It’s remarkable what great impact little events of chance can have on the course of history.

In the 1840s, a southbound traveler in North Carolina discovered that his horse had developed a sore back. He happened to pass a small farm belonging to the Hancock family and encountered one of the Hancock boys. The man proposed a trade: his sore but nicely-conformed horse for one of the boys’ simpler but sound horses. After consulting with a little brother, the boy agreed to the trade. The little brother, Richard Johnson Hancock, made the stranger’s horse into the best racing Quarter Horse in the local area.

That deal led to a longtime love of horses for Hancock, but it wasn’t until after the Civil War that he was able to explore his love of racehorses. Wounded in battle, he hap-pened to find refuge from the Yankee army in the woods near Charlottesville, Va. He was taken in by the Harris family, which owned a large estate. Like something out of the pages of a romance novel, he fell in love with one of the Harris girls, married her, and ultimately took over the family’s farm, Ellerslie.

Several decades later, Richard Hancock made sure all his sons knew horses from nose to tail before they left for col-lege, but it was his youngest son who fell in love with the farm. Arthur Hancock’s early years at Ellerslie were spent taking his father’s horses north for sale in New York, and when he finished his degree at the University of Chicago, he returned home to help Richard run the farm. Richard handed over operations to him not long after in 1909. At that point, the commercial bloodstock market was at a low point as officials in New York threatened to halt racing in the state. Hancock trimmed his stock down to twelve mares and hunkered down, determined to wait out the financial storm.

Keeneland Sales Legends: Arthur B. Hancock, Sr.By Natalie Voss

SPECIALJanuary 13, 2014 www.PaulickReport.com

“As long as I can make enough on the farm to feed these mares, I am going to keep them,” Hancock said at the time.

When the farm was on more certain footing, Hancock wisely took advantage of the depressed market to pick up British-born stallion Wrack for just $20,000; the horse would go on to become the damsire of Triple Crown winner Omaha and Ascot Gold Cup winner Flares. The former steeplechaser was one of several horses Hancock brought across the Atlantic, including Sir Gallahad and Blenheim, who were bought in some of the first known stallion syndicates.

ASK RAY

QUESTION: Will we ever see Garrett Gomez ride in another race?

ANSWER: My hunch is yes. Garrett, who hasn’t

ridden since summer of 2013 when he suffered a relapse on his 10 years of sobriety, has gone through personal and family issues. When those are resolved, he’ll be back in the saddle.

continued on Page 5

www.PaulickReport.com Page 2

Stallion SpotlightUncle Mo

By Frank Mitchell

PRS

Well-represented both by in-foal mares and by short year-lings, Uncle Mo is the second in a quartet of juvenile cham-pions that Coolmore acquired for its Ashford Stud opera-tion here in Kentucky. All champions at 2 and all by different sires and from different sire-line branches, the four are Un-cle Mo (by Indian Charlie, Caro male line), Lookin At Lucky (Smart Strike, Mr. Prospector), Hansen (Tapit, A.P. Indy), and Shanghai Bobby (Harlan’s Holiday, Storm Cat).

Champion and classic winner Lookin At Lucky (by Smart Strike) was the first of the four, and his ini-tial racers came to the track last season. Lookin At Lucky finished the season as the third-ranked freshman sire, and several of his offspring appear likely to improve with time and distance.

Now, Uncle Mo is on deck, and his first crop will be highly anticipated at the premium sales of juveniles in training. Then we will see how the first of them fare at the top tracks against the other hot young pros-pects of the coming season.

If the past is a guide to the future and to the horse’s pros-pects as a sire, the offspring of Uncle Mo will begin to prog-ress strongly through the spring, come out to race in the summer and fall, then show their form through the fall. So far, the first crop yearlings have been very well-received at the select sales of 2014, some of them bringing excep-tional prices, even better than their sire.

As a sales horse, Uncle Mo was a good prospect, but as a

racehorse, Uncle Mo was a revelation. Unbeaten in three starts at 2, the big, brawny colt was a man against boys with his romps in the G1 Champagne and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. Those made him champion of the division, and the great question for the untried stallion is whether his off-spring will follow their sire’s example.

