It was quite a few days for Canadian-based trainer Kevin Attard.
On Saturday, he won his first Breeders' Cup race with Moira (Ghostzapper) in the GI Maker's Mark Filly & Mare Turf and some 48 hours later she went through the ring for $4.3 million.
Knowing he'd have plenty to say, we invited Attard to join us on this week's TDN Writers' Room Podcast presented by Keeneland.
He admitted that saying goodbye to the best horse he has ever trained was difficult.
“Well, right now it's extremely difficult, no doubt about it.” Attard said. “You know, for our stable, our barn, these type of horses don't come by often. Then you get a horse that did so many firsts like she did. There's obviously that sentimental attachment and love for her. Cultivating it all in the Breeders' Cup was a dream come true in a sense. Now to have to kind of watch her go, that has been one of the most hardest things I've had to do in horse racing. The love and the bond that you grow for these horses, it's hard to explain. And I don't think people realize how much we care for these animals, how much we appreciate them.”
Moira gave Attard his first win in the Queen's Plate (now the King's Plate), his first Canadian Horse of the Year and is in a strong position to win this year's Eclipse Award for North America's champion turf filly and mare. Ironically, she is not eligible for any Sovereign Award in Canada because she did not compete the minimum of three times in her home country, which is the requirement.
When asked if he thought the rule was fair, Attard said that he did not.
“I don't, to be honest,” he said. “Unfortunately, under the criteria, as you mentioned, for the Sovereign Awards, she is not eligible. I'm hoping that the Jockey Club of Canada that looks after the Sovereign Awards does something to honor and recognize her. Obviously, the seventh Canadian bred to win a Breeders' Cup race in history is pretty special. I think that alone tells you the significance and how important of a Canadian bred she is.
“As it stands right now, she has a very good opportunity to become the Eclipse Award winner,” Attard said. “Who would have ever imagined that when Donato Lanni put this group together to buy a Canadian-bred to try to win a Queen's Plate that this would happen? Here we are winning a Breeders' Cup race and now, possibly, an Eclipse Award. Like how surreal is that? I almost want to pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming.”
Apparently Moira has her quirks and Attard has mentioned that she can be a handful. She must also be pretty smart because she can tell when it's a race day, he said.
“On a regular day when you get her ready to go out and train in the mornings, you can put the saddle on easily,” Attard said. “I can throw the bridle over her head very easy. On race day, after let's say 12 o'clock, anytime after 12, you try to put that bridle on, she just knows it's game time. It's a fight getting it on her, getting the tongue tie on, too. She just knows on race day she's doing something different.
“And we've even tried to trick her,” said Attard. “We've literally put the saddle on her before sending her over just to try to trick her into thinking she's just going out to train. And still, she's just smarter than we are. She knows. She's just a real cool horse, a real special horse. Just a top performer that was so consistent and brought it each and every time.”
In our breeding spotlight section, we looked at the WinStar stallion Life Is Good (Into Mischief).
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar, XBTV.com, and the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, the team of Randy Moss, Zoe Cadman and Bill Finley reviewed several Breeders' Cup races, including the eventful GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic.
While all three applauded the effort of race winner Sierra Leone (Gun Runner), the conclusion was that runner-up Fierceness (City of Light) was the best horse that day because he held on so well after chasing a brutally fast pace. In trying to understand why City of Troy (Justify) ran so poorly in the Classic, Moss said it was simple because he is a grass horse who wanted no part of dirt racing.
The team also congratulated Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) for her win in the GI Longines Breeders' Cup Distaff, where she likely clinched the Horse of the Year title.
Finally, Moss returned to the subject of using GPS tracking for fractional times–like at Del Mar–and how the numbers are often incorrect.
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