2007 Maryland-bred champions

Horse of the year • Older male •Sprinter •Turf runner
Heroes Reward

Dk.b./br.g., 2002, by Partner’s Hero—Lifes Passage, by Caveat; bred by Gretchen Mobberley; owned by Rob Ry Farm and Jayne Marie Slysz; trained by Dale Capuano.
Foaled at Summer Hill Farm, West Friendship.

Few runners go from near zero to hero. But that’s what happened with Heros Reward, the Partner’s Hero gelding who was voted to three state-bred divisional titles for 2007, in addition to Horse of the Year.

Claimed by trainer Dale Capuano on behalf of owners Robert Haynes and Jayne Marie Slysz for $20,000 while making his fifth career start in April 2006 at Laurel Park, Heros Reward hit bottom when he failed to win for a $5,000 tag that August at Delaware Park.

The turnabout began when Capuano switched him to the turf.

In 12 consecutive turf sprints, beginning in October 2006, Heros Reward became a high-class running machine, registering a half-dozen wins, five seconds, and only one off-the-board finish.

In his final start of 2007, Heros Reward delivered an awe-inspiring performance in the Grade 2 $500,000 Nearctic Stakes on October 21 at Woodbine. On the front end the entire trip, he scored by three-quarters of a length in a six-furlong time of 1:08.04 over firm turf and missed equaling Woodbine’s 11-year-old course record by only .44 of a second.

The Nearctic—with a winner’s share of the purse amounting to $310,620—was the richest win to date for Capuano, who has been in the business for two decades and ranks among Maryland’s all-time leading trainers.

It was a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that Heros Reward had launched his stakes career only five months earlier.

His stakes debut came before the Preakness day crowd at Pimlico on May 19, in the five-furlong Baltimore City Turf Sprint, which he won by a length. Moving right up to graded company, he finished second by a half-length in Woodbine’s Scotts Highlander Stakes-G3, at six furlongs, on June 24. In his next-to-last start before the Nearctic, Heros Reward was runner-up in the five-furlong Turf Monster Handicap on September 3 at Philadelphia Park.

In 10 starts last season (five wins and four seconds), Heros Reward earned $515,826, a total that accounts for nearly all of his career earnings ($543,616). Three times his Beyer speed figures topped 100—he earned a 102 for the Scotts Highlander, and 103 for both the Nearctic and Turf Monster.

Heros Reward is also the best horse to date for Haynes, who campaigns under the banner of Rob Ry Farm (named for his sons, Robert and Ryan). Haynes has owned horses for about 20 years, and maintains an active claiming stable with Capuano. His main business is East Coast Productions, a Silver Spring (Md.)-based company that provides fundraising services for police and firefighter organizations. Slysz, who worked for many years as a stable foreman for the late John Lenzini Jr., is the firm’s office manager.

In 2006, Haynes and Slysz celebrated a thrilling victory with the ex-claimer Due, who upset that year’s edition of the Maryland Million Classic.

Heros Reward, bred by prominent Maryland horsewoman Gretchen Mobberley at her Summer Hill Farm in West Friendship, comes from well-established families of Maryland-bred sprinters and turf performers on both sides of his pedigree.

His sire, Partner’s Hero (champion Maryland-bred older male of 1998), is a Grade 2-winning sprinter and half-brother to Safely Kept, who captured the nation’s sprint title in 1989.

Heros Reward’s dam, Lifes Passage, is a daughter of Caveat, the Maryland-bred who won the 1983 Belmont Stakes and later built a career as one of this state’s most accomplished turf sires.

Lifes Passage was bred and raced by Caveat’s breeder and co-owner Jim Ryan, who purchased her stakes-winning dam, Likely Passage (1983, John Alden), for $50,000 at the 1989 Keeneland January sale. Although barren at the time, Likely Passage possessed strong credentials as a full sister to multiple stakes winner Sparrowvon (champion Maryland-bred older male of 1986) as well as to Florida Oaks winner Star Jolie.

