Won...and Done

Talk about an emotional swing!  I was in a meeting in Mount Pleasant, MI when E Sveikata’s race was run.  I got into the car about 15 minutes after the finish of the race to a rash of text messages from a friend in Vegas sending me the good news: Kat won!  Our girl was a maiden now more.  She professionally dispatched a group of $32,000 maiden claimers running wide the entire trip, roused when asked and keep the competition at bay for a 3-length victory – like a 6/5 shot should.

At this point my personal phone was dead and I only had about 10% left on my work phone but I jumped on Facebook to post the news:

“A maiden no more!!! E Sveikata breaks her maiden at Camder this afternoon!!!!”  (You read that right – Camder.  It’s an iPhone…I have fat fingers…). 

Not much later, as the congratulations started coming in, a friend in southern Cal added, “Congrats Ted Grevelis! She got claimed!”

Huh…

The elation quickly dissipated as the reality settled in.  I couldn’t contact our majority partner because the one phone was dead and the one in my hand just died.  My concern was immediately for him, Gabe Puniska and his wife, Jenepher.  Gabe was there when Kat was pulled from her mother’s womb.  She was a homebred and supervised every bit of her development. He’s been in this game a while and has lived through the ups and downs, but I had no idea how he was going to react with her claim.

I had several hours to stew as we heading toward the hotel in Battle Creek.  When the dust settled, Gabe was okay.  He was understandably conflicted but in the span of a week offspring of his broodmare sold horses in excess of $55,000 (a half-brother of Kat was sold at Fasig Tipton earlier in the week for $25,000) – not bad for a mid-level claimer/allowance mare that toiled at Canterbury Park.

The feelings of the group, while a bit mixed, were generally the same: she was great, and we made some money, let’s move on.  So that’s what we will do in some way, shape or form.  All the partners may not stay and some new may join us, but we will move one, secure in knowing that we were part of a two-year old’s development, paying out with no possibility for a return in months and then picking up a 4^th, 2^nd, a win and being claimed for more than we paid for her.  We came out of her ahead, and that’s never a bad thing.