(Austin, TX) – Seven juveniles have been supplemented to the 2023 Texas Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale, adding to an already record setting number of horses cataloged in April’s TTA Sales two-year-old sale.
HIP 187 is a filly by Dialed In who is a half to a stakes winner and from the family of MSW Gray Attempt. Consigned by 1880 Bloodstock.
HIP 188 is a filly by freshman stallion Catholic Boy who is from the family of MGSW Tax, MGSW Yell, and MG1W Elate. Consigned by 1880 Bloodstock.
HIP 189 is a filly by Tapwrit who is a half to two winners and from the family of G2W Doremifasollatido. Consigned by 1880 Bloodstock.
HIP 190 is a colt by Lord Nelson who is out of Malibu Party (SP mare by Hard Spun). Second Dam is the G1SW mare Malibu Mint. Consigned by Oak Creek Thoroughbreds.
HIP 191 is a colt by Half Ours out of G2SP/SW Moontune Missy who is half to four winners. Consigned by Clear Creek Stud.
HIP 192 is a filly by Congrats out of a Midnight Lute mare who was the champion imported filly in Mexico and is half to a multiple winner. She’s from the family of G3W Governor Charlie and champion Silverbulletday. Consigned by A B Dynamite Racing.
HIP 193 is a filly by Nyquist out of MGSP Maria Maria and from the family G3W He’s Got Grit. Consigned by Clary Bloodstock.
The sale is April 5th at Lone Star Park’s Sales Pavilion. The breeze show is April 3rd at Lone Star Park.
Paper catalogs are available. The interactive catalog is available at www.ttasales.com. A full downloadable catalog is available at www.ttasales.com.
Cagliostro with Rachel Beaulieu(left) Adrianne DeVaux (right)
New Orleans, La (March 22, 2023) – Cagliostro should count his lucky stars. The 3-year-old Upstart colt trained by Cherie DeVaux will be making his fourth start on Saturday in the $1 million Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby (G2) at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots. Stepping forward in every race, he’s earned the right to be there, but he lucked out to find three women ready to tolerate his antics, to teach him the rules of barn life, and to capture his overactive mind to show him his potential as a racehorse.
Physically the potential has always been there, as trainer Cherie DeVaux recognized when selecting him at the 2-year-old Spring 2022 Ocala Sale. Mentally, well he’s a Thoroughbred, and each comes with their own challenges. Possibly the best way to understand the project known as David Ingordo, Talla Racing, James Spry, West Point Thoroughbreds and Nice Guys Stables’ Cagliostro is to know a few things about the real-life Cagliostro.
An Italian psychic healer and alchemist living in the 1700s, Cagliostro was also a scoundrel whose writings were burned by the Catholic Church. Infamous across Europe for his antics, so much so that the real-life Cagliostro was also the basis for Goethe’s title-character Faust, who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads and lived a sinful life.
The parallels are uncanny, as the DeVaux barn has worked hard to sort out all the biting, the breaking loose, the misbehavior and get their Cagliostro back on the righteous path. The path of Kentucky roses, perhaps. But first, he’ll need to outrace eleven others in Saturday’s Louisiana Derby.
Cherie leads the team but her younger sister Adrianne DeVaux is the assistant trainer on the grounds and Rachel Beaulieu is the barn foreman. With Cherie at Ocala early in the week ahead of Cagliostro’s run in the Louisiana Derby, Adrianne and Rachel kept to task overseeing the 16 Thoroughbreds on the grounds, preparing Cagliostro for his first stakes race, and making sure their promising 3-year-old has plenty of bananas.
“He eats bananas everyday,” Adrianne DeVaux said. “His favorite part is the peel.”
A banana-loving colt, who in the beginning could readily be described as “bananas” – some things are just funny that way. Cagliostro, the Italian alchemist. Alchemy is a perfect way to describe the task which was laid upon the DeVaux barn as they’ve been hard at work melding Cagliostro’s reckless, unbounded mind with his raw physicality to transform it all into a new substance – a racehorse.