Gretchen Mobberley entered the picture when her daughter, Bird, was training Lifes Passage for Ryan. Mobberley took a liking to the mare despite her uninspiring race record (one win in 11 starts and earnings of $6,930), and bought her as a broodmare prospect.

Lifes Passage has four winners from four foals to race, but Heros Reward—who raced for Mobberley until Capuano claimed him—is the mare’s first stakes performer.
Still in production at Summer Hill, Lifes Passage has a yearling colt by Dance With Ravens and was not bred for 2008 because of a late foaling.

Heros Reward is one of many stakes winners born at Summer Hill, which was established in the 1960s by Gretchen Mobberley and her late husband, Jack. A longtime MHBA director who also served several terms as vice-president of the association, Jack Mobberley made his mark as an breeder, owner and trainer until his death in 1995.

Two-year-old filly
Ask the Moon

B.f., 2005, by Malibu Moon—Always Asking, by Valid Appeal; bred by Mr. and Mrs. Charles McGinnes and Country Life Farm; owned by Millicent Johnsen; trained by Edward T. Allard. Foaled at Thornmar, Chestertown.

Timing is everything. When it came to selecting the Maryland-bred champion 2-year-old filly of 2007, Ask the Moon’s perfectly timed ascent in the division landed her the title.

Owned by Millicent John­sen and trained by Philadelphia Park-based Ned Allard, Ask the Moon made the most of her only start in stakes competition at 2, taking the Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship Stakes on December 22 at Laurel Park by an emphatic four and a quarter lengths.

It was Ask the Moon’s third victory in six starts (she also had a second and a third to her credit), and boosted her total earnings to $81,200. Plus she remained undefeated (from three starts) at a distance of a mile, with an average winning margin of nearly five and a half lengths.

The filly was second in her debut, at Philadelphia Park on July 2, and broke her maiden her third time out by 10Z\v lengths at Laurel Park on August 22 over a track rated good.

Off for more than two months, Ask the Moon was back in action at Philadelphia Park in November, finishing third in a “non-winners of one other than” allowance, before succeeding on November 17 in a game effort.

Ask the Moon’s very existence also came down to a matter of timing. Bred by Cynthia and Charles McGinnes and Country Life Farm, she is from the first Kentucky-sired crop of Malibu Moon, the son of A.P. Indy who rose to national prominence and left his former Country Life Farm home for the 2004 breeding season.

The McGinneses, Maryland’s breeders of the year in 2004, had long supported the young stallions standing at the Pons family’s breeding establishment in Bel Air, Md., including Malibu Moon. When the couple sent a mare to the increasingly popular stallion in 2003, only to have her fail to produce a foal the following year, they assumed they’d get a return to him.

The McGinneses were told initially that Malibu Moon’s move to Kentucky negated the previous contract. “But because we were such longtime clients, the Ponses honored the return,” said Charles McGin­nes. “It was such a classy thing for them to do, so Cyn­thia and I decided we would add Country Life Farm as co-breeder of the resulting foal.”

Adhering to a policy of not shipping foals to Kentucky alongside their dams, the McGinneses sent the barren Valid Appeal mare Always Asking to Malibu Moon for the return breeding. Although she had yet to produce anything of note, “We picked a mare we thought would be easy to get in foal,” acknowledged Charles McGinnes.
Ask the Moon is the result.

The McGinneses sold Ask the Moon, “a very square and powerful yearling, although not big,” according to McGinnes, at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall yearling sale to agent Nick de Meric for $45,000.

Ask the Moon was consigned by de Meric to the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s March 2-year-olds in training sale, where Allard, who originally spotted the filly at the yearling sale, picked her up for $125,000.

Ask the Moon is the fourth Maryland-bred champion 2-year-old, and second consecutive filly champion, sired by Malibu Moon. He is also represented by sons Perfect Moon and Declan’s Moon (2003 and 2004 respectively) and Spectacular Moon, the 2006 champion filly owned by Country Life Farm.

