An hour removed from hitting the sales grounds for some last looks before the second session of the 2015 Saratoga yearling sale, Michael Wallace sat down in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Saratoga Springs and talked about the goals for a largely unknown racing operation based thousands of miles away.
“We want to participate in and try to win the biggest races in the world, including those here in America,” said Wallace, the racing and bloodstock manager for the China Horse Club.
The China Horse Club, led by the Harvard-educated Malaysian Chinese billionaire Teo Ah King, already scooped a major prize in Europe when it partnered with Coolmore and won the Epsom Derby and Irish Derby with Australia in 2014. Billing itself as a racing, business and lifestyle club, the China Horse Club dipped its toe in American waters by investing in Grade 1 winner Daredevil and other stallion prospects, but it was clear the top goals included major racing prizes.
Friday at rain-soaked Churchill Downs the China Horse Club took another step forward when Abel Tasman, a filly the operation owns in partnership with her breeder Clearsky Farms, skipped through the slop to win the 143rd running of the Longines Kentucky Oaks.
“That was good right?” Wallace said as he made his way back through the tunnel at Churchill, flanked by Teo and Kentucky state police officers, on his way to the post-race press conference. “I should say it was quite good.”
Abel Tasman was indeed good in the Oaks in front of 105,100 fans who braved a raw day with light rain and temperatures that barely cracked 50 degrees all afternoon.
Racing with blinkers for the first time, added by Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert with an endorsement from jockey and fellow Hall of Famer Mike Smith, Abel Tasman held off Daddys Lil Darling to win by 1 1/4 lengths. Last after the opening quarter-mile and 13th of 14 through the half – as 6-5 favorite Paradise Woods, Miss Sky Warrior and Farrell seemed to be trying to win the race by being first to the half-mile pole on the sloppy track – Abel Tasman won in 1:51.62.
“Obviously, we are on the biggest stage here,” Wallace said during the post-race press conference, flanked by Teo, Smith and Baffert. “To win a classic like this is right at the top end of what we are trying to achieve really. She’s a filly that’s obviously been there and done it at this level before.”
Abel Tasman collected her second Grade 1 victory, adding the Oaks to her resume that also includes last year’s Starlet Stakes at Los Alamitos. The daughter of Quality Road raced exclusively for Clearsky, the operation founded by the late Eamon Cleary and now run by his sons Bernard and Eamonn along with farm manager Barry Robinette, in the Starlet. The China Horse Club came calling after that race, Wallace’s colleague Mick Flanagan using his past connection to the farm and a deal was brokered to sell a significant interest in the filly.
“She was a filly that Mick Flanagan identified for us and brokered a deal with Clearsky and the Cleary brothers,” Wallace said. “Luckily, (we have) been proven very right today. She’s a filly that’s got a lot of scope, a lot of size, a lot of power. She’s going to be one to have a bit of fun with in the next 18 months.”
Trained at the time in California by Simon Callaghan, Abel Tasman made her first start for the partnership of China Horse Club and Clearsky in the Grade 3 Santa Ysabel in early March at Santa Anita.
Abel Tasman ran into Unique Bella, largely considered the early favorite for the Kentucky Oaks, and lost by 2 1/4 lengths when second. China Horse Club transferred Abel Tasman to Baffert shortly after that race – a decision Callaghan claimed on social media was made because jockey Joe Talamo wore the wrong silks in the Santa Ysabel, a claim that Wallace declined to discuss Friday – and she ran into another buzzsaw in her next start, finishing a distant second to Paradise Woods in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Oaks.
“She was kind of, not 100 percent focused,” Smith said of the Santa Anita Oaks. “She would get a hold of you for about sixteenth of a mile and there was a little bit of focus again. It is a good indication they probably need just a little bit of a blinker. So, as soon as we got off, (Baffert) said, ‘What do you think about a little bit of a blinker?’
“I said, ‘I was just getting ready you to tell you that.’ They went on. So her next work she had a slight pair on. She worked really well. Although I wasn’t on her for the work, I was standing with Bob when she worked. She was in the bridle the whole time breaking off. Even when she ran by her company, she stayed in the bridle and with her head down instead of looking up.”
Baffert conceded that “nobody was going to beat” Paradise Woods in the Santa Anita Oaks, but thought that Abel Tasman might be able to cut into the deficit with more focus. He saw immediate results in the filly’s training, once they were added at Churchill in the days leading up to the Oaks.
“Big,” Baffert said of the change. “I could see she was into the bit. The first day we brought her here, Dana (Barnes) galloped her, and she went around there sort of like she was lost. So then we put the blinkers on her to gallop and she was a different filly.
Abel Tasman was well back in the early stages of the Oaks, nearly 15 lengths back through the opening quarter put up in :22.79 by Paradise Woods and Flavien Prat. They led by a length over Miss Sky Warrior at that point and by the same margin through a half in a demanding :46.24. Farrell, the Fair Grounds Oaks winner who brought a 2-for-4 record at Churchill into the Oaks, raced in third with a big gap to a large pack of pursuers.
Smith stayed patient, something he’d done less than two months ago aboard Arrogate for Baffert in the Dubai World Cup and countless times in his legendary career. Abel Tasman started to make progress approaching the far turn and came with her run while wide at the three-eighths pole.
Baffert watched it unfold on the big screen in the paddock, as he often does with his wife Jill and son Bode.
“The way the track was today, I was really worried earlier because it seemed like just all speed on the rail,” he said. “I was thinking I am just always a day early or whatever. And I got to give a lot of credit to Mike. He just rode her with the confidence he does. The older he gets, the better he gets. I don’t know what it is. Big Money Mike.
“The last thing I told him, ‘Don’t think you are riding Arrogate.” Sure enough, ‘Well, you rode her just like Arrogate.’ The thing is, Mike, he knows I have confidence in him, whether it’s right or wrong. Whatever move, it’s not the end of the world. And the clients I have, if you don’t have mutual respect for each other, you have to trust each other.”
Paradise Woods, Miss Sky Warrior and Farrell tossed the anchor over the side of the boat and started to back up approaching the stretch just as Abel Tasman got in gear. She took the lead at the 3/16ths pole and opened up to lead by 1 1/2 lengths with a furlong to run. Daddys Lil Darling and Lockdown, both well back early, made steady progress but couldn’t get to the winner and settled for second and third. Vexatious also closed to be fourth, while Gulfstream Park Oaks winner Salty also ran on well late to be fifth. The first five under the wire were 13th, 11th, sixth, ninth and 10th after the opening half-mile, perhaps giving a lesson to believers in a speed-bias without taking into account the Oaks – and Derby for that matter – is at a distance not run in any other race on the card.
Talking about Saturday’s Derby field, where he doesn’t have a starter for just the fourth time since 1996, Baffert could have easily been discussing Abel Tasman in the Oaks and providing a further lesson to handicappers.
“A lot of horses wake up once they start going a mile and an eighth,” he said. “That starts separating those horses. A mile and a sixteenth, they all stay together. When they start going a mile and an eighth, they’re Real Quiet. War Emblem, you remember him? When they start going that distance, that’s when the big engines kick in.”