“When he first came into the barn, he was all over the place mentally,” Adrianne said. “He wasn’t focused on the track or in the barn. He wasn’t very friendly. You couldn’t put a lip chain on him, couldn’t put a bridle on him. He didn’t want to get medication, catching him in the stall was difficult. In July at Saratoga when Rachel (Beaulieu) joined our team I said ‘here, he’s your project. Work with him.’ Rachel was his punching bag for a while. He would grab her, bite her and she would stand there and take it, and he eventually realized he had one person who was in his corner. Rachel has helped to show him life’s not so scary.”
“It was a little bit of a struggle,” Rachel said. “When I showed up at Saratoga I saw this horse who was (reduced to) walking the shedrow because he kept getting loose when he went for a walk outside. I took it upon myself to be like ‘well, you are going to need to be able to walk like a well-mannered boy’.’”
Adrianne and Rachel have a subtle yet infectious joy to them. They are thoughtful and quick to infuse humor into any difficult task. They both put off an unflappable air, and once upon a time, Cagliostro was by all means a flapper. Another barn might have met his antics with forceful antics of their own. Not these horsemen.
“Patience is the key,” Rachel said. “Being calm. If anyone acts up around him, he’ll start freaking out.”
“He does like women, and I think being a team of women has been a big part of it,” Adrianne said. “In general women have the touch. Our stature, yes, but our demeanor – it’s Cherie, Rachel, and me. You have a team of women and a horse like him is able to understand ‘okay, it’s alright.’ Slowly he’s kind of realized everyone is here to help him. He’s had the same groom, he’s had consistency, and I think that’s really helped him. He loves Cherie, he loves Rachel, and well, he tolerates me.”
“For the most part, women don’t try to outmuscle the horse,” Rachel said. “If something happens, it’s like okay what happened? We figure it out, and do something different. Women know how to tolerate and give the horse space to learn. But if he crosses the line, then we let him know he crossed the line, correct him. It’s all about understanding how insignificant things become significant.”
After finishing sixth on debut at Saratoga as a 2-year-old, Cagliostro didn’t make his next start until January’s Lecomte undercard. He won his first start as a 3-year-old, then he stepped up to a salty allowance on the Risen Star undercard and would have made it two wins in a row if it wasn’t for Denington’s late jump past him at the wire. He’ll face Denington again in the Louisiana Derby.
“Most of the time you can tell horses what you want them to do,” Adrianne said. “(Cagliostro) has to have it spelled out for him. We can’t just show him two and two, he’s got to also know that it equals four. Then he’ll be like ‘oh, I got it now.’ Once he ran at Saratoga, he came back and you could see the wheels were starting to spin, like this is fun. Then he started getting into his works, and before he ran here (at Fair Grounds) he was still very green, but once he got into the race, he was like ‘wait a minute I got this.’ His third race here was even better. I think he realized that this is fun. He was having fun out there. Denington just surprised him and dropped him at the wire. But Cagliostro came back on in the gallop out.”
“From Saratoga to now he’s progressed so much,” Rachel said. “It was a team effort. Now that he’s getting bigger, I just kind of baby him,” Rachel said. “It’s cool to see his mind work. He’s always looking at things, assessing, analyzing. Cool to see him take it all in and not want to be so crazy.”
Whether mentally, physically, or both, every racehorse is an ongoing project, but Cagliostro’s story has a certain charm to it. The success the DeVaux barn has had with Cagliostro offers an insight into what many trainers are working with in our sport, specifically those with 3-year-olds currently in the thick of Derby and Oaks dreams. When they’re dreaming of roses, sometimes they’re dealing with bananas.
The Jockey Club announced Thursday, March 23, 2023, that the 2023 edition of the Fact Book is available in the Resources section of its website at jockeyclub.com.
The online Fact Book is a statistical and informational guide to Thoroughbred breeding, racing, and auction sales in North America and is updated quarterly. It also features a directory of Canadian, international, national, and state organizations. Links to the Breeding Statistics report that is released by The Jockey Club each September and the Report of Mares Bred information that is published by The Jockey Club each October can be found in the Breeding section of the Fact Book.
