Show Goes On at Barretts

By Jessica Martini 

Barretts officials admitted they were a little nervous going into Thursday’s preview of the March Sale of Selected 2-Year-Olds in Training. The preview had already been pushed up a day due to projected heavy rain in the Pomona area Friday, but Thursday started out looking bleak as well with persistent overnight rain lasting through to 8 a.m. 

“We got lucky to get it in between showers and the track is perfect,” Barretts General Manager Kim Lloyd said with a relieved smile as the last of the horses breezed over the Fairplex surface late Thursday afternoon. “At 3 in the morning, I was looking at my swimming pool as it was overflowing and I thought, ‘Man, this could be a rough day.’ But the track is wonderful–it couldn’t be any better.” 

Originally scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., the start of the breeze show was pushed back to just after noon as crews worked on the track. “We just wanted to wait until the track was right,” Lloyd explained. “We knew we were going to delay it until we had it right.” 

Despite the date change and the delayed start, the breeze show was well-attended. WinStar President Elliott Walden, Coolmore’s Demi O’Byrne and Stonestreet’s John Moynihan, as well as Stonestreet owner Barbara Banke, were all in attendance. 

And there was a healthy turnout of California trainers, including Kristin Mulhall, Craig Dollase, Paddy Gallagher, Neil Drysdale, Simon Callaghan, Patrick Biancone, Richard Mandella and Dan Hendricks all watching the breezes from the grandstand. Among the bloodstock agents were Patti Miller, Jamie McCalmont, Joe Brocklebank, David Ingordo, Steve Young, Alex Solis, Pete Bradley, Bob Feld and Mersad Metanovic. 

“The turnout was great–especially with having to move the preview up a day–everyone showed up,” Lloyd said. 
Three horses shared the day’s fastest furlong time of :9 4/5. First to hit the sub-:10 mark was the regally bred hip 93. The son of Street Cry (Ire) is the first foal out of Grade I winner Careless Jewel (Tapit). The juvenile was bred by Southern Equine Stables, which purchased Careless Jewel for $1.95 million out of the 2010 Fasig-Tipton November sale before selling her last November for $1.85 million. 

“I was thrilled with the work,” reported consignor Eddie Woods. “He’s a very nice horse and he’s a very well-bred horse and when both of those combine, you usually come up with a runner. And he appears to be a runner.” 
Woods was also thrilled with the track condition. 

“They did an amazing job–I don’t know how they did it,” he said. “With what we had here last night through 8 o’clock this morning, I couldn’t see how we would go at all. We had the first horse on the track, so I was up there with my fingers crossed, saying, ‘We’ll see how this goes.’ And she went fine, she went right as we expected her to work, so I was good to go for the rest of the day.” 

The Woods consignment enjoyed a strong day at the track, with one hiccup. Early in the third set of horses, hip 136 got loose and ran around the track before being caught on the backstretch. 

“In my opinion, she was my fastest horse–of course everyone says that about one that gets loose or stumbles,” Woods said of the daughter of Munnings. “But she is really really quick.” The filly came out of the incident mostly unscathed. “She’s fine,” Woods said. “She has a couple scrapes where she crashed into the wall and I would have brought her back again, but she kind of breezed half a mile. It was not exactly how we planned.” 

Also working in :9 4/5 was hip 48, a colt by Malibu Moon out of Rosy Humor (Distorted Humor) from the family of Johannesburg and Tale of the Cat. The juvenile was consigned by Raul Reyes’s Kings Equine, agent. 

“We expected him to go real fast, because he always prepped real fast,” said Raul Reyes. “We were very pleased with the work; we had a great day.” 

Completing the :9 4/5 workers was hip 104. Consigned by Steve Venosa’s SGV Thoroughbreds, the chestnut is out of stakes winner Dixie Dreamer (Mutakddim). 

“Coming out here, we had very high expectations on that horse and he performed to the level that we thought he would,” Venosa said. 

The Barretts March sale begins Monday at 2 p.m. PT.