Brocklebank Eager for Barretts

by Jessica Martini 
John Brocklebank, who has catalogued 11 horses to the Barretts Selected 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale, is anxious to get the juvenile sales season started. 

“I can hardly wait for breeze show day,” Brocklebank said ahead of the Barretts preview show scheduled for Friday in Pomona. “I’m excited because of the group of horses that we have. They’ve kind of ripened at the right time.” 

Brocklebank is particularly high on a pair of horses he will be pinhooking with longtime client and friend Bill Peeples. 

“We’ve probably been working together for 25 years or so,” Brocklebank said of Peeples, a California banking executive. “He is a star human being. We started in the Quarter Horse world and kind of migrated with each other because we both wanted to explore the possibility of doing Thoroughbreds. After a while, we found ourselves buying horses together and that led to a friendship. It’s evolved to now we are not only business associates, but we’re real good friends. I guess we get the best of both worlds that way.” 

Peeples, who has campaigned stakes winners Cover Gal (Falstaff) and Let Em Shine (Songandaprayer), has impressed Brocklebank. 

“He does his homework,” Brocklebank said. “Most owners don’t really have an opinion on horse conformation, but he packs a pretty good opinion. So when I’m at the sales, I don’t mind bouncing an idea off him…‘What do you think about that one?’ I always feel like I can get a really useful opinion from him.” 

Brocklebank continued, “I wish my horses had as much heart as he does because he stays in the game. Even though he has been rewarded, he can also take a hit, which is good since I always say this game is not for the thin-skinned.” 
Peeples decided to bulk up his pinhooking prospects last year and Brocklebank already notices a difference. 

“We decided, on his pinhook division, that he wants to deal more in quality rather than quantity,” Brocklebank explained. “And I think that is maybe what I’m seeing this year. The quality sure seems to be showing its true colors.” 

That quality will be on display at next week’s Barretts sale when a pair of six-figure yearlings go through the sales ring. Hip 46, a son of GI Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver, has the highest yearling purchase price in the Barretts catalogue. The youngster sold for $220,000 at last year’s Keeneland September sale. Hip 104, a colt from the first crop of GI Arkansas Derby winner Archarcharch, topped the 12th session of last year’s September sale when selling for $110,000. 

“Both of these horses that he’s bought, the Archarcharch and the Super Saver, are really great,” Brocklebank said. “I try not to crow about them because you always seem to shoot yourself in the foot, but I want to just climb a mountain and just scream how good they are doing.” 

The Super Saver colt is out of Kiss the Breeze (Kafwain), a half-sister to graded stakes-placed Kiss to Remember (Big Brown), and from the family of Grade I winners Spun Sugar and Daaher. 
“The Super Saver has a huge shoulder and is kind of a big-walking horse with a real presence,” Brocklebank said. “He looks kind of like Affirmed–that kind of a look.” 

The Archarcharch colt is the first foal out of graded-stakes placed Wild Forest Cat (D’wildcat). 

“The Archarcharch, if I grow up, I would like to look like him,” Brocklebank said. “He has a really pretty head and he has an unbelievable body. To look at him, you would think, ‘Wow, that looks like a champion sprinter.’ But being around the horse, he is such a relaxed kind of an animal that to me, he looks as if he’ll get the ground quite easily.” 

Brocklebank’s successful graduates include Brother Derek (Benchmark), a $150,000 Keeneland September yearling turned $275,000 Barretts March juvenile who went on to win the 2005 GI Hollywood Futurity and 2006 GI Santa Anita Derby; as well as River’s Prayer (Devon Lane), a $15,000 Barretts October yearling who went on to win the 2007 GI Princess Rooney H. The gray mare sold as a broodmare prospect for $1.5 million at the 2007 Keeneland November sale. Brocklebank compared both juveniles to those Grade I winners. 

“They are both May babies, but they haven’t bothered once about what they are doing,” he said. “They’ve jumped through every hoop that we’ve pointed them at. In the past, like with River’s Prayer and Brother Derek and some of the good ones we’ve had in the past, they kind of train the same way. They never really vary it, they just went out and did their work. That’s how these two are acting.” 

Brocklebank is currently based in St. George, in Southwestern Utah. “It only took us 30 years to figure out it’s a little easier to not train in two feet of snow,” the Utah native laughed. “A bad day here is 40 degrees.” 

Of 70 juveniles currently at his training center, Brocklebank estimates he will pinhook some 50 head this spring and he is expecting to see strong demand. 

“I think the supply and demand is kind of kicking in,” he said. “And, I’ve always felt this way, if I was going to buy a racehorse, I think the pinhookers–and I might be biased–but I think the pinhookers are the best horsemen that walk around. And just to let them go out and cherry pick a bunch of horses and then you cherry pick from there, I think is the only way [to buy a racehorse]. Even horses like Bayern, who won the [GI Breeders’ Cup] Classic, he is a great example of that. The pinhookers kind of draft in the ninth round, but it seems like their horses are always bringing down the Grade Is.” 

The veteran horseman thinks horses prepared for juveniles sales have an advantage. 

“The way you prepare a 2-year-old to run, I think scientifically, is the correct way,” he said. “I know this is going to make a lot of people mad, but age has nothing to do with it. There is only one way to make an athlete and that is to prepare him and that is probably through stressing the bone at an earlier age. They seem to be able to grow a better bone density at a younger age than they do if you let one mature on his own. That’s actually a scientific fact, but sometimes people kind of roll their eyes at the way we think. But I think the proof is in the pudding.” 

While he is excited by his draft at the impending juvenile sales, Brocklebank also has big plans for his St. George base. 
“We want to try to go year-round,” he explained. “We can economically train a little more inexpensively than say right there in California. And here we can work all day, where you have to be done by 10 in the morning there. We’re trying to figure out if we can offer year-round training so people can get the first part of it economically and then, after we start the horse, give him up to trainers. Basically, we’re going to try to hold on to them, start them one time and then give them up after that.” 

As for his 70 juveniles, those who don’t make it to the 2-year-old sales will likely find new homes in other ways. 
“We kind of toyed with the idea of even getting a trainer’s license and trying to run from here,” he explained. “We might have to start training a few and then go to these paddock sales–we really enjoy that. But like everybody else, we’re trying to figure out the combination to the lock.” 

But the Barretts sale, which will be held a week earlier this year, is first on the agenda. 

“Barretts is a sale that you can’t ignore,” Brocklebank said. “They get too darn many good horses out of it. I love California and I love selling out there. [The earlier date] is a bit of a concern, but they’ve never let me down in the past and they feel good about their position. I hope they are right.”