This edition of the Fact Book includes updates to the Reports of Mares Bred (RMBs) and Breeding Statistics sections. RMBs are now sortable by stallion name, number of mares bred, and state. The Breeding Statistics can be sorted by year and then by stallion name, mares bred, reports received, live foals, percent of live foals, and state. Both sections now have a search function and enable you to view all statistics or a certain number of statistics.
The 2023 State Fact Books, which feature detailed breeding, racing, and auction sales information specific to numerous states, Canadian provinces, and Puerto Rico, are also available on The Jockey Club website. The State Fact Books are updated monthly.
In 2021, The Jockey Club took over the production of The American Racing Manual from the Daily Racing Form, and the latest edition will be available as part of the Fact Book in the coming weeks.
The Jockey Club, founded in 1894 and dedicated to the improvement of Thoroughbred breeding and racing, is the breed registry for North American Thoroughbreds. In fulfillment of its mission, The Jockey Club, directly or through subsidiaries, provides support and leadership on a wide range of important industry initiatives, and it serves the information and technology needs of owners, breeders, media, fans and farms. It is the sole funding source for America’s Best Racing, the broad-based fan development initiative for Thoroughbred racing. You can follow America’s Best Racing at americasbestracing.net. Additional information is available at jockeyclub.com.
With an eye toward the future of our industry, Clear Creek Stud will once again be making a $5000 Scholarship Donation in the name of their clients to a college student with Louisiana based connections to the Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse Breeding and Racing Industry.
Clear Creek Stud recognizes that for many of the people who perform the hard work of this industry day in and day out, the rewards are often not financial. “We want to help the children who come from these families who put in the long hours and hard work that are essential to keep our industry in operation,” says Val Murrell, general manager of Clear Creek Stud.
The scholarship recipient will be chosen by the Louisiana Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association (LaHBPA) and based on their opinion and evaluation of need and merit.
Interested students should send a letter and resume to Eddie Fenasci at the La.H.B.P.A. office by end of business day, Friday, May 12, 2023. Letters can be mailed to La.H.B.P.A. attention to Eddie Fenasci 1535 Gentilly Blvd. New Orleans, La. 70119 or email to efenasci@lahbpa.org.
The recipient will be named on Saturday, June 3, 2023 at the LTBA Awards Banquet at Evangeline Downs.
THE 61-DAY SEASON RUNS FROM APRIL 7 THROUGH AUGUST 12
OPELOUSAS, LA –The Louisiana Racing Commission recently approved an amended dates schedule for the 2023 Thoroughbred season at Evangeline Downs. The meet will now consist of 61 days of racing, with opening night Friday, April 7.
The racing schedule will feature racing on Wednesday through Saturday for the first five full weeks of the meet. Beginning the week of May 18, racing will switch to a Thursday through Saturday schedule, with closing weekend now set for August 12. First post each night will be at the new time of 5:30pm Central time.
Director of Racing Chris Warren stated, “I feel the amended race schedule will enhance the overall purse structure and make for a stronger, more appealing race meet for both horsemen and fans alike.”
The 2023 stakes action begins on opening night with the $60,000 Acadiana for 3-year-old fillies at six furlongs and the $60,000 Spotted Horse for 4-year-old and up fillies and mares at one mile. The first Saturday of the meet will feature the $100,000 Evangeline Mile for 4-year-olds and up, along with the $60,000 Lafayette for 3-year-olds sprinting six furlongs. The Evangeline Downs track maintenance crew has been working diligently for the past few weeks to get the track prepared for the opening night, including having races scheduled for the turf course.
Racing fans should also mark their calendars for April 22 as the “Exotic Animal Racing” makes a return. The Saturday card will include races featuring camels and zebras that are sure to entertain and delight the crowd.
Evangeline Downs Racetrack Casino and Hotel, a property of Boyd Gaming Corporation (NYSE:BYD), features exciting casino action, live horse racing, the Fan Duel sportsbook and fun dining experiences. Evangeline Downs is located in Opelousas, Louisiana, off I-49 on Cresswell Lane at Exit 18.
