Small-time breeders score big with Knicks Go

Knicks Go sprang a $142 upset when winning the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland to earn his way into the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. Not only was the colt a massive longshot on the odds board – the odds of his breeders producing a Grade 1 winner may have been just as long.

Knicks Go was bred in the name of Sabrina Moore, 26. Her mother, Angie Moore, introduced her to equestrian sports, and the two rode barrel racers and dabbled in Thoroughbred ownership via partnership.

Six years ago, Sabrina Moore decided to pursue a career as a commercial breeder and took over business operations at her family’s Green Mount Farm in Reisterstown, Md. The Moores own only three mares.

“It’s tough being a small fish in a big pond,” Sabrina Moore said. “But it’s so rewarding in the end.”

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Green Mount claimed Kosmo’s Buddy, the dam of Knicks Go, for $40,000 out of an optional-claiming race in September 2010 at Monmouth Park. The Outflanker mare won the Maryland Million Turf Sprint Handicap at Laurel and the Crank It Up Stakes at Monmouth in 2008 and finished second or third in 12 other stakes.

In her only start off the claim for the Moores, Kosmo’s Buddy finished fourth in the 2010 Maryland Million Turf Sprint, won by the great Ben’s Cat.

Knicks Go, from the second crop of Paynter, is the fourth foal out of Kosmo’s Buddy, who has produced three winners from as many starters. The colt sold for $40,000 as a weanling to Northface Bloodstock at the 2016 Keeneland November breeding stock sale and was an $87,000 pinhook to the Korean Racing Authority, his current owner, at the Keeneland September yearling sale.

Kosmo’s Buddy has delivered a pair of colts since Knicks Go – a yearling by Orb and a weanling by Broken Vow.