For the McGinneses, Ask the Moon becomes their third Maryland-bred juvenile champion, following filly Touch Love in 2001 and colt El Viento in 2005. They also bred 1998 champion 3-year-old male Greenspring Willy.

Always Asking, purchased by the McGinneses for $21,000 in July 2002 from the Wim­borne Farm dispersal, remains at the couple’s Thornmar farm in Chestertown. Ask the Moon, the first named foal produced by the mare for the McGinneses, is Always Asking’s first stakes horse.

Always Asking has a 2-year-old colt by Great Notion, named What’s the Deal, who was sold by the Mc­Ginneses at last fall’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling sale for $22,000 to Silverton Hill, which campaigned Great Notion. Not bred for 2007, Always Asking was due to foal to Lion Hearted in mid-February and is booked to the first-year A.P. Indy stallion Scipion, who stands at Murmur Farm in Darlington, Md.

Two-year-old male
Ready's Image

Dk.b./br.c., 2005, by More Than Ready—Clever Phrase, by Clever Trick; bred by Dark Hollow Farm; owned by James T. Scatuorchio; trained by Todd A. Pletcher. Foaled at Dark Hollow Farm, Upperco.

Two-year-old Maryland-bred champion colt Ready’s Image has been the proverbial golden boy.

Winning a championship in his first year of competition is the latest of many accomplishments in his young career.

From the moment Ready’s Image took his first steps at David and JoAnn Hayden’s Dark Hollow Farm in Upperco, he was a knockout, according to David Hayden, who noted the son of More Than Ready has “never had an ugly day.”

That opinion was validated when trainer Tim Ritchey selected the dark bay colt as the winner of his class at the Maryland Horse Breeders Association’s 2006 yearling show.
Then less than three months later, Jake Pletcher, the father of four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher, spotted the colt at the Keeneland September Yearling sale, and signed the ticket on behalf of leading owner Jim Scatuorchio. The most expensive of 68 More Than Ready yearlings sold in 2006, Ready’s Image—who bore a strong resemblance to his sire—inspired Pletcher to pay $410,000 for him.
The Todd Pletcher-trained More Than Ready was one of the first major stars for Scatuorchio, amassing $1,026,229 from 17 starts and ranking as one of the leaders of his generation at 2 and 3.

It was deja vu during the summer of 2007, when Ready’s Image produced a similar juvenile campaign to that of his sire, and for a time was the top-ranked 2-year-old in the nation.

Pletcher turned the precocious colt loose on April 20 at Keeneland, and Ready’s Image proved his readiness, drawing off to win the four and a half-furlong test by three and a quarter lengths.

He made his stakes debut next out, in Churchill Downs’s Kentucky Breeders’ Cup Stakes-G3 over a sloppy track during Derby week, and finished third going five furlongs.

When Ready’s Image next appeared eight weeks later, there was no stopping him. Seven rivals were at his mercy in Belmont’s five and a half-furlong Tremont Stakes, as Ready’s Image won by seven and three-quarters lengths in a hand ride.

During his juvenile season, More Than Ready had won the Tremont and then added Saratoga’s Grade 2 Sanford. Ready’s Image followed suit, drawing off to win one of the Spa’s most important 2-year-old fixtures by four lengths over Tale of Ekati, getting six furlongs in 1:09.90.

Ready’s Image appeared well on his way to a national championship, but those aspirations were about to slip away. The first blow came in early September when, sent off as the 3-5 favorite in the Grade 1 Hopeful, he was caught up in a speed duel with highly regarded Maimonides and, failing to hold off late-closing Majestic Warrior, ultimately finishing second.

The final start of his season proved disastrous, as he was never in contention in the Grade 1 Champagne Stakes at Belmont and finished last of eight, far behind eventual 2-year-old champion War Pass.

Four days later Pletcher found a plausible excuse, when it was discovered Ready’s Image had a bone chip in his left knee. The colt was shipped to Florida for surgery, and has a good prognosis for a full recovery. Looking forward to a 3-year-old campaign, Ready’s Image has since been nominated to the Triple Crown.

