Canadian breeders hit classic jackpot at auction

The Keeneland November breeding stock sale is often where the dominos are set for racing trends in the coming years, but rarely does it have the kind impact that Bernard and Karen McCormack of Mapleshade Farm created with their purchases during the 2011 renewal, especially at their price point.

The McCormacks bought the dams of two eventual Canadian classic winners – 2016 Queen’s Plate winner Sir Dudley Digges and this year’s Prince of Wales Stakes winner, Cool Catomine – at the same November sale for a combined $70,000.

Breeding two Canadian classic winners in as many years is even more impressive considering that those mares made up a quarter of Mapleshade’s broodmare band.

“After the Plate last year, that was a breakthrough for us, and for us to win the next leg the following year just gives me goose bumps,” Bernard McCormack said. “Obviously, when you breed these horses, it’s so personal – a small, little farm like ours, to get two classic winners out of a broodmare band of eight, I don’t know what the odds are, but it’s a longshot, and [Cool Catomine] was a longshot horse, and he got it done.”

The past year-plus of racing has been a highlight for the Janetville, Ontario, operation, which was developed in 2004. The McCormacks also consigned both classic winners at auction under their Cara Bloodstock banner, which is in its 20th year in operation.

Sir Dudley Digges, a Gio Ponti colt, was sold as a weanling for $72,000 at the 2013 Keeneland November sale. He later ended up with Ken and Sarah Ramsey and added a runner-up effort in the Breeders’ Stakes to his classic win. The colt has returned at age 4 to become a solid U.S. turf runner for the Ramseys.

McCormack bought his dam, the stakes-winning Kris S. mare My Pal Lana, for $45,000 at the Keeneland November sale. The mare died of foaling complications in 2014, the year after producing Sir Dudley Digges.

Cool Catomine, a son of Spring At Last, went to trainer John Ross as agent for $29,305 at the Ontario Division of the 2015 Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society premier yearling sale. He races for Jack of Hearts Racing and J.R. Racing Stable.

McCormack is plenty familiar with Cool Catomine’s sire line. As general manager at E.P. Taylor’s Windfields Farm in Ontario, he managed paternal grandsire Silver Deputy.

The dam, the unplaced Smart Strike mare Smart Catomine, was a $25,000 buy at Keeneland following the death of her previous owner, Canadian Hall of Fame horseman Robert Anderson. Cara Bloodstock consigns her Flashback filly at this year’s CTHS Ontario yearling sale.

“I was actually there to buy the foal and switched to buying the factory,” McCormack said about buying Smart Catomine. “The foal turned out being Wild Catomine, who was second in the Woodbine Oaks. Any time you have a mare with two classic horses under her, it’s nice to have her in the paddock.”

Allowances for CTHS sale grads

Stakes races restricted to graduates of a certain auction are nothing new. Local breed organizations often facilitate the races to incentivize entry in their sales, and the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. fashions an entire card around its graduates in January.

What’s more unusual is an allowance race written for auction alumni.

Woodbine’s latest condition book features a pair of sixfurlong, $45,000 allowance races restricted to 2-year-old graduates of a Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society (Ontario Division) auction. A race for fillies is carded for Aug. 6, while colts and geldings are scheduled for Aug. 7.

To the best of racing secretary Stu Slagle’s knowledge, the races will be the first of their kind in Canada and possibly for North America.

“It’s an innovative way to reward people for participating in the local CTHS sales program, and hopefully it’s successful,” he said. “It’s unusual for horsemen to telegraph their plans for overnight allowance races too far in advance, but there have been people talking about it, trying to figure out what they have that is eligible.”

The idea was formed last year in a partnership between the CTHS and Woodbine. Slagle said about 250 juveniles were eligible for sales-restricted races this year.

The races will serve as preps for the Muskoka Stakes for fillies and the Simcoe Stakes for males. Both races will be held Aug. 30 for CTHS Ontario auction graduates at 6 1/2 furlongs, each for a $200,000 purse.

Slagle said two more salerestricted allowance races for juveniles are scheduled for about a month after the stakes races.