STATE SECRETS
Early Queen’s Plate favourite State of Honor’s unlikely ride to Saturday’s Kentucky Derby gives Canadian horse racing fans reason to cheer,
A casual trip with a neighbour to Woodbine Racetrack inspired Penny Conrad to talk her husband Manfred into buying a broodmare so she could try her hand at breeding horses. It proved to be a sound investment. Only seven years after the purchase of their first thoroughbred, the Wellesley, Ont., couple has bucked the longest of odds; the Conrads’ homebred three-year-old colt, State of Honor, will compete in the daddy of all horse races, the Kentucky Derby, on Saturday at Churchill Downs.
“You can’t imagine this happening at all,” Penny Conrad said. “We’re just new at this. It’s not something we ever thought of. We’re so excited.”
State of Honor, an amazon of a colt produced from one of the Conrads’ first mare purchases, State Cup, is a 30-to-1 long shot for the Derby but is also considered the early favourite for the Queen’s Plate at Woodbine in July.
The Conrads said it was Woodbine horseman Andrew Smith, their first trainer, who bought State Cup for them for $80,000 and then bred the mare with Kentucky stallion To Honor and Serve. By then, the couple had moved their horses from their own farm to the well-known Grandview Farm in Grand Valley, Ont., owned by Mike Carroll.
“When State of Honor was born, he was the biggest foal ever born at Mike’s farm,” said Penny Conrad, who along with her husband has only raised three or four horses a year since they started. “The colt was a bit of a bully because he was so big, but now he’s very gentle.”
Mark Casse replaced Smith as trainer for the Conrad horses in 2013 and Woodbine’s perennial leading trainer and his team have developed State of Honor into a consistent performer with career earnings upwards of $400,000 (U.S.). The colt’s second-place finish in the $1-million Florida Derby in March earned it enough points to land a spot in the 11⁄ 4- mile race at Churchill Downs, where Classic Empire — another Casse horse — was made the early 4-1 favourite on Wednesday.
Win or lose in the Derby, the Conrads are pinching themselves that they get to make their first trip to Churchill Downs along with 125,000 other crazed horse racing fans.
“We’re going to try our first mint julep,” Penny Conrad said.