2008 Maryland-bred champions

Horse of the year
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.

The Maryland Horse Breeders Association named a steeplechase champion back in 1962. The honor went to Hunter’s Rock. Through the years, other Maryland-bred jumping stars included Jay Trump, Inkslinger, Tuscalee, Life’s Illusion and Double Reefed. They won major races, made history overseas, dazzled aficionados of the “up-and-over” set – but they never did this.

Good Night Shirt, Maryland’s champion steeplechaser for the third consecutive year, also won the Horse of the Year title with a 2008 performance that left many grasping for descriptions. Five starts. Five Grade 1 wins. A second consecutive Eclipse Award. A single-season earnings record. Tops (by more than $100,000) on the earnings list of all Maryland-breds.

“If a steeplechase horse is ever going to get it, he’s the horse and 2008 is the year,” said Dr. Tom Bowman, the champion’s co-breeder with wife Chris. “He did everything he could do, and nobody else did enough.”

Bowman said that well before he knew the results of the official balloting, in which ‘The Shirt’ outpointed Heros Reward, 87-69. No other horse amassed more than 13 points in a 5-3-1 system.

Annually among the state’s leading breeders (and represented as co-breeders of 1998 Horse of the Year Tenski), the Bowmans do not have a steeplechase division. Good Night Shirt went through the same program as all other Thoroughbreds at Dance Forth (Chestertown) and Roland (Chesapeake City) farms. Matings get planned by factoring bloodlines, conformation, budget and the other variables breeders consider.

A steeplechase career was not the goal – it rarely is for any Thoroughbred – but the son of Concern and the Two Punch mare Hot Story found his calling and now stands third in career earnings among North American steeplechasers with $934,493.
Tom Bowman marveled at the improbability of it all.

“Most of the successes you have in this game are, at best, happenstance, and many of them are absolutely accidental,” he said after watching Good Night Shirt win the $250,000 Grand National in October. “All the plotting, planning and thinking you do, and many of the successes, come out of left field. It’s humbling; it kind of lets you know that you’re not as bright as you might think you are.”

Named after a saying by Tom Bowman’s grandmother, Good Night Shirt at first followed the arc of other Bowman horses, growing up on the farm, likely destined for the sales ring. Auxiliary plans were considered, as always, and needed in the case of Good Night Shirt: The strapping chestnut flew right past auction (he was too big, too unfashionable, too immature) and wound up doing everything about a year late.

Suzanne Moscarelli did his early training and her son, Vinnie, had the horse at Fair Hill Training Center early in his 3-year-old season (2004). Purchased by Sean Clancy and Lizzie Merryman, who liked his stride, his size, his presence and his potential “out” as a steeplechase prospect, Good Night Shirt joined Merryman’s barn at Fair Hill and embarked on a flat career.

He won back-to-back starts on the Pimlico turf in 2004 but was still a two-other-than at season’s end. Clancy and Merryman enacted a backup plan and sold the horse as a steeplechase prospect to trainer Jack Fisher and owner Sonny Via.

Based in Butler, Md., Fisher unveiled the 4-year-old hurdler in April 2005. Since then, it’s been nothing but upward momentum. Good Night Shirt won twice that first year, became a stakes winner in 2006, and took his first Eclipse Award with three Grade 1 wins in 2007.

In 2008, he raised the bar again, winning Grade 1 starts in April, May, September, October and November. Ridden throughout by Willie Dowling, the gelding finished his 7-year-old campaign with $485,520 and victories in the Georgia Cup, Iroquois, Lonesome Glory, Grand National and Colonial Cup. He won the first four starts by nearly 14 lengths combined and really proved his mettle in the fifth – a two and three quarter-mile classic run at Springdale Race Course in Camden, S.C., since 1970. Pressured by fellow Maryland-bred Preemptive Strike, Good Night Shirt won a stretch battle by a neck, hammering home his class.