From six starts in 2007, Ready’s Image won three times, was second once and third once, and earned $259,422. As the leading Mary­land-bred juvenile earner of 2007, Ready’s Image also earned the Haydens a $13,000 first-place prize from the Yearling Show Purse Premium, which goes to the exhibitors of the highest-earning 2-year-old shown at the 2006 show.

The Haydens bred Ready’s Image from the mare Clever Phrase, whom they originally tried to claim as a 5-year-old for $8,000 on August 26, 1998, at Laurel Park. The daughter of Clever Trick proved immensely popular that day—“There must have been 20 claim slips for her,” noted David Hayden. Although they didn’t have the luck of the draw, the Haydens came home with the mare after someone overheard Hayden comment he’d have paid twice that much for her. (He wrote the check for $16,000 the next day.)

The first foal out of Clever Phrase is the multiple stakes-placed 2001 Horse Chestnut (SAf) filly Yingyingying. Ready’s Image is the mare’s next surviving foal, after bad luck claimed the lives of a 2002 Polish Numbers colt and a 2004 Two Punch filly.

Ready’s Image has a current 2-year-old half-brother by Two Punch, expected to be sold by the Haydens at the Fasig-Tipton Florida Calder Selected Two-Year-Olds In Training Sale. Clever Phrase was barren for 2007 and was due to foal to Malibu Moon in early February.


Three-year-old male
Steve's Double

Dk.b./br.g., 2004, by Stephen Got Even—Think Double, by Al Nasr (Fr); bred by Acorn Hill Farm Inc.; owned by Oxbow Racing LLC; trained by Ronny W. Werner.
Foaled at Rigbie Farm, Darlington.

Steve’s Double earned his Maryland-bred champion title with an impressive three-race win streak at three different tracks in the final four months of the season.

It began with an entry-level allowance win at Saratoga on September 3, and ratcheted up with a half-length score in his stakes debut, Keeneland’s Grade 3 Perryville Stakes on October 13. Then, facing older rivals, in his first test beyond a mile, Steve’s Double—highweighted at 118 pounds—passed with flying colors to capture the Tenacious Handicap at Fair Grounds.

In eight starts at 3, Steve’s Double had four wins, one second and one third, for earnings of $238,246.

Owned by Oxbow Racing LLC, a stable name of prominent Kentucky horsepeople Stephanie and Art Preston, Steve’s Double is trained by Midwest-based conditioner Ronny Werner.

His success has come as a pleasant surprise for his breeders, Jess and Sharon Sweely, who maintain a busy operation, primarily focused on sport horses, at their 200-acre Acorn Hill Farm in Madison, Va.

Steve’s Double (by Kentucky sire Stephen Got Even) is a Maryland-bred because the Sweelys sent his dam, Think Double (Al Nasr-Fr), to foal in the state to be closer to Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City, Md., where she was bred that season to Partner’s Hero.

Because their experience with Thoroughbreds was limited, the Sweelys relied on advice from bloodstock agent Don Litz when purchasing Think Double for $6,000 at the 1995 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic February sale.

“We were looking to buy Thoroughbred mares capable of producing sport horses,” said Jess Sweely. But after taking a second look at Think Double’s race record (42 starts, six wins, $100,128), they decided to aim for racing prospects with her.

The first foal Think Double produced for the Sweelys was Northern Thinking, a 1996 son of Northern Baby who carried their colors to victory in the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup and also placed in two other stakes over jumps.

Steve’s Double is Think Double’s only other foal of consequence. But he is not the only accomplished runner bred by the Sweelys. The couple also bred and sold Case of the Blues (In Case—Musical Cure, by Cure the Blues), a multiple stakes-winning Maryland-bred of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The Sweelys sold Steve’s Double for $25,000 at the 2005 Keeneland September Yearling sale. Oxbow Racing bought him at Keeneland and put him through the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May 2-year-olds in training sale, where he sold on a bid of $200,000 by CDP Racing, a stable name of their son, Cole Preston. Oxbow subsequently reacquired him.

