Hope Springs Eternal at Springland

We've all got a shot. But only Bill Nicholls has a Shotski (Blame). Not strictly true, of course. The son of Blame, who makes his sophomore bow in the GIII Withers S. Saturday, is banking his racetrack purses for a partnership comprised of Adam Wachtel, Gary Barber, Pantofel Stable and Mike Karty; and raised no more than $25,000 when sold as a yearling by Springland Farm and Prime Bloodstock LLC. But if that's a fairly minimal reward, for breeding a GII Remsen S. winner, then Nicholls can comfort himself that Shotski's dam is still grazing the pastures at Springland, his family farm near Paris; is still only 12 years of age; and is due to Bernardini in mid-March.

Who knows what Shotski might do, at Aqueduct, for the value of this sibling? Or what his further development, in the hands of trainer Jeremiah O'Dwyer, might yet achieve for his mother She Cat? A daughter of Bluegrass Cat, she was picked out by Nicholls for just $10,500, with an Archarcharch cover, at the Keeneland January Sale of 2013. In four starts, she had faced 35 rivals and beaten four of them, but she was a half-sister to one graded stakes winner and to the dam of another. Their mother, in turn, is out of a half-sister to Try Something New (Hail The Pirates), who was Shug McGaughey's first Grade I winner in the 1983 Spinster S.

Nicholls partnered with a couple of Arkansas pals, Elgin Hamner and Luke Kauffman, who had been looking to dip their toes in the business. She Cat was their first mare together, and their friendship is making the emergence of Shotski all the more rewarding.

Her Archarcharch filly was cashed in for $42,000 that November and went on to win five races. She Cat had meanwhile been sent to Pioneerof The Nile, just ahead of the American Pharoah curve, and produced a colt named Colonist who was twice graded stakes-placed. Next the mare was given consecutive assignations with Blame, first producing a colt who broke down on his second start; and then Shotski.

“She's not a big mare, but she's put together well,” Nicholls explained. “We thought we'd try to breed her to bigger horses and the Blames came out huge. Though Shotski wasn't as big as the first one, who was probably 1,100 lbs as a yearling.

“Shotski was a very laidback, easy horse, just never any trouble at all. I think that's the kind you want: the learning type, that will take the trainer's advice and do what they need to do. But we brought him up to Keeneland [for the September Sale] and there just wasn't a lot of interest. I thought he was a very nice horse, but the sire was kind of down then, and he was probably two or three days early for a Blame at that time. So we scratched him out, took him home and decided to put him through the October Sale.”

Not that there was a great deal more demand at Fasig-Tipton.     “So we sold him to some people we knew: I've dealt with Kings Equine in the past and they really liked the horse,” Nicholls said. “It wasn't quite what we wanted for him, but we weren't in a position to race anything at the time so we had to let him go at that.”

And maybe that was where Nicholls might have shared with his partners the seasoned, shrug-of-the-shoulder perspectives of a third-generation horseman.

Old timers in the Bluegrass will remember his grandfather, W.K. Taylor, who founded Springland in 1962 while general manager at Claiborne. His parents have a picture at home of Taylor greeting Secretariat to the farm, the champion exiting the orange and yellow horsebox. After that, Taylor took a similar post at Bluegrass Farm for Nelson Bunker Hunt.

Some of the original Springland estate was sold to other concerns, including Hidden Brook and Beau Lane, but Nicholls redeemed the brand when buying a nearby parcel of land in 1998. He was still only in his twenties, and maybe that was just as well. For while he was grateful for the counsel of his father and grandfather, it was an enterprise that required the energy of a young man.

“It was 150 acres with one horse barn on it,” Nicholls recalled. “No road, no fence, nothing. So we laid it out. I had some of my dad's old clients, some of my own. And then M.R.L.S. hit. I had to lay off all my help, and it was just me and my dad because everybody shipped their horses out of Kentucky.

“It was a real struggle. But I don't have quit in me. So I went to some friends, went round some farms, basically begged for horses. I filled back up pretty quickly, got some really good clients-and then the market crashed in '08. Again, tough times. But there's always something. Knock on wood, Shotski's been good to us, but his dam was carrying an Empire Maker a couple of years ago and was empty on fall check. Stuff like that hurts. But it's just part of the business.”

One way or another, then, Springland is just another of those smaller Kentucky farms trying to ride the dips, hoping that the good days level out the bad in the longer term. At one stage, things got too stretched: they were breaking 2-year-olds, pre-training, the works. Now they board 100-odd mares, and foal around 60 every spring. Nicholls has just a handful of his own, and another few in partnership with friends.

It's good that there remains a niche for places like this, among the more industrial outfits; and it's good when a sunbeam like Shotski illuminates the skills of born-and-bred horsemen like Nicholls. And while he knows he can't hit a home run every year, he believes that a more intimate regime has day-to-day benefits for his customers.

“I think it's about personal touch,” he explained. “One of my clients had horses at several different farms and he told me years ago that the difference was he could always call me and I can tell him right away what's going on with his horses. These other farms, they have to go call someone and they'll get back to me. I'm hands-on. I foal every mare, the night person calls me and I'm out there. I'm with the vet every day during breeding season, and basically 24/7, it's my life other than my family.”

But you can learn from the storied operators, too. His father rode with the vet round Claiborne, when Taylor was manager there; and Nicholls himself did the same for seven or eight years after leaving college.

“I learned a lot from how they raised horses,” he said. “They've done it for 100-plus years and they've not changed a lot over that time. I've never believed in doing anything that wasn't good for the horse. You feed them right, raise them right, you get good blacksmiths and make sure they're walking right. A yearling shouldn't come into the sale looking like it's ready to go to the track.”

Springland Farm co-bred the winner of the GI Santa Anita Oaks in 2014, Fashion Plate (Old Fashioned), but in the GI Kentucky Oaks she got upset in the gate-and that was that. No need, then, to tell Nicholls to keep his feet on the ground. But if you've raised a Remsen winner and he then goes on to win the Withers, it's hard not to allow the “D” word to start percolating through your subconscious. After all, the whole point of paying your dues is to enjoy the good times when you can.

“You have to, because there's more downs than ups,” Nicholls said with a shrug. “And you can be excited inside, while still being realistic because anything can happen. One of my partners texts Jeremiah O'Dwyer all the time and they do really like the horse. From my standpoint, I think he's a classic two-turn horse. That's kind of how he looked as a yearling, too, just a big stretchy type. I think he's a horse that should rate. I know he went out on the lead, in the Remsen, but I think he should be able to stay back and come running.”

She Cat has already more than paid her way, her weanling daughter by California Chrome having made $160,000 at Fasig-Tipton's Fall Sale in 2018. And though she missed the last cycle, after losing her Empire Maker foal, her future foals would seem likely to be moving up the catalog.

“My budget's pretty low,” Nicholls said. “I'm not rich by any means, I'm working class. I tend to be in that $20,000-$30,000 range when I go to buy a mare. My wife is a nurse, and she puts up with a lot because horses get in the way of a lot of family stuff. So you've got to love the animal, and you've got to love what you produce. It's fun to follow your horses on the track, after you've sold them; fun to see what you can do.”

He has a Shotski and, for anyone renewing the patient cycles of his calling, that's no more than you can ever ask.