The performance “proves that he’s a fighter too when they throw it to him,” said Dowling. “[Preemptive Strike] took it to me and made me work, but ‘The Shirt’ is a special kind of horse.”

Good Night Shirt’s family includes an eclectic mix, though success has come of late. Four-year-old half-sister Story of a Lion (by Lion Hearted) was stakes-placed at Charles Town and Timonium in 2008, and On the Throttle (also by Lion Hearted) won three races in 2008 at age 5. Three-year-old gelding Under Shirt, a son of Polish Miner purchased by Clancy from Bowman recently, is training for his debut this year.

Good Night Shirt continues an amazing legacy that traces back to his grandsire, Robert E. Meyerhoff’s homebred multimillionaire Broad Brush. Good Night Shirt is a third-generation Maryland-bred Horse of the Year, following his sire Concern (1994) and Broad Brush (1986-87). R

Two-year-old filly
Miss Charm City

Ch.f., 2006, by Bowman’s Band—Pam’ssummerwind, by Rodeo.
Bred by James Glenn; owned by Estate of James Glenn; trained by Carlos A. Garcia. Foaled at Wellington Park, Woodbine.

Miss Charm City stepped into a 2-year-old maiden race at Laurel Park in August as Miss Unknown. Now, she’s a beauty queen.

The daughter of Bowman’s Band and the Rodeo mare Pam’s­summerwind went three for three in 2008, all in dominating fashion, won two stakes and claimed the title as Maryland-bred champion 2-year-old filly.

Sadly, neither her sire nor owner/breeder Jim Glenn could reap the bounty of Miss Charm City’s achievements. Bow­man’s Band, who stood at Maryland Stallion Station in 2005 and 2006, was euthanized in August 2008 at famed Lane’s End in Kentucky after complications from colic surgery. Glenn, a longtime client of trainer Carlos Garcia and wife Carol, died of cancer at 78. The Monkton resident never saw Miss Charm City run.

The chestnut filly won that August 13 maiden race by four lengths, crossing the spot at the finish line where Glenn’s ashes were spread a few days earlier. Pointed for the $50,000 Gin Talking Stakes on Laurel’s turf course on September 6, Miss Charm City skated over the mud (thanks to Tropical Storm Hanna) and won the five and a half-furlong stakes by almost seven lengths.

Again ridden by Horacio Karamanos, Miss Charm City stretched to seven furlongs and produced another stellar effort in the $150,000 Maryland Million Lassie at Laurel on October 4. She survived a bump at the gate, opened four lengths at the top of the stretch and won by a comfortable length and a quarter over Fools in Love.

The victory provided the highlight to Glenn’s uninten­tional breeding program. He had bought Pam’ssum­mer­wind to race her; she flopped in four starts, then joined the Garcias at their Wellington Park Stud (in Woodbine, Md.) as a broodmare prospect.
Carol Kaye-Garcia planned the mating with Bowman’s Band and felt the impact in the winner’s circle on Maryland Million day.

“We had horses for Jim for 20 years,” she said. “If only he could have held on a few more months to have the fun of this, he must be up there somewhere watching. It’s bittersweet.”

On target for her first two-turn attempt in the Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship, Miss Charm City was shelved after suffering a suspensory injury in her left fore leg in the week leading up to the December race. She is expected to return to competition later this spring.

Miss Charm City is not the first Maryland-bred champion from the family of Pam’s­sum­merwind, whose half-sister Celestial Legend (by City Zip) won two stakes at 2 and was the champion juvenile filly of 2005. Pam’ssummerwind produced a 2007 filly by St Averil but, because of Glenn’s illness, was not bred for 2008. She is due to foal to Domestic Dispute this spring.R

Two-year-old male
Peace Town

Ch.c., 2006, by Peace Rules—Darnestown, by Williamstown.
Bred by Bowman & Higgins Stable; owned by Vinery Stables LLC
and Singer Stables; trained by Michael J. Trombetta.
Foaled at Dance Forth Farm, Chestertown.

