Greetings from Del Mar
“I left Lexington yesterday morning at 5am, it was 45 degrees and steadily raining, frankly a welcome sight for a fall that has been too dry for our young trees! Six hours later I am welcomed to the beautiful Southern California sunshine!
It’s only my second time to Del Mar, my first being last year for the Breeders’ Cup, and I get it. It is an incredibly special place and San Diego certainly lives up to the hype, especially for this Kentuckian who’s heading into the winter hibernation!
We are so blessed to have several connections this year that we are here to support. Just to have a runner over Breeders’ Cup weekend is why we wake each day, to have three two year olds we have raised competing on Friday is beyond words. I am so proud of our team and their incredible efforts to have three runners tomorrow: TIME TO DREAM (Juvenile Fillies Turf), HEEERE’S JOHNNY & STARK CONTRAST (Juvenile Turf).
TIME TO DREAM is most memorable because we sold her for $750,000 at last year’s Saratoga Sale to Mike Repole. This was the sale that John Stewart and Mike Repole found themselves in several bidding wars. The beauty of a live auction is watching people go back and forth…each bid exceeding our expectations on sale price! It was amazing and the next morning Mike reached out to confirm if John had been interested in the horse, or was bidding because he was interested in making Mike pay more money…a call I had never previously received!
All that to say, John had shown interest in the horse, so I felt his bids were genuine, not just to flex against Mike. The most beautiful part of the story is nearly a year to the day TIME TO DREAM wins her first race easily at Saratoga! She came back and won a stake easily and then ran a very good 3rd with traffic trouble at Keeneland.
She enters this race with a very live shot and I can’t wait to see her run. As a side note we had a young man work with us last summer named Nick Butler. Nick left us earlier this year to join Todd Pletcher’s barn and thus has continued to work with TIME TO DREAM from being a yearling to now being a Breeders’ Cup runner…I would love to see her perform as I know how impactful special horses have been in my life and know she means the world to Nick.
Later in the card we have both HEEERE’S JOHNNY and STARK CONTRAST in the Juvenile Turf. Both will be middle of the pack choices and I think both could be very live longshots. HEEERE’S JOHNNY is a son of Oscar Performance and bred by my grandfather, out of a mare he has been breeding for 3 generations. He has been second in his last three starts, and I think he could turn the tables and go from bridesmaid to bride tomorrow! STARK CONTRAST was bred and raised for the Amerman Family and won the stake here in California to get ready for this race… he is a beautiful horse and could be very live to defend his home turf.
All three of these runners were also conceived and mated by dad and Nicoma Bloodstock…so if you hear some celebration and high fives from wherever you find yourself, know it is a family affair celebrating a result that we dream about every day!!
Depending on how Friday goes I hope to follow up Saturday morning with some thoughts on Breeders’ Cup Saturday.”
Sincerely,
Price
