David Cassidy on the Web
New York-breds in the News
68 NY-breds have won or placed in 2006 stakes outside state-bred ranks
November 1, 2006
By Rab Hagin
www.nybreds.com
Highlighted by new state-bred-and-conceived stakes winners HALF HEAVEN and LIGHTS OF BROADWAY about nine minutes apart on Saturday and bracketed by stakes-placed two-year-olds Admiral Bird and What a Tale on Friday and Sunday in Kentucky, the tally of New York-bred open (to horses bred anywhere) 2006 stakes horses reached 68. New York-breds through the final weekend of October have registered a total 106 top-three finishes in stakes events outside state-bred company during the year. The four aforementioned New York-breds that won or placed in open stakes -- three of them juveniles -- acquired their latest unrestricted black-type credentials at four tracks on three different circuits, with racing at Aqueduct being cancelled over the weekend because of storms and high winds.
David Cassidy's and Edward Lipton's homebred Half Heaven ($246,461) had placed second three times and third once in NYRA turf stakes in 2005-2006, including close back-to-back runner-up efforts outside state-bred company last fall, and had captured an open N2X Aqueduct allowance in April above her condition level. Still, the four-year-old daughter of Regal Classic had never raced on anything other than turf, and when Woodbine's $91,872 River Memories Stakes was switched to the all-weather surface at a mile and 70 yards, the wagering public dismissed her as the 42.10-to-1 last choice among 12 fillies and mares. Big mistake. The favorable turf-to-all-weather transition history already is well documented, and Half Heaven's class was never an issue, even though she had tired noticeably a week earlier on yielding turf in New York Showcase Day's Ticonderoga Handicap. Her Bloodstock Research Information Services (BRIS) speed rating (99) in the River Memories was the highest for a filly or mare going beyond a mile in a stakes race during the week of October 23-29. Half Heaven's three-year-old half-sister, E El R Stable's Doll Baby, had won Finger Lakes' Niagara Stakes in July, making their newly-minted multiple stakes-producing dam, Sand Pirate, an amazingly prescient private acquisition by singing and television star Cassidy, who boards horses at Dr. Jerry Bilinski's Waldorf Farm in North Chatham. Cassidy has bred all three winners produced from Sand Pirate, who had scored her seventh win as a seven-year-old in 2000 (when she conceived her first winner) but was running cheap -- although a half-sister had produced Grade 2 winner Continental Red ($1,363,788) and her dam was a graded winner. Half Heaven is the 50th stakes winner sired by Canadian champion Regal Classic and the fourth stakes winner this year to represent that stallion, who stands at Joe and Anne McMahon's McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds, LLC in Saratoga Springs.
New York Minute: Half Heaven appears to have a whole new world of all-weather track possibilities available to her, and she is being offered as a racing or broodmare prospect as Hip No. 95 at Fasig-Tipton Kentucky's selected mixed sale on Sunday, November 5 to dissolve the partnership between Cassidy and Lipton. "She'll make a good broodmare, or she can come back next year and earn $100,000," remarked the bay filly's regular trainer, Gary Contessa, to David Schmitz of The Blood-Horse, adding: "She's 100 percent completely sound."