In support of its stallion Peace Rules, the Kentucky farm Vinery spent $50,000 to purchase a Maryland-bred colt at the Keeneland September sale in 2007.
That chestnut colt has proven a good investment.

Named Peace Town, he went three for five in 2008 and took the Maryland-bred juvenile male championship for the partnership of Vinery Stables and Singer Stables. He clinched the title in his only start versus restricted competition, the $50,000 Maryland Juvenile Championship at Laurel Park on December 27.

Bred by the Bowman & Higgins Stable, Peace Town launched his career with a runaway maiden win on June 17 at Delaware Park. He ripped through five furlongs in 59.63 seconds, winning by eight lengths for trainer Mike Trombetta and jockey Julian Pimentel.

Next came a muddy allowance victory punctuated by a hairy stumble at the start and a four-wide move on the Laurel Park turn August 14. Fifth in the $100,000 Fitz Dixon Jr. Memorial Juvenile at Pres­que Isle Downs in September, Peace Town shipped to Belmont Park and finished second (a half-length behind Royal Vindication) in the $75,000 Trapp Mountain Stakes on October 13.

Reunited with Pimentel, who remained undefeated on the colt, Peace Town returned with four days left in the year and determinedly held off In the Juice to win the Juvenile Championship. Peace Town concluded 2008 with $88,850 in earnings.

The first foal of Darnes­town (by Williamstown), a stakes-placed winner of $94,280, Peace Town is another product of the successful partnership of Tom and Chris Bowman and Milton Higgins III. They sold Peace Town as a weanling at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic December Mixed sale for $37,000 in 2006. Sally Thomas pinhooked him to Keeneland the next year, when Vinery made the purchase.

One of trainer Bobby Frankel’s best runners, Peace Rules earned more than $3 million and counted the 2003 Haskell Invitational-G1 among his eight stakes victories. Standing at Vinery’s Florida farm, the 9-year-old stallion placed ninth on the country’s first-crop sire list in 2008, thanks to 23 winners. Peace Town was his leading earner.R


Three-year-old male
Willsboro Point

B.g., 2005, by Point Given—Petrouchka, by Red Ransom.
Bred by Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Bowman, Dr. Jason Layfield and The Thoroughbred Corporation; owned by Bonnie J. Wooster; trained by Scott M. Schwartz. Foaled at Dance Forth Farm, Chestertown.

Willsboro Point, a small town on Lake Champlain in northern New York, is a long way from Maryland. And Willsboro Point, the horse, hasn’t been much closer – he has never raced in his home state.

But that didn’t stop him from becoming the Maryland-bred champion 3-year-old male in 2008. He started last season as an unraced maiden and finished as a stakes winner of $115,440.

The path took plenty of twists.

Purchased for $47,000 by trainer Roy Lerman at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern fall yearling sale in 2006, Willsboro Point made his career debut on the turf at Tampa Bay Downs on January 5. He promptly finished ninth of 10 and earned the coveted “showed little” comment from the Equibase chart-caller. Things looked considerably brighter next time as Willsboro Point turned aside several challengers to break his maiden in a $50,000 claimer (also on the turf at Tampa) on January 31. He failed to win two allowance starts at the Florida track before heading to New York.

Lerman ran the bay son of Point Given in a $35,000 claimer on May 24 at Belmont and lost him to trainer Scott Schwartz and owner Bonnie Wooster. Victorious that day, Willsboro Point won again June 11 at Belmont and just missed in a first-level allowance race (beaten a neck by future stakes horse Wesley) 17 days later.

Trying stakes company next out, Willsboro Point confirmed the opinion with a one and a half-length score in the $75,000 French Colonial at Belmont Park at a mile and an eighth on the turf. His year ended when he pressed the pace but faded to seventh (beaten three and a half lengths by winner Wesley) in the Grade 2 National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame Stakes at Saratoga on August 4. The nearly 17-hand gelding grabbed a quarter in that race and missed the rest of the year but is prepping for a 2009 return.

