the horse 10 times more than me.”
Notacatbutallama, a 6-year-old gelding by Harlan’s Holiday, had a record of 8-7-8 from 39 starts and earned $789,359. In 2013, he won the Grade 3 National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Stakes at Saratoga and the Grade 3 Hill Prince at Belmont.