New Orleans, La (March 17, 2023) – After running the first race, the decision was made to
cancel the rest of Friday’s card at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots due to inclement weather.
Live racing will resume on Saturday, March 18 with 9 races scheduled to begin at the regular
post time of 1:15 p.m. CT.
Also on Saturday at 11:45 a.m. CT, the field for the 110th running of the $1 million
Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby (G2) with starting gate assignments and morning line odds will
be revealed during the Louisiana Derby Draw Show.
The Louisiana Derby Draw Show will be broadcast on Fair Grounds simulcast & on Twitter:
@fairgroundsnola. Joe Kristufek and John G. Dooley will host and be joined by morning line
odds maker Mike Diliberto & racing analyst Kevin Kilroy. Following the post-position draw, the
connections on hand and members of the Fair Grounds management team will be available for
interviews.
New Orleans, La (March 16, 2023) – With less than two weeks to go in the 2022-23 meet at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots, there is a new leading trainer as Ron Faucheux has caught fire in the month of March. The Faucheux barn won their 33rd race of the meet in the finale on Sunday, March 12, capping off an eight-win week and claiming the lead for most wins for the first time this meet.
After winning with Janisthebeauty in the lid lifter on Wednesday, March 15, Faucheux leads all with 34 (24%), Bret Calhoun is one win back at 33 (25%), and Brad Cox has 32 (40%). (All stats are through the end of the day 3/15/23). Either of these three high-percentage barns could seal the deal in the closing days.
Faucheux has gone 15 for 32 since Ash Wednesday (Feb. 22) with a $4.08 ROI, a hot streak that could be the storybook cornerstone to three trainer titles in a row.
“Once I got the one title, just to compete and be in the conversation is enough for me,” Faucheux said. “Sure I’d love to win another, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m not going to be upset about it. If it didn’t happen the first year, I was going to be upset, I can promise you that. Even last year I just took it as it came. If it happens it happens, but I’m not stressed about it.”
One of the biggest successes for the Faucheux barn this meet has been the 3-year-old Allnight Moonlight. His win in the $75,000 Half Ours Stakes was a shift in the meet for a barn that didn’t have things go their way to start the year. Whether drawing poorly or having horses with minor setbacks, at first it seemed a three-peat was unlikely. On Feb. 25 Allnight Moonlight scored what would be the barn’s fifth tally from six starts in a week that began with Faucheux in third with19 wins. He trailed Calhoun’s 29 and Cox’s 27.
“I wouldn’t say that I am shooting for the title,” Faucheux said. “I’m going to place them where they belong and see how it pans out. If it looks like I’m close the last couple of weeks maybe we’ll try to shoot for it a little stronger. Trust me, I’m content having two titles. If I don’t get another, I’m fine. That’s two more than I ever thought I’d get.”
Besides Allnight Moonlight, Faucheux has a strong cast of sophomores and four of them were integral to the recent success: Not On Herb, Comanche Warrior, De Saix and Veterans Day each rung one up for the barn in March. Besides 3-year-olds getting it done, five of the eight wins last week came from class-droppers, often a sign the barn is getting aggressive to win the title.
“Honestly I always kinda do that,” Faucheux said. “With the way the purses are here at Fair Grounds, I always try to unleash a lot of horses. I open the stalls up for the babies we’ve got coming in, and you’d rather run for the decent money here than for half price over there (at other tracks in Louisiana).”
Prior to March, the story had belonged to Bret Calhoun and Brad Cox. Calhoun has landed in the top ten of the Fair Grounds standings 16 consecutive years and he finished as the runner-up three times (most recently in 2014-15), but he has never won the title.
“It would be nice to win, but it’s not our main objective,” Calhoun said. “The main thing is to try to win as many races and the most money as you can. To win a title you really have to do a lot of different things. You’ve got to have horses that fit in certain categories that you know those races will go all the time, condition horses, and cheaper horses. And you need to claim to run back, but we’re not going to do all that. It’s not that important to me, but I understand people doing it, but that’s not really what we’re trying to do.”