“With a turf horse, especially a young one, if you miss a month at that time of the year, you might as well take the rest of the year off,” said Schwartz. “He really had a good year, and he could come back and have another one.”

The trainer saw Willsboro Point’s potential before he claimed him.

“I liked his pedigree, and he’s a big, good-looking horse,” said Schwartz. “He was only going to get better as he got older, and I figured if I got lucky, we could do okay and have some fun.”

Bred by Tom and Chris Bowman, Dr. Jason Layfield and The Thoroughbred Corporation, Willsboro Point hails from the accomplished race mare Petrouchka. The daughter of Red Ransom, a Grade 3 winner and earner of $266,396, sold for six figures as a broodmare before being purchased by the Bowmans at Keeneland in 2002 (while not in foal) for $14,500.

Unproven as a producer in 2002, Petrouchka is now represented by two stakes winners, as her daughter Jennie R. (a foal of 2001 by Awesome Again) won three stakes winner and is graded stakes-placed, with earnings of $338,034.

Petrouchka’s 2004 filly by Not For Love, named Hard to Get, sold for $110,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July sale as a yearling and for $460,000 (to Jess Jackson of Curlin fame) at Keeneland’s 2006 2-year-olds in training sale. Petrouchka has a 2-year-old colt by Leroidesanimaux (Brz) and a yearling filly by Dance With Ravens, both bred in partnership by the Bowmans.R


Three-year-old filly
Sweet Goodbye
B.f., 2005, by Louis Quatorze—Thirty Eight Steps, by
Thirty Eight Paces. Bred and owned by William R. Harris; trained by
Christopher W. Grove. Foaled at Murmur Farm, Darlington.

Unraced as a juvenile, Sweet Goodbye started her 3-year-old campaign as if she needed to make up for lost time – reeling off five consecutive wins from June through November for owner/breeder William Harris and trainer Chris Grove.

The fast-forward campaign proved rewarding, with $177,221 in earnings and the nod as Maryland-bred champion 3-year-old filly.

From the first Maryland-sired crop of Louis Quatorze, who stands at Allen and Audrey Murray’s Murmur Farm in Darlington, Sweet Goodbye opened the season (and her career) with a seventh-place finish in a Delaware Park maiden special weight on June 7. The bay filly showed her inexperience, breaking slowly and never getting into the race. She had no such ensuing problems, drawing off to win a Charles Town maiden special next out by 10 lengths.

Up and up she climbed from there. She won a first-level allowance in July at Philadelphia Park, her first time going a mile and a sixteenth, by five and a quarter lengths. The next step, a second-level allowance at Charles Town at the same distance in September, was just as easy as she led at every call to win by four and a quarter lengths. Then came the triumphant Maryland Million Oaks in October. And, for good measure, she defeated males in the two-turn Northern Dancer at Laurel in November. The streak ended with a seventh in the mile and a quarter Ladies Handicap at Aqueduct in December, but it did little to diminish a standout year in which she soared through her victories by an average winning margin of nearly five and a half lengths.

Sweet Goodbye put a hammerlock on her championship with her stellar run in the Maryland Million Oaks. The favorite at slightly more than even money, she battled for the lead along the rail and drew off late to win by three lengths over multiple stakes winner Saxet Heights.

The champion continued a legacy for Harris, who bought his first horse in 1961 and now owns about 20 broodmares. The Virginia resident acquired Sweet Goodbye’s great-granddam, Amaranth Street, in the 1970s at the conclusion of her racing career. She produced Amanti, who won or placed in 20 stakes for Harris. Amanti extended the success by producing stakes horses Nawmon, Quiet Gratitude and Imadefender, and the unraced Thirty Eight Steps.