The Sweelys still have the 21-year-old Think Double. They pensioned her after she produced a Lion Hearted colt in 2006, but when Steve’s Double emerged as a graded winner, they considered bringing her out of retirement for this season. The Lion Hearted colt, Lion’s Double, is in training for the Sweelys.


Three-year-old filly
Moon Catcher

B.f., 2004, by Malibu Moon—Smartster, by Smarten; bred by Albert H. Cohen, Randy L. Cohen and A. Ferris Allen III; owned by CJZ Racing Stable and Timothy Ritchey; trained by Timothy Ritchey. Foaled at Hickory Plains, Monrovia.

Moon Catcher sprinkled moondust everywhere she went last season—earning $663,450 on the race track and another $1.35 million in the auction sales ring.

Unraced at 2, the daughter of former Maryland sire Malibu Moon broke her maiden in her second start of the season, at Oaklawn Park in February, and rapidly moved up the ranks, capturing the Susan’s Girl Breeders’ Cup Stakes at Delaware Park on June 16 and then delivering a powerful frontrunning performance to capture the Delaware Oaks-G2 by a head over Winning Point. Subsequently fourth in both the Grade 1 Alabama Stakes (Saratoga, August 18) and Fitz Dixon Cotillion Handicap-G2 (Philadelphia Park, September 22), Moon Catcher made a stirring season’s finale in the Maryland Million Oaks (Laurel Park, October 13), ridden out to a four and a half-length score.

She campaigned at six different tracks, making 11 starts and registering six wins, one second and one third.

Bred by Randy Cohen, his father, Albert Cohen, and trainer Ferris Allen, Moon Catcher is the 16th stakes winner, and second Maryland-bred champion, to represent the Cohens as breeders (singly or in partnership); the Cohens are also the breeders of 1998 champion Maryland-bred 2-year-old male Red Star Rose. However, Moon Catcher is the richest runner born at the Cohens’ Hickory Plains Farm in Monrovia.

Moon Catcher is also a testament to the acumen of trainer Tim Ritchey, who bought her twice at auction. Ritchey spotted the filly at the 2004 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic December Mixed sale, where he paid $49,000 for her as part of a pinhooking venture with another partner. Unwilling to let her go at the 2005 Keeneland September Yearling sale, Ritchey signed the ticket for $75,000 on behalf of himself and CJZ Racing Stable’s Chuck Zacney (a co-owner of the Ritchey-trained 2005 Preakness/Belmont Stakes winner Afleet Alex).

At the end of her highly productive 3-year-old campaign, Ritchey and Zacney consigned Moon Catcher to the 2008 Keeneland January sale, where she sold on the second day of the auction for $1.35 million. Purchased by Narvick International on behalf of owner Marsha Naify, Moon Catcher reportedly will race this year with Christophe Clement as her trainer.

Moon Catcher is the eighth foal and second stakes winner for her dam, Smartster (by Smarten), who also produced the 1993 Baederwood gelding Smarten Up ($141,225, Loser Weeper S).

A few years ago, Cohen gave away Smartster as a pensioner, but the now 22-year-old mare is back at Hickory Plains, and is expected to be bred this spring. Her interim owner, Pam Bussard, bred a Partner’s Hero filly, Smart Hero (now 2), from Smartster; that filly was sold for $5,500 at the 2007 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling sale.

Moon Catcher is one of two Maryland-bred champions from the final Maryland-sired crop of Malibu Moon. A nationally prominent sire currently standing at Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky, Malibu Moon (by A.P. Indy) launched his career at Country Life Farm in Bel Air, Md., and was represented by the 2006 champion 2-year-old filly, Spectacular Malibu.


Older female
Silmaril

Dk.b./br.m., 2001, by Diamond—Kattebuck, by Spend a Buck; bred and owned by Stephen E. Quick and Christopher E. Feifarek; trained by Christopher W. Grove. Foaled at St. Omer’s Farm, Forest Hill.

