$2,000 Mare In Iowa Hits Grade I Update

“My friends thought I was nuts when I got back into the horse business,” says Maynard Thompson. “But when those babies are about three to five days old, and you take them outside and turn them loose for the first time, every one of them thinks he's the toughest thing out there. And if that doesn't put a smile on your face, you're not breathing.”

Which is why Thompson perseveres on 15 acres of gently undulating terrain, a few miles south of Tama on the Iowa River.

“I'm 71 years old, and supposed to be retired,” he says. “But I still fool with the horses. That's all I've got anymore, is the horses. Some cats, couple of dogs. But I am just an old Iowa farm boy that likes horses.”

There's obviously something in the blood. His father used to tell him about traveling a Percheron stallion around as a kid, spring and early summer. And his uncle had a flair for horses, too.

“He was one of those types that if he heard of one in the neighborhood that was kind of an outlaw, he had to go trade for him,” Thompson says. “Because he just wanted to prove to everybody that he could make that horse work.”

Maynard Thompson with his granddaughters | Joyce Schmitz

Well, that will seem a familiar trait by the time we are done. But one step at a time.

When they put the interstate straight through the family farm, about 20 miles farther south, his brothers opted to go off to college. A couple became mechanical engineers. “They liked cars and stuff,” Thompson says. “If I took a car apart, I would put 10 pieces back together and have 50 left over. But the cows and the horses, I got along a lot better with them. I always liked being with the livestock.”

So for most of his life Thompson would make no more claim for himself than being “a hired man for a farmer.” Then, when Prairie Meadows reopened in the late 1990s, he decided to buy the odd Quarter Horse—and found that to be “just a good way to go broke.”

The final straw was when he sent a favorite mare to be bred, and she died in an accident.

“I just sold out then,” he recalls. “All the horses, the saddles, hauler, everything. Figured I'd never owned another horse in my life. But you never lose the itch, and in 2019 it got so it was a pretty good scratch. So I bought three mares from Texas. And the day they came up, it was 55 below zero here. It was January and, the guy who delivered them, I tried to talk him out of it. He said, 'It's the only weekend my boy can come with me.' And when they got here, with that windchill factor, they couldn't believe that anybody could live in that kind of weather.”

One of the mares had herself only recently changed hands, in foal to Flat Out at the 2018 Keeneland November Sale, for just $1,000.

“My idea was, I was keeping none of the babies,” Thompson says. “They were strictly going to be sold. Well, the girlfriend and I fell in love with her filly, we called her Flat Out Stormin. And she's now made over $200,000 up at Prairie Meadows.”

Another of the mares had similarly made a bare $1,000 at the November Sale, in foal to an unproven Constitution. Unfortunately she died shortly after foaling. But her baby was one that Thompson did return to Keeneland, as a short yearling. Consigned by Ballysax, and buoyed by Constitution's first juveniles, he made $135,000. “To me, that was hitting the lottery,” Thompson marvels. “I mean, I didn't know there was that much money.”

But it now turns out that Thompson had done something more remarkable still, in between, at the 2019 November Sale. He was on his way home when Connie Brown, who helps him at the sales, called about a Flatter mare in the dregs of the auction: Hip 4424. Though only nine, Applelicious was making her seventh appearance in a sale ring. How typical of the way commercial breeding operates! She had been an $11,500 weanling; pinhooked as a $50,000 yearling; and made $120,000 as a Timonium 2-year-old. But she failed to win in nine starts, once managing second in a maiden claimer, and her price had been steadily dwindling as various people tried to eke a few dollars out of her pregnancies. Her first foals had been plainly sired, with her latest weanling–a Firing Line colt–selling at the same auction for $18,000.

“Connie said she probably wasn't going to cost me a lot,” Thompson says. “And that she wouldn't hurt me any. Connie knows what I like: those big Quarter Horse types, not those tall greyhounds. And she knows what I can spend too. So I told Connie to buy her.”

Applelicious cost only $2,000, but this time things did not appear to work out so well. Two of the three mares he shipped up from that sale “got in a real scuffle” and both aborted. And then, the following year, they lost her first Iowa-bred foal.

Nakatomi | Sarah Andrew

In the meantime, however, her Firing Line colt was coming to life. Resold to Marc Detampel as a yearling for $25,000, he had won on debut for Wesley Ward at the Keeneland Spring meet and later that year added the Bowman Mill Stakes. Racing for a new partnership after a $205,000 transfer through the HRA Sale at Fasig-Tipton, last year he reached the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint with four graded stakes placings to his credit. He added a fifth when beaten just a couple of lengths by champion Elite Power, secured another elite podium in Dubai, and last weekend made his Grade I breakout with success in the Alfred G. Vanderbilt Stakes.