A daughter of Thirty Eight Paces, Thirty Eight Steps rewarded by producing three stakes winners in addition to Sweet Goodbye, all by Murmur Farm stallions: Norstep (1992, by Norquestor, $229,845, Politely S, etc.), Deer Run (1997, by Deerhound, $408,530, Mary­­land Million Sprint H, etc.) and Five Steps (2001, by Yarrow Brae, $413,746, R.R.M. Car­penter Jr. Memorial S, etc.).

Thirty Eight Steps died a few months after producing Sweet Goodbye (hence the filly’s name) in 2005, and Five Steps was euthanized in 2008 following an undetermined illness.

But the line lives on, and Harris loves the feeling of extending the family.

“I raised her, her mama and her grandmother,” Harris said at the Maryland Million. “I like to see them run. I don’t sell them, I just race them. I’ve been doing it 50 years; is that a long time? I was born on a farm, I liked horses, I just bought me an old broodmare, she had a foal, he won his second race and I’ve been hooked ever since.”

The Maryland-bred championship was the first for Harris and for Louis Quatorze, the 1996 Preakness winner who has sired millionaires Repent and Choctaw Nation and 2006 Eclipse Award finalist Bushfire.R


Older female
Smart and Fancy

Dk.b./br.m., 2003, by Not For Love—Substitute Teacher, by
Shelter Half. Bred by Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Bowman; owned by
Park Avenue Racing Stable; trained by Anthony W. Dutrow.
Foaled at Dance Forth Farm, Chestertown.

Smart and Fancy’s name could use a few more adjectives because she’s more than that. Fast would work. So would rich. Brilliant. Consistent. Tough. Just pick some and tack them on. The Jockey Club won’t mind.

In 2008, Smart and Fancy took a strong career and added three wins, two seconds, a third and $196,170 from six starts. Owned by Park Avenue Racing Stable and trained by Tony Dutrow, the daughter of Not For Love eased into her 5-year-old campaign with a third behind All Giving and Cat On a Cloud over the Pimlico mud in the off-the-turf The Very One Stakes on May 16.

Back on the grass the rest of the year, she won her next three and wrapped up the season with back-to-back seconds, giving her 21 top-three finishes in 23 lifetime starts.

The winning streak started in June at Colonial Downs, where she aired in the $60,000 Buckland Stakes. Next came Delaware Park’s $100,000 Light Hearted Stakes on July 13, then a classy allowance at Philadelphia Park in early September. Favored in Philadelphia’s $200,000 Turf Amazon on September 27, Smart and Fancy lost her position on the turn and settled for second behind Sheets.

Dutrow shipped the mare to Belmont Park for the $100,000 Xtra Heat Stakes on October 12, and she just missed her 14th career victory. At six furlongs, her longest race of the season, Smart and Fancy lost a nose-bob to the victorious Diamondrella.
The three-win season proved good enough. Smart and Fancy edged All Giving in the championship voting and gave breeders Tom and Chris Bowman one of their four Maryland-bred champions for the year.

Dutrow bought Smart and Fancy for $47,000 at the 2004 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern fall yearling sale after seeing her at the Bowmans’ Roland Farm in Chesapeake City. He loved her and would have paid more, only some bidders were scared off by the lack of a pre-sale endoscopy. She didn’t have a wind problem; she was just too high-strung to be scoped.

Undeterred, Dutrow made the purchase, and he and partners Richard Frisina, Alvin Akman and Stuart Grant have been collecting paydays since. Smart and Fancy lifted her career earnings to $755,363 and will be back for more in 2009 despite having turned up in November sales catalogues.

“She’s good, and we all can’t wait to get her back to the races,” Dutrow said in February. “At the end of every turf season, we put her in the sales in case she is not perfect. If we feel like that’s enough [racing], we’ll sell her as a broodmare. There’s no reason for alarm. She’s fine and will be back.”

Dutrow smiles when he thinks of Smart and Fancy.

“I’m lucky because I have a small handful of horses like her,” he said. “You know, the ones you always look for, that come back year after year – you have so much respect for them and what they do. You’re really blessed when you have horses like that. They become part of the family.”