Approaching the muddy pasture early one morning this past January, Sue Quick noted that all of the broodmares—except for one—had rolled in the goop. Silmaril glided up to the fence line without a hair out of place, with the kind of presence you might expect from a newly minted millionaire, and awaited her royal due—a peppermint.
“She wanted me to go back to the house and get her one,” said Quick, adding with firmness in her voice: “I didn’t do it.”

After five years as the pampered star of trainer Chris Grove’s Bowie barn, Silmaril has entered a new phase of her life, becoming a broodmare at St. Omer’s Farm, her birthplace in Forest Hill. From now on, she’ll be grazing in fields like any other horse—albeit an especially prized and watched-over one.

Campaigning as a homebred for Steve Quick (Sue’s husband) and retired Towson (Md.) radiologist Christopher Feifarek, Silmaril has already notched her place in Maryland racing history.

Her 2007 season, the richest of her career, generating earnings of $405,820, propelled her to just under the $1 million mark. And on January 12 she soared past it, annexing Laurel Park’s What a Summer Stakes for her 12th career stakes win.
Silmaril’s $1,032,973 in career earnings (from 35 starts) puts her in elite company—as one of 17 Maryland-breds, including five female runners, to have earned $1 million or more.

Never off the board in 10 outings last year as a 6-year-old, Silmaril (also the champion Maryland-bred older female in 2005) easily earned her second title while registering four wins and four seconds. She led off the season by winning the What a Summer Stakes in January, and returned the following month to finish second (beaten three-quarters of a length by Oprah Winney) in the Barbara Fritchie Breeders’ Cup Handicap-G2.

As the season progressed, she added victories in the Conniver Stakes at Laurel (March 10), Skipat Stakes at Pimlico (June 9) and Grade 3 Endine Handicap at Delaware Park (September 8). She was also runner-up in the Maryland Million Distaff Handicap (three-quarters of a length behind Akronism) and Northview Stallion Station Stakes.

Silmaril, whose sire, Diamond, stood at Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City, Md., when her dam, Kattebuck (by Spend a Buck), conceived his only millionaire, comes from a female family that has provided the heart and soul of the Quicks’ breeding operation.

Silmaril’s great granddam, Pilgrim’s Pride (1965, First Landing), was the Quicks’ first horse. They bought her as a barren broodmare for $5,400 at a Timonium auction in 1978. From a mating that same year to North Sea, a son of Nearctic standing at Alfred G. Vanderbilt’s Sagamore Farm, Pilgrim’s Pride produced the outstanding race mare Kattegat’s Pride. Campaigning for the Quicks and trained by Joe Devereux, Kattegat’s Pride was a Maryland-bred champion for three years running, from ages 3 to 5. She won or placed in 18 stakes and earned $511,812.

Kattegat’s Pride had a profoundly disappointing career as a broodmare, and is now—at age 29—living out her life as a pensioner at St. Omer’s.

But the legacy of Pilgrim’s Pride has been carried on by Kattegat’s Pride’s only daughter, Kattebuck, who produced Silmaril (named for the “great jewels of the J.R.R. Tolkien stories) as her fifth foal and first stakes performer. Also contributing significant black type has been Pilgrim’s Pride’s stakes-placed granddaughter Frozen Lock (by Corridor Key), whose daughter Lexi Star has won multiple stakes in 2007 and earned $452,624 for the Quicks and Grove.

Kattebuck has an up-and-coming performer in Another Jewel, Silmaril’s full sister, who broke her maiden on January 12 at Laurel, one race before Silmaril made her grand finale. The Quicks are also hoping for good things from her current 2-year-old colt, For Ivymount (by Not For Love). Kattebuck did not produce a foal in 2007, but is in foal for 2008 to Not For Love.

Silmaril is booked for breeding this spring to world-leading sire Giant’s Causeway, a son of Storm Cat standing at Ashford Stud in Kentucky.





