Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Lieblongs go after first Classic
Alex and JoAnn Lieblong’s home track is Oaklawn Park in their home state of Arkansas. The Lieblongs chose their blue and white racing colors based on their shared alma mater, Conway High School. Alex Lieblong is further involved in the state industry as the chairman of the Arkansas Racing Commission, and the couple was among the leading owners at Oaklawn’s recently concluded meet.
But that’s not to say the Lieblongs’s Thoroughbreds are not accomplished at other racing venues, including some of the sport’s most historic. And with Laughing Fox, the couple is out to see if their blue and white colors could be painted on the weathervane at Pimlico, another track they’ve become fond of.
Laughing Fox’s appearance in the Preakness Stakes will mark the first starter in a Triple Crown race for the Lieblongs. They have run a horse at Pimlico during Preakness week before, with Marathon Lady finishing second by a nose in the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan Stakes in 2013.
“I always liked it at Pimlico,” Alex Lieblong said recently. “I always remember how well they treated us when we were at the Black-Eyed Susan a few years back. It’s a special atmosphere, for sure.”
The Lieblongs, who own an 80-acre farm where they previously raised cattle, first entered racing in partnership with fellow Arkansas owners Patricia and Gus Blass in the early 1990s. Since then, the couple has campaigned three Grade 1 winners, all of whom scored their major victories at Saratoga Race Course. Telling won the Sword Dancer Invitational in both 2009 and 2010; The Big Beast won the Grade 1 King’s Bishop Stakes in 2014 and placed in two Grade 1 races the following year in New York; and Embellish the Lace won the 2015 Alabama Stakes. The Lieblongs also have campaigned graded stakes winners High Dollar Woman and I Spent It.
Laughing Fox, a Union Rags colt bred in Kentucky by Chester and Anne Prince, is out of the multiple stakes-winning Stormy Atlantic mare Saskawea. Laughing Fox was a $120,000 purchase by George Yager out of the 2017 Keeneland September yearling sale, and then pinhooked for $375,000 at last year’s Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co.’s March sale of 2-year-olds in training, where the Lieblongs purchased him from the Harris Training Center consignment.
Laughing Fox was unplaced in two outings as a 2-year-old, both of those efforts coming at seven furlongs for a horse Alex Lieblong said would “absolutely” relish distance later on.
“The seven-furlong races were more for education purposes,” Lieblong said. “Sure, we would have loved to have won the races, but I didn’t have any feeling that was going to happen. But that’s kind of what you’ve got to do with a horse like this, I think.”
Laughing Fox turned the corner by winning 3 of 5 starts at Oaklawn this meet, all in the care of trainer Steve Asmussen. His performances helped the Lieblongs finish as third-leading owner by earnings at the meet, behind Mike Sisk’s M and M Racing, which started more than four times as many horses, and Fox Hill Farm, whose Omaha Beach won a division of the Rebel Stakes and the Arkansas Derby to stamp himself as the morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby before his scratch.
After winning a maiden and an optional-claiming race, both at 1 1/16 miles, Laughing Fox finished seventh in a division of the Rebel. He was then fourth in the Arkansas Derby behind Omaha Beach, likely Preakness Stakes favorite Improbable, and Country House, who was placed first in the Kentucky Derby. Laughing Fox subsequently earned his first stakes victory when he rallied from ninth at the three-furlong marker to defeat Night Ops by a neck in the Oaklawn Invitational on May 4. The 1 1/8-mile race, a new addition to the Oaklawn calendar, awarded a free berth into the Preakness.
“I want to say between the Arkansas Derby and his last race, I think he actually put on a little weight,” Lieblong said. “He’s a big, stout boy, and I think he’s finally growing into himself.”
Laughing Fox has, indeed, grown into himself to the point of putting himself in the starting gate for an American classic. And as a late foal – his date of birth is May 16, just two days prior to the Preakness – he could continue to mature before the proud eyes of his owners.
“I like to watch them all run, but obviously when you get in this kind of company, that’s special,” Lieblong said. “To watch him mature from a 2-year-old to this point and then work your way into this position, it checks all the boxes.”