INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The biography of Laffit Pincay Jr. that appears in the Hollywood Park media guide covers six pages. Three of them are dedicated to reviewing his major stakes wins over the last 35 years.
Listed among those pages are numerous California-breds who played a pivotal role in the Hall of Fame career of the jockey whose retirement will be honored at Hollywood Park on Sunday.
From the early 1970's to as recently as last summer, statebreds helped Pincay reach major milestones.
The Tattersalls July mixed sale ended in England on Wednesday with a record average price and the auction's second-highest gross.
Headed by Group 3-winning colt Clifden, who brought $292,740 as the auction's highest-priced 2-year-old ever, the auction established a record average price of $19,433. Overall, the three-day sale sold 287 of 336 lots offered for a total of $5,577,214.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - With two graded victories and several stakes placings, Grand Slam's progeny put the ball out of the park for their sire last weekend. While Cherish Destiny ran second in the Grade 3 Landaluce at Hollywood and Sweet Jo Jo was third in the Grade 3 Debutante at Churchill Downs, Strong Hope and Limehouse were victorious in their races, the Grade 2 Dwyer at Belmont and the Grade 2 Bashford Manor at Churchill.
Kay Jeffords, owner of five-time champion steeplechaser Lonesome Glory, died Tuesday in New York City at age 80. She had suffered from Parkinson's disease in recent years. She was 80.
Jeffords had been married to the late Walter Jeffords, who died in 1990. Kay Jeffords campaigned a string of top horses with her husband and in her own name. She was steeplechasing's leading owner in 1995 and overall won purses of $1.4 million, according to the National Steeplechase Association.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A $2.79 million colt from the last crop of the great Japanese stallion Sunday Silence topped Monday's opening session at the Japan Racing Horse Association's select foal sale.
Shadai Farm, the Hokkaido stallion station that stood Sunday Silence until his untimely death last year at age 16, sold the brown colt to Fusao Sekiguchi for 330 million yen, or $2,791,878. Sekiguchi, a flamboyant Japanese entrepreneur, owned 2000 Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus.
Ohio resident George Smith and his longtime friend and partner Dr. W.E. Johnson usually breed and foal a mare or two in Florida. The result of one of such breeding is Spoken Fur (Notebook-Siberian Fur, by Siberian Express), who, following her recent sale by Smith and Johnson, went from allowance company to a Grade 1 win in the Mother Goose Stakes for Amerman Racing Stables and trainer Bobby Frankel.
The trip was a homecoming for Kentucky Derby- and Preakness-winning trainer Barclay Tagg, who returned to the state where he had trained horses for nearly 30 years to judge this year's 69th annual Maryland Horse Breeders Association's yearling show last Sunday.
Tagg swapped stories with dozens of old acquaintances. He attended a crab feast at one of his old stomping grounds, Merryland Farm, a Thoroughbred nursery and training center in Baltimore County where years ago he found work galloping horses.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The full brothers Mineshaft and Rock Slide could have a blast this weekend. Mineshaft is the likely favorite in Saturday's Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park, and Rock Slide will race the same day in the Firecracker Handicap at Churchill Downs.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Popular sprinter Hallowed Dreams has been off the track for a little more than a year now, and her owners report she is doing well in her new life as a broodmare.
Now 6, Hallowed Dreams, a Malagra mare, is in the broodmare band at trainer Lloyd Romero's farm in Erath, La., and is carrying her first foal by his stallion, the Claiborne-bred Tirade. Romero said he and Hallowed Dreams's co-owner, Johnny Gaspard, plan to keep the mare's first foal and race it, which accounts in part for their choice of stallion.