The Bowmans bought Smart and Fancy’s dam, Substitute Teacher (by Shelter Half) in a package that also included Hot Story – the dam of 2008 Maryland-bred Horse of the Year and steeplechase champion Good Night Shirt – in 2001. Substitute Teacher produced three foals for the Bowmans before her death in 2006. Her final foal is Smart and Fancy’s year-younger half-sister, Studious, a multiple winning daughter of Allen’s Prospect.R





Older male • Sprinter • Turf runner
Heros 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.

Encore. Encore.

Good in 2007, Heros Reward backed it up with a standout 2008 season that pushed him to the brink of $1 million earned. The now-7-year-old gelding made turf sprinting an art form, winning three stakes and walking away with Maryland-bred championships in the older male, turf horse and sprinter divisions for the second consecutive year. Only the Horse of the Year title escaped the son of Partner’s Hero, that award going to steeplechase superstar Good Night Shirt.

Heros Reward and Good Night Shirt showcase the innate differences in Thoroughbred runners. The former is all speed, the latter all stamina. Heros Reward started seven times in 2008 and covered less than five miles; Good Night Shirt started five times and covered almost 13 miles. But there’s no question who’s faster.

Trained by Dale Capuano for Rob Ry Farm and Jane Marie Slysz, Heros Reward followed a similar schedule to that of 2007, which included five wins and four seconds in 10 starts.

He started his 2008 campaign in Florida in April, rallying for third in the Bob Umphrey Turf Sprint Breeders’ Cup Handicap, which lasted all of 55 seconds. On Preakness Day, May 17, he defended his crown in the Old Mutual Turf Sprint, going five furlongs in :59.19 and defeating True to Tradition by a neck.

Sent to Canada for the Grade 3 Scotts Highlander June 22 at Woodbine, Heros Reward controlled the pace throughout and held on to win by three quarters of a length in 1:08.02 for six furlongs – improving on his second-place finish in the 2007 running. Next came Penn National, where Heros Reward took on nine foes as the 2-5 favorite in the $100,000 Pennsylvania Governor’s Cup on August 1. Accorded top weight of 124 pounds, four to 18 pounds more than his rivals, he flew home to win by almost two lengths in a rapid :55.14 for five furlongs, about two-fifths off the course record.

Ridden throughout by Javier Castellano, Heros Reward tackled Philadelphia Park’s $250,000 Turf Monster Handicap on Labor Day and finished second, four lengths behind True to Tradition (who carried five less pounds) in the budding rivalry.

Capuano headed back to Woodbine for the $500,000 Nearctic Stakes, a Grade 2 that Heros Reward had won in 2007. He ran well again but ended up fourth, beaten a length, as True to Tradition held off Rouse the Cat by a nose.

With the new Turf Sprint division in place at the Breeders’ Cup, Heros Reward represented Maryland at Santa Anita in the $1 million race at six and a half furlongs on the downhill course, and did so admirably. Breaking from the rail, considered a decided disadvantage over the course, Heros Reward was eleventh of 14 early but closed into wildly fast fractions and finished fifth, beaten just two and a quarter lengths by longshot winner Desert Code.

For the year, Heros Reward earned $367,600 to push his lifetime bankroll to $911,216.

Consistently fast, Heros Reward started at six race tracks in 2008 and never earned a Beyer Speed Figure lower than 95. The champion raced for breeder Gretchen Mobberley before his current connections claimed him in April 2006. His sire Partner’s Hero, the Maryland-bred champion older male of 1998, stood at Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City, Md., when Heros Reward was conceived. Partner’s Hero now stands at Northview PA in Peach Bottom.

Lifes Passage, a daughter of Caveat still owned by Mobberley, has a 2-year-old colt, Crow Bar, from the first crop of Maryland sire Dance With Ravens. Because that colt was born May 30, Lifes Passage was not bred for 2008. She is due to foal this year in early March to the cover of Langfuhr.