HorseRacingBC Serving the British Columbia Horseracing community
Issue # 46
B it s & Bi kes HorseRacingBC Subscription Can’t find a copy? Anyone wishing to receive this paper via email can email jimreynolds@uniserve. com and simply ask to be put on the mailing list. You will receive it (free of course) each month. 2012 Pacific Yearling Sale Cloverdale Fairgrounds Monday October 1, @ 6:00 pm Online Auction begins at 6pm Log on to: www.canamauctions.com Ten more Broodmares HarnessRacingBC is pleased to announce that they have approved the purchase of 10 broodmares from the Harrisburg PA. sale These mares will be sold at a mixed sale to be held in late November or early December. BCTOBA Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of the BC Thoroughbred Owners & Breeders Association will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday October 13th Location Hastings Racecourse Old Slots Floor meeting room The purpose of the meeting is to receive annual reports, elect four directors, approve the appointment of the auditor for the 12 season, and to transact such business that may properly come before the Annual Meeting. Looking for photos HorseRacingBC is looking for old photos of people or horses from the past. Jockeys, trainers,and backstretch personnel from BC’s racing history are welcome and will be used in future issues. Each photo will be scanned and returned to it’s owner in the condition it is received. No win photos please. The Thoroughbred Ladies Club of BC, whose charity work and scholarship program has benefited backstretch workers at Hastings Racecourse since 1973, meets the first Tuesday each month. If you would like to join them in their worthwhile efforts or help at the occasional function, please call: Linda Sentes at 604-318-7949 or Barb Williams at 604-542-8951.
www.horseracingbc.ca
October 2012
Second City Scores Stunning BC Derby Upset Touted as a speed horse that has never run further than seven furlongs Second City was an unknown factor around three turns. There was enough mystery around the horse to generate a lot of talk and a not so confident odds of five to one when he went to post. Breaking slowly with a little bump and shuffle at the start he trailed the field for the first half mile. But when jockey ‘King Richard’ Hamel asked him for a little run halfway down the backside he showed just how good he is. “He kicked into another gear,” said Hamel. “This is a professional horse and to tell you the truth when we passed the wire this horse still and another gear in him.” Second City paid $13.80 for a two buck bet and in hindsight it was an overlay and there are a lot of factors to that argument. First of all the three races he won were in New York, where as they say a minute of racing is run a bit faster, pulling away from the field by a combined total of 22.5 lengths. He is by Distorted Humour, North America’s leading sire of 2011 who has sired 12 G1 Stakes winners, was leading sire of Stakes horses (45) in 2011 and since his freshman season has had $10,000,000 in progeny earnings including nine millionaires in four countries. His dam Sis City (winner of $795,764), by Slew City Slew, handled the BC Derby distance with ease in Aqueduct’s Demoiselle Stakes. So the pedigree is better than most we see around Hastings. Trainer Craig MacPherson, who looked in shock after the Derby, was impressed when the horse arrived in Vancouver but concerned that he had never run further than seven furlongs. “But he got off the van with an professional attitude,” he said “you could tell he was a pro.” These thoughts were echoed by jockey Hamel. “He had a very professionally attitude about him,” said the rider.
“When I worked him (3 furlongs in 35.1) two days before the Derby I felt I had a lot of horse under me.” Owner Peter Redekop has long been a supporter of racing here and is the consummate fan. Eighteen years ago he won the 1994 British Columbia Derby with Squire Jones, the 19 years gap proving as he says, “that the race is a hard one to win.” “We were in a bit of shock at the start,” he says about Second City. “The plan was to be in front (that’s how he won his three races but he broke slowly and then got bumped around a bit but Hamel was patient. He settled the horse down and when he asked him the horse made a big move and won it easy. “We bought Second City through my agent Alistair Roden in Charlestown after his second win. The plan now is to run him with three-year-olds where possible. So there’s not a lot left for him here,” he says. And sadly for Hasting’s race fans Second City was sold earlier this month for an undisclosed sum to Paul Reddam and will be sent to trainer Ben Cecil’s barn at Santa
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Anita in the next few days. Cecil flew to Hastings on Thursday to watch the Second City gallop, and he liked what he saw. “I probably liked him too much,” Cecil said. “He looks like an easy horse to be around and he just has a nice way about him.” Cecil said Reddam, whose I’ll Have Another won this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness, was impressed by Second City’s race in the B.C. Derby. “After watching the race, Mr. Reddam asked me to take a look at him,” Cecil said. “I can’t give you the exact price Mr. Reddam paid for him, but it was substantial.” Cecil said he and Reddam were looking at three races for Second City and his next start will probably be the $500,000 Grade II Indiana Derby at Hoosier Park on Oct. 6. Hastings attendance has been growing steadily for the past few years and this year had one of the largest Derby crowds for quite some time as shown by a 21 per cent increase in the total handle over last year’s BC Derby Day.