Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Quality Road showing quality
Oaks winner Abel Tasman adds to sire’s solid résumé
Quality Road posted the biggest victory of his young stud career last Friday at Churchill Downs, as daughter Abel Tasman asserted her class in her division by splashing home to win the Kentucky Oaks.
The filly classic was the second Grade 1 victory for Abel Tasman, who is from just the third crop by the Lane’s End stallion. She has now been first or second in six of her seven career outings, including a win last December in the Starlet Stakes.
Quality Road’s own racing career was brilliant, with signature scores in the Florida Derby, Donn Handicap, Metropolitan Handicap, and Woodward Stakes, but also was marked by misadventure, as he battled a foot issue and was an infamous gate scratch at the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
The son of Elusive Quality ultimately won 8 of 13 starts, only missing the board once, and earned more than $2.2 million. He got his second career at Lane’s End off to a flying start, as he was the leading freshman sire of 2014 with a first crop including Hootenanny, the winner of the Windsor Castle Stakes at the renowned Royal Ascot meeting and later the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.
Quality Road is also the sire of Grade 1 winners Illuminant and Klimt; Grade 2 winners Blofeld, Frank Conversation, High Ridge Road, and Salty; and Grade 3 winners Guest Suite and Long Haul Bay.
Always Dreaming star of sale
The opening session of the 2015 Keeneland September yearling sale was just more than an hour old when a bay colt from the first crop of Bodemeister walked into the ring and ultimately sold for $350,000 to agent Steven W. Young out of the Dromoland Farm consignment.
Less than two years later, Always Dreaming became the most expensive of three graduates of Keeneland’s signature auction who have won the Kentucky Derby since 2000. I’ll Have Another (2012) sold for $11,000 to Victor M. Davila before being pinhooked as a 2-year-old, and War Emblem (2002) sold for $22,000 to L.R. Springer.
Graduates of the 2015 September sale opener had a productive Saturday at Churchill Downs. The third horse through the ring that session was Arklow, the winner of the Grade 2 American Turf on the Derby undercard for Donegal Racing, which landed the Arch colt for $160,000.
Others to emerge from that session include multiple graded stakes winner Unique Bella, sold for $400,000 to Don Alberto Corp., and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner New Money Honey, sold for $450,000 to agent Mike Ryan.
Derby winner from Calif. girls
While Always Dreaming is Kentucky born and bred and prepared for the spring classics in Florida, the Kentucky Derby still marked a major victory for the West Coast, as his first three dams were all bred in California.
Always Dreaming is out of the In Excess mare Above Perfection, who was bred by Old English Rancho out of its unraced mare Something Perfect. Above Perfection won seven of 10 starts, taking the Grade 3 Las Flores and three other stakes. She was also second in the Grade 1 Prioress Stakes, beaten a neck by Hall of Fame racemare Xtra Heat. Always Dreaming became the second Grade 1 winner out of the mare, joining Hot Dixie Chick.
Something Perfect is out of stakes-placed Happening, who was bred by Ray Freeark Jr.
Pletcher donates to aftercare
Following the Kentucky Derby, as he was awarded a Dodge Ram truck as winning trainer, Todd Pletcher made a point of calling Thoroughbred aftercare, a cause he has championed throughout his career, to the forefront.
“I will definitely take the truck because it has significant sentimental meaning to me to do that. But I’d like to donate the value of the truck to Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance and New Vocations,” Pletcher said. “It’s a very important cause for us to take care of our retired racehorses.”
Pletcher maintains a “Thoroughbred retirement” section on his stable’s official website, endorsing New Vocations, the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, and Thoroughbred Charities of America. He has consistently participated in New Vocations’s annual Breeders’ Cup pledge program, in which owners and trainers commit a percentage of any purse winnings to the program.