By Katie Petrunyak
Special Me has been the gift that keeps on giving for breeders Carrie and Craig Brogden and Dr. Sandra Fubini of Machmer Hall. Now that the outstanding broodmare is 18 years old, you'd think that her best days are behind her. But with a Grade I winner competing at the top level of the filly and mare turf division this year and an impressive fleet of well-bred, unraced progeny in the pipeline, the mare's fairytale story just keeps getting better.
Carrie Brogden famously purchased Special Me, a Maryland-bred daughter of Unbridled's Song, for just $6,000 at the 2009 Keeneland January Sale. Born six weeks premature, the 14.2-hand filly who never placed better than sixth in three career starts was about as unassuming of a broodmare prospect as one could possibly find. Flash forward 15 years and the petite gray mare has built up a produce record worthy of the blue hen appellation.
“It's kind of amazing that she was actually named Special Me and she became so special,” reflected Brogden. “It's hard to put into words something that you just can't believe you actually have. I mean, you see her now at 18 and she's got old arthritic knees, but she has heart. Gosh, she has a heart the size of Texas.”
Special Me was already the dam of Grade I winner Gift Box (Twirling Candy), who now stands at Lane's End Farm, and Grade II winners Stonetastic (Mizzen Mast) and Special Forces (Candy Ride {Arg}) when Gina Romantica (Into Mischief) came onto the scene. She was Special Me's first seven-figure yearling when she brought $1.025 million in 2020 and two years later, she became her dam's second Grade I winner when she scored in the GI Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes. The Chad Brown-trained, Peter Brant-campaigned filly returned to Keeneland the next season with a win in the GI First Lady Stakes, posting an 11-1 upset.
Special Me and her Flightline filly | Sara Gordon
Brogden was on hand for both of those wins at her home track and she remembers them as two of her favorite days in the sport.
“Sheer joy,” the horsewoman described. “Just irreplaceable joy. It's the greatest thing about horse racing, which we do not get across enough. Everyone that has owned a racehorse and has won a race understands what I'm talking about. I wish I could bottle that feeling and give it to somebody because it's euphoric. And she's done it twice now.”
Gina Romantica ran a big number in last year's GI Breeders' Cup Mile, finishing in fourth less than two lengths behind winner Master of The Seas (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}). She was having a relatively quiet 5-year-old season this year with two unplaced starts at the Grade I level, but she recently put in a big performance in the GI Diana Stakes, closing late to just miss second by a nose. Chad Brown has said he is considering the GI Fourstardave Handicap on Aug. 10 for her next start.
Meanwhile Special Me had a few quiet years herself after producing Gina Romantica. In 2020, she aborted a Quality Road colt at six months. It was the only year she hasn't produced a foal in her 15 breeding seasons. The next year she had a Curlin filly who tragically died in a paddock accident.
The mare returned to making headlines with her next foal, a colt by Into Mischief who made history for his breeder when he sold to Coolmore for $1.2 million at the Keeneland September Sale last year.
“We have owned parts of several 2-year-olds who sold for more and we've consigned some higher-priced yearlings, but I think for our farm, $1.2 million is the highest-priced yearling [we have bred],” Brogden said.
Now named Jousting, the 2-year-old colt has been exported to Ireland and has yet to make his debut.
Special Me's yearling filly by Twirling Candy bound for the Keeneland September Sale | Sara Gordon
Special Me has another yearling pointing to the Keeneland September Sale and Brogden has hopes that the filly could perhaps out-do her older brother. The full-sister to Gift Box is by a sire that Brogden has supported enthusiastically over the years.
“We've had really, really good luck with Twirling Candy,” she said. “We've had a lot of graded stakes horses that we've sold like Sweetontheladies, obviously we had Gift Box, Trophy Chaser. This filly definitely has some traits of Twirling Candy and she definitely has some traits of Unbridled's Song. She's easy peasy to be around. Straightforward and a great mind. She's a big, strong filly and she's correct. The mare always throws correct, never had a crooked horse no matter who we breed her to.”
Brogden always gets a little anxious when it comes time for Special Me to foal each spring and this year was no exception. She told her husband Craig, who heads up the mare and foal division, not to tell her when Special Me was showing signs of foaling. Around 2:30am on April 7, she got the text she was hoping for: It's a filly.
From the first-crop of Horse of the Year Flightline, Special Me's latest foal is everything Brogden was hoping for and more.
“If I had imagined the best case scenario of what we could have possibly gotten from this mare, it would be what this filly is times two,” Brogden reported. “I cannot believe it. In my mind, she's kind of irreplaceable. Stonetastic was also a ten physical, which is why she sold for $77,000 as a daughter of Mizzen Mast all those years ago before the mare was a producer. That's how good of a physical she was and this filly rivals her.”
“She's really saucy,” Brogden continued. “I don't know if it's because the guys are afraid of her because she's worth so much money, but both her and [the yearling] are going to be hard to sell because mama is 18 now and at some point we know it'll be retirement for her. But the good thing is, no matter what Special Me looks like physically, her uterus is in great shape.”
Special Me was bred back to Into Mischief this spring and has checked in foal. Aside from arthritic knees that Brogden says are manageable and are a result of her underdevelopment as a premature foal all those years ago, the broodmare continues to thrive and does especially well when there is a foal at her side.
“She just loves her foals so much,” Brogden reflected. “I think she must give something to her foals like some tenaciousness or toughness. There is a reason that they've been so sound and successful. I can't predict the genetics, but obviously there's something special going on.”
The Brogdens do have a granddaughter of their superstar mare at Machmer Hall. They purchased Stonetonic, an unraced daughter of Stonetastic by Candy Ride, for $400,000 at the 2022 Keeneland November Sale. She now has a yearling filly by Yaupon and a colt at her side by Flightline.
Special Me's Flightline filly | Sara Gordon
Other than Stonetonic, the Brogdens do not have any other members of Special Me's family, so the idea of keeping one of her latest fillies is tempting.
“The biggest question I've had asked on a regular basis with the Twirling Candy is if I'm selling her,” said Brogden. “We're not going to go up there and give her away, but at some point with being commercial breeders it gets to a point where yes, we are sellers. It's hard for us to keep filles because they are so valuable. We are getting back into having a bigger racing program, but our racing program is basically for horses that, for whatever reason, we couldn't sell.”
Fortunately–or perhaps unfortunately depending on how Brogden is looking at it–the Twirling Candy filly had x-rays this spring that were “squeaky clean with a grade one scope.”
While the results of Special Me's offspring in the sales ring have been and continue to be imperative to Machmer Hall's success, Brogden is even more proud of the ability and soundness the mare's progeny have shown on the track rather than their growing reputation for producing big-figure sales.
She fondly remembers how, when Gina Romantica was preparing to sell as a yearling, a veterinarian was looking at her x-rays and complimented what he found.
“I remember he came up to me and said that she had the cleanest, strongest bone he'd seen in a long time from a yearling,” she recalled. “Clearly it meant something with her because she went on to become a Grade I winner. I don't know what the genetics are with this mare, but I know we're super lucky to have her.”
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