Courtesy Gainesway FarmTapit
Wood Memorial runner-up Normandy Invasion is looking to give Rick Porter his first Kentucky Derby victory after the owner came close twice before, and could give trainer Chad Brown his first win in the classic in his first attempt.
Richard Bremer and Cheryl Sprick swept the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and Charles Bellingham awards for breeders of the year during the Minnesota Thoroughbred Association’s annual awards dinner Saturday night to honor the champions of 2012.
Bremer and Sprick’s homebreds Bet Your Life and Badge of Glory were also voted top 2-year old male and female, respectively.
It took Darby Dan homebred Chateaugay 2:01 4/5 to complete the 1963 Kentucky Derby and give John Galbreath his first classic victory. But Galbreath’s trip to Churchill Downs had started in earnest back in 1957, when he gradually convinced Rex Ellsworth to sell him Swaps, a half-interest at a time over the course of a year, for a total of $2 million.
Although two of the three newly inducted horses into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame who went on to stud careers failed to make a major commercial impact, both Housebuster and Lure—whose own breeding career was truncated by fertility issues—have produced Grade/Group 1 winners and successful sons at stud. Fellow inductee Invasor's second career as a stallion is still in its nascent stages.
Debates over the identity of the greatest racehorse of all time are both forever pointless and endlessly entertaining. I’ll see your 31-length Belmont win by Secretariat and raise you Frankel’s 14 straight wins. For racing’s equivalent to the hot-stove league, there is no universally valid and accepted method of comparing great horses of different eras.
California-based freshman sire Brave Cat was represented by his first winner April 25 when La Tonga equaled the track record to capture a maiden special weight at Golden Gate Fields.
The 2-year-old filly, who is owned by trainer Jeff Bonde, won by a head, completing two furlongs on the Tapeta Footings synthetic surface in :21.20.
It was the second career start for La Tonga, who was third in her debut on April 11. The filly is out of the Fit to Fight mare Ducks On the Pond.
Pierro, Australia’s champion 2-year-old colt and a five-time Group 1 winner who was retired last week, will begin his stud career at Coolmore’s Australian division in New South Wales. His initial fee will be announced at a later date.
Bold Affair, a multiple stakes winner in the Mid-Atlantic region, has been retired from racing and will be bred to Kentucky sire Ghostzapper, the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred reports.
Record-priced mare Havre de Grace, the 2011 Horse of the Year, has been confirmed in foal to Tapit.
The 6-year-old mare, from the only crop of 2005 Horse of the Year Saint Liam, got in foal on one cover by the Gainesway Farm stallion, Gainesway's director of sales Michael Hernon said. This would be her first foal.
"Tapit is attracting extraordinarily high-quality mares," Hernon said.
