Odd-looking filly Painting the Sky can run

Those who watched the sixth race at Delta Downs on Feb. 20 might have thought that a Paint horse won the maiden special weight race at the Vinton, La., track. But Painting the Sky is all Thoroughbred, and the 3-year-old filly with unusual markings will be back in action Friday night. She again runs in the sixth race, a first-level allowance on the penultimate card of the meet.

Painting the Sky is registered as a chestnut since it’s her predominant color, but there’s much more to the daughter of Yankee Gentleman and the Lone Star Sky mare Lone Star Quest. In fact, trainer Brett Brinkman said there are about four paragraphs describing her markings on her foal papers issued by The Jockey Club.

“She’s a novelty,” Brinkman said. “If you looked at her from just her jugular forward, just her head, you’d call her an albino without hesitating. But the rest of her body has pigmentation in it scattered throughout, and you would have to classify her as some kind of Paint horse. If you wheeled her out for some show judge, he would look at her and say this is a so-and-so Paint. There’s no way you’d pick her out as a Thoroughbred.”

Painting the Sky was bred in Louisiana by her owner, Sandra New. The filly beat the odds to survive birth and again by having a racing career. Painting the Sky’s win in the maiden race – against a field that included offspring by the red-hot sire Uncle Mo – was a moment of sheer joy for New as well as Brinkman, who has won 35 races from 131 starts at this meet to rank second in the trainer standings at Delta.

“That win right there, that was the paramount win,” Brinkman said. “The vets told me how odd it is to get these kinds of horses. Usually, these horses, when they’re born this way, something is wrong with them inside, and they never live through birth or become any kind of animal through it. I give Sandy New all the credit. A lot of people would have sold her as a yearling and not taken the risk. When we were discussing what route to take, she said, ‘If the odds were that much against us ever getting her, then I owe her the opportunity to compete.’ ”

Painting the Sky was special even before she was born. New and her late husband, Buddy, raced the filly’s dam, Lone Star Quest. She was a two-time winner at Delta in 2012 for Brinkman and closed out her career with a runner-up finish in a $4,000 claiming race May 25, 2012, at Evangeline Downs. At the time, she was in foal – with Painting the Sky.

“They made me announce it on the claim box on her,” Brinkman recalled. “I got all kind of inquiries, and we ran her, ran second, got beat a nose, and retired her immediately afterward.”

Lone Star Quest’s breeding to Yankee Gentleman was the last mating Buddy New planned before he died. Brinkman said the mare was the last New had from her family line, and he wanted to keep and breed Lone Star Quest. Brinkman said the mare’s two subsequent foals have been regular bays.

“Lone Star Quest has roan flakes through her flank and has a coon tail on her,” Brinkman said. “She’s kind of got a big, bald face, but she’s not even close to what this filly is [as far as markings]. She’s got very little white on her legs.”

Painting the Sky, whose connections have filed paperwork to have her dual registered as a Paint, has a lot of good physical attributes, said Brinkman. Among them is her size, as she stands a “solid” 15.3 hands tall.

“Her mother’s a really big mare,” Brinkman said. “As far as conformation, she’s a well-balanced filly. You cannot fault this filly a whole lot on conformation. If you looked at her as a plain body, she’d get high marks.”

Junior Inirio has been the regular rider aboard Painting the Sky and has been an important part of her development, as Brinkman feels the filly’s vision and hearing is slightly compromised. She has the blue eyes of an albino and carries herself in a manner not seen on a regular basis.

“She’s in a different world, and she deals with things differently than normal horses do,” Brinkman said.

But she does have one important thing in common with many of her peers – she is a winner.