Contest

Tapiture was a sire I was in liked after studying Dialed In. The guys at Darby Dan seem to be doing some creative thinking about who should be a sire. Tapiture’s career was solid, but unexciting. His early results have been interesting. For $10,000 he is worth a try. Now all we have to do is choose the right mommy.

Hip #1195 was by Tapiture out of a unusual mare Its’s Heidi’s Dance. IHD looks like a disaster with only the line “placed at 3 and 4”. But oh what places they were. She ran a 103 and then a 95 Equibase speed figure in MSW mile turf races at San Anita. Of course she did not get to races until November of her 3 year old year.

Her pedigree is very distance oriented, the dam is by Green Dancer, and the second dam has British distance pedigree. You might call this experimental pedigree at best, but IHD was already produced a graded stakes winner by the undistinguished Hansen. In all IHD has a fantastic 7 winners from 9 of racing age.

As a great grand daughter of AP Indy, and out of a Green Dancer mare it is amazing that this filly is even attending a 2 yr old in training sale, but her work was a solidly average 21.2.

The Tapiture filly I own 2% of is out of a nice race horse, but she never ran a number better than 85. Does that matter, who knows? The sire of my horses dam, was Service Stripe who won some small stakes in Detroit (yes the old track in Detroit). Green Dancer won a Classic race in France, and was the son of British Triple Crown winner Nijinsky.

My filly worked slightly faster at 21.1.

Better yet my imaginary purchase cost only $17,000, less than 2x, while Dare to Dream spent $50,000

Of course the Dare to Dream could look at each filly in person, and see the vet records, and measure the stride length. All I can do is read a sheet of paper.

In the real world the buyer was Mike Vitello, who has won 3 races in his lifetime as an owner at Tampa Bay. The Dare to Dream guys have won 297 more races at meaningful race tracks.

I really hope the D to D guys picked the right Tapiture. That is why I invested with them. Over thirty years ago my first boss called me “an arrogant son of a bitch” because I would not listen to Wall Street analysts. I officially declare a contest to find the better Tapiture filly. My odds are best 10-1 to win. That is why they hold horse races and trade stocks every day. People work hard, do the research. and have different opinions.

Let’s call #1195:

Quixote’s Contest

Let’s hope they duel down the stretch at next May’s Oaks.