Sadler faces life after Flightline
Life without Flightline has made for a strange winter for California trainer John Sadler.
The stable’s most famous runner was retired to stud in November, days after finishing his career with an easy win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland. Flightline was undefeated in six starts in a 19-month career.
The first stall outside of Sadler’s office is occupied by a different horse these days in a barn seeking a new leader. There are no Flightlines on the horizon, just horses likely to start in stakes in California.
“I’m trying to fill that hole,” Sadler said with a laugh. “Do you think that is easy?
“We’ve got some new horses coming up.”
McLaren Vale, third in the Grade 2 San Vicente Stakes at Santa Anita last January in his only graded stakes appearance, was purchased for $200,000 at the Keeneland November Horses of Racing Age sale and is owned by Hronis Racing, which was part of the group that raced Flightline.
McLaren Vale had four trainers in 2022 – Bob Baffert, Sean McCarthy, Rodolphe Brisset and Brittany Russell. McLaren Vale has had a steady pattern of works at Santa Anita since late November for an expected start in coming weeks.
“He looks really good,” Sadler said.
At the same Keeneland sale, Hronis Racing purchased Anywho for $290,000, weeks after she won her debut in a maiden race for 2-year-old fillies at seven furlongs at Aqueduct.
Lane’s End Racing is the new owner of Seisai, a 4-year-old Irish-bred filly who won 2 of 14 starts in Ireland for Joseph O’Brien and was second in the Group 2 Kilboy Estates Stakes for fillies and mares at the Curragh last July.
Seisai, by the Galileo sire Gleneagles, was purchased for approximately $457,000 at a horses in-training sale in England last month and recently joined Sadler’s stable.
Flightline’s Breeders’ Cup Classic is Sadler’s most recent stakes win. The 4-year-old filly Kirstenbosch ended her 2022 season with two stakes-placings for Sadler – a second in the Zia Park Oaks in New Mexico in November and a third in the Grade 1 La Brea Stakes at Santa Anita on Dec. 26.
On Saturday’s California Cup program at Santa Anita, Sadler is not involved in the five stakes on the 10-race program. He runs Moon Ice in a maiden race in the second race and Press On in an allowance race on the hillside turf course in the fourth race.
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