The case for Uncle Mo’s success will be helped by the breeding program at Ashford. They get a high volume of mares to their stallions, and Uncle Mo has been one of their most popu-lar. His mates will have a great va-riety of types and bloodlines, and those which fit him best should be-come obvious more quickly.As an individual, Uncle Mo was notably precocious, and that is even more unusual because he is a towering beast of a horse. He is tall, like his tall and toweringly talented sire, Indian Charlie. The latter was the best racer by the very talented racehorse and sire In Excess. This is a line of big horses, horses with

size and speed and class.

Uncle Mo is a natural inheritor of this tradition, and his combination of size and mature development proved a le-thal combination against the competition. If he manages to pass along the required combination of those, plus class and soundness, then Uncle Mo could challenge for leader-ship at the top of the freshman sire list.

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Honor RollTwilight Eclipse a ‘Sound’ Investment for West Point

By Scott Jagow

2009 Bay Gelding, Purim--My Twilight Dancer, by Twi-light Agenda. Consigned by Select Sales, agt., to 2010 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale, purchased by John Langemeier for $1,000.

One of the great arts in this game is seeing something very few others see. At the 2010 Keeneland January Horses of All Ages sale, John Langemeier spotted talent in a short yearling that hadn’t been prepped and didn’t stack up well against his fellow auction candidates. Offered up because the colt’s breeder, Epona Thoroughbreds, had filed for bankruptcy, Langemeier bought him for just $1,000.

“Conformationally, he was very good,” Langemeier told This is Horse Racing three years later. “But a lot of people, when they buy horses at the sale, they want them to look like they can put the tack on them that day. They don’t want to wait.”

Langemeier waited patiently, for two and a half years, as the son of the Dynaformer stallion Purim developed at Spooky Hollow Farm, the Kentucky facility run by Langemei-er and his wife, veterinarian Clara Fenger. When the own-er/trainer felt his charge was ready, Twilight Eclipse hit the track and immediately flashed his Dynaformer bloodlines,

winning his first two starts routing on the turf at Indiana Downs. Other observers, including bloodstock agent Steve Castagnola, took note of the performances made possible by Langemeier’s foresight and care. Castagnola arranged a sale to West Point Thoroughbreds — the $1,000 short yearling was now a 3-year-old fetching nearly $200,000.

“Two things – how good his videos looked in his two races. And he just looked like he was a sound horse who had a really good outlook and a nice attitude,” said West Point President Terry Finley. “It was good for everybody involved. John made a really nice profit, and we had a good prospect on our hands.”

In the ensuing seasons, Twilight Eclipse has proven a per-fect partnership horse for his dozen investors. He’s started consistently at the top levels on the grass and has shown up nearly every time, hitting the board in 13 of 21 starts, earning six victories and nearly $1.3 million.

“His stamina is just through the roof,” said Finley. “He might not be the most talented older turf horse in the country, but he’s obviously shown that he’s been right there.”

Twilight Eclipse scored his first victory for West Point in the G2 W.L. McKnight Handicap at Calder in late 2012, then struck again in the G2 Pan American Stakes at Gulf-stream Park four months later, setting a world record for 1 ½ miles on the turf. He repeated in the McKnight a year later and captured the G2 Mac Diarmida Stakes next out at Gulfstream to begin 2014.

A trip to Dubai a month later was unsuccessful, and despite not winning after that last year, his season could hardly be considered a failure. Twilight Eclipse faced undefeated and almost certain Male Turf Champion (and Horse of the Year finalist) Main Sequence four times in Grade 1 events, finish-ing no worse than third and beaten twice by only a neck. One of those thirds came in Twilight Eclipse’s final race of the year, the G1 Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita.