For this son of Applelicious, of course, is none other than Nakatomi. And suddenly the $2,000 mare is hot property. He's been urged to try a digital sale, though at present he's leaning to sending her back to Keeneland in November. She's 14, admittedly empty this year, but duly primed for an early cover–and there's more in her pedigree than might be expected, in terms of explaining Nakatomi: her half-sister by Maria's Mon is the graded stakes-placed dam of four stakes scorers, including GI Clement L. Hirsch Stakes winner Lady of Fifty (After Market). Significantly, moreover, Nakatomi is the image of his mother.

“If you were 100 yards away, you could switch horses and nobody would know,” Thompson says. “It has been exciting, following Nakatomi along. I thought it was a big deal last year, when he ran at the Breeders' Cup. I know I got lucky here. Like I said, I'm just an old Iowa farm boy. I don't know what she's worth–but I do know she's worth a hell of a lot more since last Saturday.”

Whatever happens next, Thompson has meanwhile made his own contribution to the Applelicious story, with a show of exactly the same maverick belief that made him purchase a $2,000 reject in the first place.

For Nakatomi has two Iowa-bred siblings. The first, a 2-year-old filly by Timeline, is training at Prairie Meadows. “I'm not a big believer in trying to get a lot out of a 2-year-old, but she has some motor on her,” Thompson said. “The trainer is very, very happy with her. He just gets this gleam in his eye. 'Next year,' he says, 'you've got something special.'”

And then there is a young colt by a stallion that Thompson stands himself. Prince of War finished down the field as favorite for his only racetrack appearance, but he's a half-brother by Cairo Prince to Instagrand. He was another find at the November Sale, a year after the one that produced Applelicious.

As usual, Thompson had asked Connie Brown to take a look, and she loved him too.

“There's one thing wrong, Maynard,” she said. “You can't afford this horse.”

“Well,” he replied. “It doesn't cost me anything to watch him go in.”

In the event, he made a single unanswered bid. When he called her, Brown thought Thompson was kidding.

“You didn't buy that horse! What did you give for him?”

He had cost $450,000 as a yearling; Brown thought him still worth six figures. Thompson had paid $12,000.

“And his oldest babies are 2-year-olds now,” he reports. “I took three of his daughters to this Iowa sale last year, and they all looked the part. Some friends came up and said, 'If these babies can run anything like they look, you hit a goldmine on that stallion.' He has no race record, obviously, so people don't like that. But like I told them, 'If he'd won $1 million, he wouldn't be here.' So he's going to have to prove it himself, this no-name, shot-in-the-dark-stallion. But I think this mare's baby is awful nice myself.”

Nakatomi | Sarah Andrew

Of course, Thompson has the option of keeping the colt to promote Prince of War at the track–while either cashing out the mare, or setting a reserve that leaves him the option of a foal share to a top Kentucky stallion.

“I can part with the mare if I have to,” Thompson admits. “It's the baby that's bothering me, because I think he's kind of special. So that's where the dreaming part comes in. Maybe he's the big-time horse that'll prove your stallion, and show you had the right idea when you bought him.”

He hasn't forgotten something his dad always used to say: “If you buy something, always be able to give it a better home than where it's been.”

“And some of these horses you see down in Keeneland, there's no way I could do that,” he admits. “They're so beautiful, not a hair out of place. So I tell you what, it's kind of hard on the sleep at night. I go to bed about 10 o'clock and at two in the morning I'm still awake thinking. I've had some friends say, 'Keep the mare, Maynard, she's what everybody wants from this game.' But maybe she's worth more than I should be fooling with.”

But the bottom line is that he has put himself in a win-win situation, and should be proud of what he has done. After all, he's similarly confounded expectations with other mares that nobody wanted. Whatever he decides, he has earned the right to his own decision–and, above all, to enjoy the ride.

“My daughters think I'm crazy for working at it as hard as I do,” Thompson says. “But it seems to me, the old farmers that I knew, they quit, they were going to move to town and relax… And, hell, in three months they were dead of boredom. They'd worked hard all their lives and then suddenly had nothing to do.

“Last year I had to have major back surgery. I went out to do chores one morning, and I'm taking steps eight inches apart. I'm all bent over. I got tears running down my face. I mean, I was a hurting unit. So we go to the surgeon, and he wanted to do it right away. And I said, 'I can't.' And my daughters were with me, and my girlfriend, and they all said, 'Why ever not?' I said, 'I've mares going to have babies. And I got to get those mares bred back.'

“So I suffered through it, and then went and had the surgery. And for the first three months I thought, 'I don't know if this is the smartest decision I ever made.' But hell, I'm getting along pretty good for an old man. And with these horses, there's always something to look forward to.”