Calhoun’s first win at Fair Grounds came in 1996, and 576 of his 3,507 career victories have come in New Orleans.
“There’s no financial incentive, that’s why I try to run our horses in places where they can make the most money for the owners and us,” Calhoun said. “Making money for the owners, they’re likely to stay with you and keep sending you some more, so claiming and dropping and losing them money might look good in the win column but at the end of the day it doesn’t work out as well.”
Already with four training titles at Fair Grounds, the main focus of the meet for Cox is kicking off the campaigns for the Derby and Oaks contenders, and the barn has been second to none in terms of that. Ten open-company stakes races written for the crop of 2020 have been run so far this meet at Fair Grounds, and the Cox barn has won seven of them, most recently with Wonderful Justice in the Black Gold. Before that they scored with Angel of Empire in the Risen Star (G2), Instant Coffee in the Lecomte (G3), The Alys Look in the Silverbulletday, Jace’s Road in the Gun Runner, Corona Bolt in the Sugar Bowl, and Dazzling Blue in the Letellier.
“It’s been a great team effort throughout the meet with good riders, good grooms, and good hot walkers,” barn foreman Trace Messina said. “Everyone shows up every day and does what they have to do. It’d be great to win (the title) but right now the goal is to win the Louisiana Derby, the New Orleans Classic, the Fair Grounds Oaks. The trainer’s title is in the back of our heads, we do think about it, but we’re not going out of our way to win it. Ron (Faucheux) is catching fire so it could be hard. Still, we’ll give it our best shot.”
Messina is in his second year working with the Cox barn, but the New Orleans native knows the significance and history of winning the Fair Grounds title.
“I grew up coming to Fair Grounds as a kid,” Messina said. “Tom Amoss was running a clinic down here when I was growing up. Asmussen, too, every year. Growing up I remember Keith Bourgeois had a lot of business and did really well as far as Louisiana guys before Ron (Faucehux) took over the scene. There have been many great trainers who have come through here over the years. It’s not an easy trainer’s title to win.”
There are still a lot more races to sort out whether the 2022-23 title becomes Faucheux’s third in a row, Cox’s fifth, or Calhoun’s first. Already having drawn the races through Thursday, March 23, the Faucheux barn has 17 horses entered at Fair Grounds, the Cox barn has 10 entered (including potential sophomore stars Bishops Bay and Merlazza), and Calhoun leads all three with 18 entered to run.
The cost of keeping horses has been rising for some time now, but last year was an especially bad one when it came to finding hay. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, hay stocks fell to the lowest point they’d seen in a decade and in December 2022 were at their lowest since 1954. After a dry late summer and fall in many places, some 37 percent of the country is still considered to be in “extreme drought” conditions, with even more sitting at milder drought ratings despite recent precipitation.
According to statistics presented at a webinar hosted by the American Horse Council, the average cost of grass hay is up to $109 per ton nationally while alfalfa has climbed to $143 per ton. (This varies widely depending on where in the country you are.)
AHC President Julie Broadway said that hay prices and availability are subject to a variety of drivers, from the weather to fuel costs to fertilizer expenses and even the pricing/demand for hay from foreign countries that import it for their grazing animals.
Louisiana stallion Requite has his first winner to his credit. Three-year-old filly Luminous Flight (Requite-My Queen Olivia, by Half Ours) broke her maiden on March 9, 2023 at Fair Grounds in her second start. After a bumpy start, the Edward L. Cox trainee set the pace in the 6 furlong maiden special weight. Under the guidance of C.J. McMahon, the filly kept rivals at bay to win by 1 ½ lengths.
Luminous Flight was bred in Louisiana by Brandon Adcock. Her sire Requite is a 2012 son of G1 Carter Stakes winner, Warrior’s Reward. A multiple stakes winner who won every year while racing from ages 2 to 5, Requite placed in the G2 Amsterdam Stakes at 3. Requite won 5 races (2 stakes), with one stakes second and one stakes third from nine starts and earned $252,510.