Finley said the 6-year-old gelding will be pointed for a title defense in the Mac Diarmida Stakes next month, where, yes, he’ll probably have to face Main Sequence again. But while the Dubai World Cup may be on the agenda for his tenacious rival, Twilight Eclipse plans to stick to a domestic campaign that hopefully ends with another start in the BC Turf.

“Horses that compete fairly successfully at the top end of our business are very hard to come by,” Finley said. “You give thanks, and we really count our blessings that we’ve come across a horse like this.”

RANDOM FACTS by Ray Paulick

Kentucky-breds won 322 or 66 percent of all North American Graded Stakes races in 2014. Ontario-breds were next with 34 Graded Stakes won, followed by Florida (25),

California and New York (20 each), Great Britain (12), Illinois and Ireland (10 each), Pennsylvania (7), and Maryland and Virginia (6 each).

Lauren King

www.PaulickReport.com Page 4

PRS

Conrad Bandoroff, a senior at Sewanee: The University of the South, is the son of Craig and Holly Bandoroff of Denali Stud.

What area of the sport would you like to work in once you grad-uate, and why? After I graduate, I have aspirations of doing the Darley Flying Start, but my ultimate goal is to pursue a career in the breeding industry. I’ve spent time working in various aspects of the sport, but I’ve always enjoyed my time at the farm and the sales the most. The idea of breeding a mare, raising her foal, selling that foal at auction, and eventually watching that horse go on to suc-ceed on the racetrack excites me.

What were you most surprised to learn from your jobs and internships so far?I’ve grown up going to the sales and seeing the consignor’s per-spective, so my time with Pete [Bradley, of Bradley Thorough-breds] allowed me to be on the other side of the fence. Pete really helped me to develop my eye for a horse.

While I was in Australia, I was lucky enough to have an internship at Arrowfield Stud under John Messara. I spent several weeks in their Sydney offices doing pedigree research and working on vari-ous projects, but during my stay in the office I was able to spend a lot of time with Mr. Messara — accompanying him to evaluate stallion prospects and attending meetings at Racing New South Wales as part of his duties as the chairman of that entity. My time at Arrowfield gave me insight into the Australian industry, as well as how a world-class stallion station operates.

What do you think the Australian racing industry is doing right (and what is it not doing right) that the U.S. industry could learn from? The racing industry in Australia does a very good job of market-

ing their product, and their campaigns are successful. The Australian public has a profound appreciation and admiration for the sport, and the big days of racing draw huge crowds and impressive handles. Their industry has done a good job of making rac-ing appeal to my generation. A day at the track is a very social event, and any given Saturday at a Sydney track, you see a lot of Millennials enjoying a day at the races. I think the U.S. is im-proving in terms of marketing, but we could learn a lot from the Aussies on that front.I find that in Australia, the two states of Victoria and New South Wales often compete against each other on dates, a problem we often encounter here in the states. The problem lies in two separate, independent bodies between the two states that make coming to a resolution difficult at times.

As a second-generation horseman, what change are you most hoping to see in horse racing during your career? I think the biggest thing I hope to see as I set out for a career in the industry is addressing our medication policy in the U.S. Espe-cially as someone who wants to go into breeding, I think that if we don’t establish a uniform medication rules and discontinue our administration of race-day furosemide, we will continue to alien-ate ourselves from international buyers—and eventually our prod-uct will begin to be seen and labeled as tainted.

Getting to know Conrad BandoroffBack Ring

About

For advertising inquiries pleasecall Emily at 859.913.9633

Ray Paulick - Publisher ray@paulickreport.comEmily Alberti - Director of Advertising emily@paulickreport.comScott Jagow - Editor-in-Chief scott@paulickreport.comMary Schweitzer - News Editor mary@paulickreport.comNatalie Voss - Features Editor natalie@paulickreport.comEmily White - Weekend Editor emilywhite@paulickreport.comFrank Mitchell - Contributing Writer

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PRS

In 1910, Hancock’s wife Nancy inherited 1,300 acres of land in Bourbon County, Ky. Hancock initially intended to use the farm that would become Claiborne as an overflow facility for Ellerslie, but after a few years it became clear that the Kentucky farm was thriving and was a suitable home for the European stock Hancock liked to import. Hancock brought his farm superintendent with him from Ellerslie to do some building on the Kentucky property. Decades later, Arthur “Bull” Hancock Jr. recalled the moment to the Courier Journal & Times Magazine:

“They built the stud barn and the barn up on the hill and that barn there on the right … and when they finished my father said, ‘Well that’s all the barns we’ll ever need here.’ I can remember him saying that.”

