Quixote Stables made its first mythical claim today. We spent an imaginary $30,000 to claim a horse named Judicial Restraint out of the first race at Belmont. Claiming horses off of Chad Brown is most likely not a great idea. In fact it might be a horrible idea.
This horse is a Tonalist purchased by Seth Klarman out a Keenland yearling sale for $130,000 in September 2018. I knew the dam because her son was hip #66, a Liam’s Map colt I looked at, but then it worked 22.0. The dam of Judicial Restraint is a Mineshaft mare out of a Dynaformer mare. There is a lot of European long distance pedigree is this horse.
In his first and only start Chad put up a strange jockey and the horse trailed the field, went off at 20 to 1, but still ran a Beyer of 60. Today he drew outside and made a much better run. Linda Rice won the race with a nicely bred Bernardini colt that crushed the field. JR tried had in the stretch to get second. He looks like a big lumbering horse that could develop later as many Dynaformer’s do.
Chad put Javier on the horse today, so best guess is that he modestly sound, maybe just not very fast.
In the real world no one actually claimed any horse from this race. Let’s watch to see what Chad does with this guy and also watch what Linda does with the winner, Fried Rice King.
Normally I would prefer to claim from low profile trainers, but this the right horse. I could not find a Tonalist at the sale, so I claimed one. Seth Klarman (the Klar in Klarevich ) is a great investor who bought our investment research for many years. I often like his stock picks (Chenerie and Viasat, for example) but today I had to take his Tonalist away. Claiming is a tough game, it was hard to make the first one from a former customer.
Maybe the better claim was Spirt Animal who stormed home to win a $50,000 claimer on the turf an hour later. This was a nice Lemon Drop Kid colt who had off a 6 months layoff.
Buying A Race Horse 