Malloy Keeps Tradition Alive at Edition Farm

SARATOGA SPRINGS, New York–It only takes a few minutes spent with Vivien G. Malloy to know that she is truly the quintessential horsewoman. With decades of experience in breeding and raising horses, she is a fountain of information on the Thoroughbred and she continues to pour that knowledge into her breeding program at Edition Farm in Hyde Park, New York.

At age 84, Malloy continues to study the stud books and is very precise in selecting which sires to cross with her 12 broodmares in order to create her desired type of racehorse. It is that attention to detail that produced several black-type winners and earned her the honor of New York Breeder of the Year twice from TOBA and once from the New York Thoroughbred Breeders. She offers three yearlings from her widely-respected breeding program as part of the Denali Stud consignment at this weekend's Fasig-Tipton New York-Bred Sale.

One of these three yearlings, Hip 416, a Frost Giant filly named Frosty Kiss, is particularly special to Malloy, who has been prepping the filly for the sale herself with the help of her staff. Frosty Kiss is out of the unraced It's In His Kiss (Yes It's True), who is a daughter of Malloy's top mare Wake Up Kiss (Cure the Blues).

A multiple stakes winner in New York, Wake Up Kiss produced Malloy's top-level horse in Japanese Group 1 winner and multi-millionaire A Shin Forward (Forest Wildcat), and is the dam of recent Saginaw S. hero Wake Up in Malibu (Malibu Moon). The 15-year-old mare produced a colt from the last crop of Scat Daddy this year and will now be retired from breeding due to medical issues.

Frosty Kiss | Kathy Landman

“She's beautiful, very well balanced and graceful,” Malloy said of Frosty Kiss while sipping coffee at a table outside of Mrs. London's. “She's me. She's what I breed for. She's a beauty and all my horses are really beautiful. They are typey. We used to say in the horse show world that a horse was typey, meaning very Thoroughbred looking–long neck, long legs, graceful. That is what I breed for.”

While Bandoroff now preps the majority of her yearlings for the sale, Malloy will often prep fillies herself and this year Frosty Kiss was her lone filly and personal project. The native New Yorker, who spent years riding and showing horses along with her five children, puts her yearlings through a very unique program at her 200-acre farm that she started with her late husband Harry Malloy in 1986.

“It's all my idea because I was a horse show person,” Malloy said of her sales prep routine. “[Farm manager] Annette [Orlando] thinks it's crazy. I have a lot of hills at my farm, so we walk them up and down hills and in the indoor [ring]. I always work them both ways. I want them to go 50% one direction and 50% the other. I have a field where I have poles set up and they walk over the poles. The last month, we put them in a surcingle and draw reins and again go up and down hills to push the hind end and build up that. We also do a lot of grooming and they are in all day and out at night.”

For foals born at Edition Farm, training doesn't just start before the yearling sales. It starts from birth.

“The main thing is from birth, we handle them so much,” Malloy remarked. “We always lead the foal before the mare and it makes them brave. We just handle them constantly. We pet them. I have the guys pick up their feet way before the blacksmith comes. Through all of this, they learn to trust humans. The ones that I breed and raise compared to the ones I buy–it's night and day.”

Malloy is also selling two other yearlings she bred and raised in Hip 314, a Tale of the Cat colt out of Awesome Bull (Holy Bull); and Hip 575, a Candy Ride (Arg) colt out of Talkin Indian (Indian Charlie). A half-sister to MGISW millionaire Better Talk Now (Talkin Man), Talkin Indian also produced the GSP Skinner Box (Freud). Both colts were prepped by Denali. Malloy believes the colts need the use of the pool and walker that she does not have at Edition Farm.

“The Tale of the Cat colt is very nice,” Malloy commented. “Craig [Bandoroff] always liked him. Everybody likes him. I have a Candy Ride out of an Indian Charlie mare that is a half to a graded-stakes sister. He is completely black with feet just like Candy Ride's.”

In addition to her three homebreds, Malloy is also offering a filly she refers to as her “personal pinhook” in Hip 460, a daughter of Freud out of GSP Missunitednations (Peace Rules), who the breeder purchased for $32,000 as a weanling at the Fasig-Tipton October sale.

“I'm at the October sale and I'm looking through the catalogue and I see this Freud. I love Freud,” Malloy recalled. “She comes in the ring, and I didn't do any homework, but I look at the page and way down, way, way down, she is related to one of the horses I bred. So, I put up my hand and I bought her. Annette and I went running back to the barn to look at her vet report. She opens the book and goes, 'Mrs. Malloy, you are so lucky!' Everything was perfect, perfect, perfect. Craig prepped her because she was already in Kentucky and he really likes her.”

Though Malloy has bought and claimed many horses throughout the years, breeding is her true passion and she takes it very seriously.

“You try to give your mare the best shot, but it doesn't always work out,” said Malloy, whose Edition Farm houses about 30 broodmares owned by Malloy and various clients, including Eclipse winner La Verdad and MGSW J'Ray. “You try to give her everything you can within reason and then you wait and see what happens. It is a long wait. You may not know you have a wonderful horse until it's 3-years-old. It's a waiting game and in the meantime you have to decide who to breed the mare back to. I breed even my non-descript mares to top stallions to give them every chance.”

She added, “My sister said to me, 'Vivien, you need to do these games to keep your mind working.' I said, 'My whole life is a game!'”

Despite the trials and tribulations that come with breeding, Malloy wouldn't trade the feeling of watching one of her homebreds run for anything.

“There is nothing, nothing like seeing something that you have bred come in the paddock for their first race and come down the stretch,” Malloy remarked. “There is nothing like it! I have bought a lot of horses, but when my babies run, it is just incredible. I feel like God because I take this horse and that horse and I put them together.”

She continued, “It is completely different than buying a horse. That is why it is so worth while. All the waiting, all the planning and some disappointments along the way, but when they come down the stretch, you are levitating with joy.”

The Fasig-Tipton New York-Bred Yearling Sale gets underway in the Humphrey S. Finney Pavillion Aug. 13 at 6:30p.m.