Those two buildings would have held some 60 horses, and of course, the farm grew larger than that. Hancock’s roster of European stallion blood had made him leading breeder by the mid-1930s; between 1917 and 1956, horses he bred won over 9,000 races and $15 million.

That power, combined with his preference for English and French bloodlines, translated into success in the sales ring, too. Hancock imported British-born mare Erne as a yearling in 1922 and crossed her with Blenheim, Sir Gallahad, and Gallant Fox, producing in-demand sales horses, among them Orange Blossom stakes winner Gallerne. Hancock also purchased Penicuik in England and bred her to Hyperion before shipping her to the U.S. for sale. She sold to Calumet and foaled Kentucky Derby winner Pensive, who subsequently sired Ponder. Hancock also sold Calumet Dustwhirl, eventual dam of Whirlaway. By the 1940s, Hancock’s breeding herd made him the most prolific consignor at sale in New York and Hialeah—perfect qualifications to help him lead the charge to establish a sale site at Keeneland.

Hancock held onto the reins at Claiborne very nearly until his death in 1957 at the age of 81. Arthur Jr. took over the farm and the rest, as they say, is history.

continued from Page 1

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Five to Watch

Hip 471 Shesabullwinkle (1999 dark bay mare by Hes-abull x Wise Woman, by Believe the Queen): An unraced mare, Shesabullwinkle proved her merit with foals like Eliz-abul, a useful winner of six races who also finished third in the Grade 3 Calder Derby. The mare’s biggest winner is Shes All Eltish (by Eltish), winner of the G2 Bonnie Miss and twice placed at that level. Shesabullwinkle is in foal to lead-ing sire Congrats (A.P. Indy) on a late May cover.

Hip 537 Up (Ire) (2009 bay mare by Galileo x Halland Park Lass, by Spectrum): Classic-placed in the French 1,000 Guineas, Up is a winner of the G2 Blandford Stakes and had three more placings at the G3 level. She is a half-sister to multiple G1 winner Dutch Art (Medicean), winner of the Middle Park Stakes and Prix Morny at 2, multiple G1-placed at 3, and now a promising young sire. She is in foal to leading sire War Front on a March 30 cover.

Hip 548 Wildcat Marie (2007 chestnut mare by Wild-cat Heir x Miss Rachel Marie, by Wild Rush): A winner of the G3 Whimsical Stakes, Wildcat Marie won six of 13

career starts. She is one of 25 stakes winners by leading Florida sire Wildcat Heir, who died last week, and she is out of a talented mare who won half her 10 starts. Wildcat Ma-rie is in foal to G1 winner To Honor and Serve (Bernardini) on a June 4 cover.

Hip 566 Afleet Deceit (2006 bay mare by Northern Afleet x Deceit, by Danzig): Stakes winner of $314,274, this mare placed in three graded races. She is a half-sister to stakes-placed Bella Traviata (Indian Charlie), and her first foal, a 2-year-old filly, is by Indian Charlie’s champion son Uncle Mo. In foal to Scat Daddy on a March 24 cover.

Hip 702 Hatpin (2002 chestnut mare by Smart Strike x Lafayette’s Lady, by Young Commander): A stakes winner who placed at the graded level, Hatpin has produced stakes winner Dannhauser (Johannesburg) and stakes-placed Shaishee (Indian Charlie). A half-sister to three stakes per-formers and a stakes producer, Hatpin is in foal to Ken-tucky Derby second Bodemeister (Empire Maker). PRS

A look at some of the sale’s top hipsBy Frank Mitchell