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FROM SALES RING TO RACETRACK D I F FE RE N T O P I NIO NS O N BR IN G ING ON THE YO U N G RAC EH OR SE
The story is both funny and telling, especially as it comes from a legendary Hall of Fame trainer, courtesy of a newly minted Hall of Famer, trainer Mark Casse. Working for the late Allen Jerkens in his late teens and early 20s, Casse remembers the venerable “Giant Killer” of upset fame saying he wasn’t going to do anything with his two-year-olds because he wouldn’t have to worry about shins, sickness and all the rest. “I’m not going to train them at all at two,” Jerkens told Casse. A year later, commenting on the now three-year-olds, Jerkens said, “They did all the things they would have done at two.”
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ot even a trainer as great as Jerkens can predict (or postpone) what will happen with two-year-olds, either in health or performance. They all begin, for the most part, with fall yearling sales, most notably the August FasigTipton sale in Saratoga and the Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton sales in Lexington in September and October. Casse compares it to the NFL draft with one enormous difference: football players have a body of work—college football—to scrutinize. With horses, it’s pedigree, eye and instinct. A seven-figure Book One yearling might make the proverbial “cut list,” never even reaching the racetrack. A sale might also yield a Seattle Slew who sold for a relative pittance—$17,500 in 1975—and who etched himself into racing history as both a Triple Crown winner and legendary sire.
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TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 62