Steeplechaser
Good Night Shirt

Ch.g., 2001, by Concern—Hot Story, by Two Punch; bred by Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Bowman; owned by Sonny and Ann Via; trained by Jack Fisher. Foaled at Dance Forth Farm, Chestertown.

Race-callers never know quite where to put the pause. Is it Good Night, Shirt—as if you are telling a shirt to have pleasant dreams? Or is it Good Night Shirt (no pause), as if you are truly enamored with someone’s choice in napping attire?

It really doesn’t matter. The horse named for an expression used by breeder Tom Bowman’s grandmother is a star. The rangy chestnut ramped up his career in 2007—winning three Grade 1 stakes, setting an earnings record, collecting an Eclipse Award and repeating as champion steeplechaser in his home state. He is the first Maryland-bred Eclipse winner since Declan’s Moon took the 2-year-old crown in 2004.
And you can say it anyway you want.

Bowman’s grandmother, Arlene Carlson, trotted out exclamations like “Good Night Shirt!” to avoid using stronger language. Her sayings live on in Bowman-bred Thoroughbreds Good Night Shirt, All Mighty Hannah and Good Gracious Ned. Carlson lived in Carroll County and is very dear to Bowman’s heart.

“She’s the source of all the country philosophy and wisdom I gained in my life,” said the veterinarian. “She used to say things like that, and we got on a kick of naming the horses after those for a while.”

Carlson would be proud of Good Night Shirt. The strapping chestnut grew past the sales ring as a young horse, made his racing debut at 3, and won twice on the flat before being sold to owner Sonny Via and trainer Jack Fisher as a 4-year-old steeplechase prospect. He won twice over jumps that year and moved up to stakes winner in 2006.

A victory in the David L. (Zeke) Memorial-NSA3 at Colonial Downs, and placings in three additional graded stakes, made him the champion Maryland-bred steeplechaser of 2006. But the best was yet to come.

In 2007, he scored Grade 1 triumphs in the Iroquois, Lonesome Glory and Colonial Cup. Twice he defeated legendary steeplechaser McDynamo. Good Night Shirt clinched the Eclipse Award in November at the Colonial Cup, a two and three-quarter-mile test that counts 15 champions on its roster of winners. For the year, the son of Concern earned $314,163—a record for an American steeplechaser.

The path to success began at the Bowman family’s Dance Forth Farm in Chestertown and moved on to Suzanne Moscarelli, who broke Good Night Shirt at her Country Roads Farm in Warwick, Md. She remembered a 2-year-old with lots of presence.
“He was gorgeous when he was here and we broke him,” she said. “He was scopey and big, bigger than the others, so he stood out.”

At Fair Hill Training Center with Moscarelli’s son, Vince, Good Night Shirt was purchased by Sean Clancy and Lizzie Merryman as an unraced 3-year-old in 2004. He won twice on the turf at Pimlico that summer for Merryman, and was sold to Via and Fisher as a steeplechase prospect in 2005.

Bowman loves the idea of having bred an Eclipse winner, though he can hardly call it a plan.

“It’s wonderful, a neat accomplishment,” he said. “We like to tell people we set out to breed the best jumper we could. But that’s just the way it turned out.”

Bowman and his wife, Chris, purchased Good Night Shirt’s dam, Hot Story (by Two Punch), several years ago from Suzanne Moscarelli, in a package with two other mares. With her oversized offspring having little to show for themselves at the time, Bowman gave away Hot Story in early 2006. The new owner planned to convert her into a sport horse producer, breeding her to Warmbloods.

But Hot Story, now 19, failed to conceive and was returned to Bowman, a specialist in equine reproduction, just in time for a late breeding to Waquoit last spring.

She was one of the final mares bred to Waquoit, who was put down in June after a long and successful stud career in which he sired several quality steeplechasers.
“If she can produce a jumper being bred to Concern, then maybe Waquoit can really help her,” said Bowman. “That was an intentional thing; the rest of it is purely accidental.”

No matter how you say it.