Requite entered stud in 2019 and stands at Red River Farms in Coushatta, Louisiana for a 2023 fee of $1,500 live foal.
As a young boy, I spent summers mucking out stalls, painting fences, and helping out on my great-uncle’s farm. Early in the mornings, his grandson and I could hear him tapping on the door, telling us to wake up and get moving in Cajun French. “Levez, levez!” We’d jump out of bed and ride down to the track to watch the jockeys breeze the horses as the sun was coming up.
Those are memories I fear the next generation might never experience as we battle the Horseracing Integrity and Security Act (HISA) – legislation slipped into the COVID relief package and passed by Congress in the dark of night to federalize the horseracing industry and give complete regulatory power to a private corporation without consent of the individual states or even input from the horsemen themselves.
Horse racing in Louisiana has its roots in Cajun and Creole culture, where the infamous bush tracks of the 1950s produced some of the finest jockeys in the world. Soon, Acadiana became known as a place where you could start out riding barefoot and work your way up to winning the Kentucky Derby with an entire community to not only cheer you on but also finance the first major racetrack in the region — Evangeline Downs (where the announcer Gene Griffin would say “Ils Sont Partis!”, which means “And they’re off!”).
Fueled by this rough and tumble past, Louisiana horse racing has effectively policed itself for over 200 years, evolving over time to meet modern challenges while maintaining its unique identity. It’s an industry built with our own sweat and blood, supported by a tight-knit group of horsemen, racing fans, and family businesses. As in other states, we know how our horses handle our unique climate, our tracks, and our footing. We know the history of our bloodlines, the traditions of our sport, and the nature of this industry far better than anyone else.
That hard-won knowledge has created an entire culture within Louisiana, one that has grown from an economic impact of $460 million in 1979 to $1.5 billion today. As Attorney General, it’s my job to protect this industry, its culture, and its people. That’s why I have been fighting against HISA from the very beginning, even as political players pressured my office to not get involved. But like most Cajuns, when I stand for what’s right, I don’t back down.
At the core of HISA is this: a handful of wealthy players wish to control the sport through a one-size-fits-all, pay-to-play scheme that will decimate the inclusive culture of horse racing. And while we can all agree that we want integrity and safety in the sport, perhaps it must also be stated that we should never let a few bad actors define the whole. Yet under the guise of “integrity,” the federal government is using the excuse of bad actors to take away the freedoms and liberties of all horsemen while completely ignoring the unique cultures of each individual state and the people who have created it.
As a result, if HISA is successfully enacted, many of those who have been racing horses in their states for generations will be run out of business by ridiculously expensive fees, fines, and other barriers to entry. This will affect breeders, jockeys, farriers, veterinarians, tracks, and supply shops. Entire cultures will be decimated in support of unclear, inconsistent, and oftentimes dangerous new rules designed by political and corporate elites who can’t even decide what kind of shoes a horse should wear.
For Louisiana and her people, my Solicitor General Liz Murrill and I took on this battle. We stood up for horsemen when it was neither popular nor politically convenient because we knew that it was the right thing to do. We believe that horse racing should be enjoyed by all — not just an exclusive elite. And our fight is now leading to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a disagreement between two federal courts must be decided. That is why it is absolutely vital everyone stand up now for true integrity in horse racing, for state sovereignty, and for the culture of this sport.
I almost feel like my great-uncle is knocking on your door, asking you all to wake up and fight with us. Place the power back into the hands of the people, where it belongs. I cannot guarantee you a win; but I do believe that the greatest advantage we have are our numbers. So, if the attorney general of your state has joined our coalition in the fight against HISA, please thank them; but if your attorney general is not yet involved, please encourage them to file an amicus brief in support of our cause. And if you run an organization affected by HISA, please join us at the U.S. Supreme Court to voice your opposition to this gross federal overreach.
Now more than ever, your voices must be heard. If we are to protect horse racing, we must take action. And so I say, “levez, levez!” Let’s go.
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