- Byron Rogers
A Kentucky Oaks winner! Congrats to client Clearsky Farm.
The Kentucky Oaks (Gr.I) has been run and won by the Clearsky Farm bred filly Abel Tasman. A daughter of the high class stallion Quality Road, out of the Deputy Minister mare Vargas Girl, Able Tasman was an Alan Porter Pedigree recommendation.
Clearsky is a commercial breeder and offered the Oaks winner as a yearling at the September Yearling sale, where we tested her for them (see her yearling photo above), but she went through the ring unsold at $65,000. Abel Tasman was a big gangly filly but she was actually turned down by a lot of vets at the sales for supposedly a bad scope. Here is the Performance Genetics Yearling Report for her.
Handed over to Simon O'Callahan, and subsequently trained by Bob Baffert for China Horse Club, the filly has grown into a horse just as our machine learning algorithm predicted, being at her best as a three year old. Its worth noting that she has, with her good cardio, outrun her genotype a little being a filly that wants every part of a mile to be at her best. This is not unusual for horses with this cardio type, especially when they are racing against their own age. The rest of her report is fairly self explanatory.
Amazingly Abel Tasman isn't the only Kentucky Oaks runner that was bred by Clearsky and found its way into the race. Ever So Clever, also a highly rated yearling (you can see her report here) was to be sold at the same September Yearling sale but with little interest shown in her, and a dam who at the time wasnt setting the world on fire (have a look at her yearling page here) the Cleary brothers elected to withdraw her from the sale. The winner of the Fantasy Stakes (Gr.III), and out of a high class stakes winning Mr. Greeley mare, Ever So Clever will find herself in the Clearsky broodmare band in due course.
Congrats to brothers Bernard and Eamonn Cleary, their farm manager Barry Robinette and his wife Lois, and all the team at Clearsky. A great result!