Donegal Firing on All Cylinders

Dear Partners and Friends,

What a week! First, Irish You Well wins the Long Branch Stakes at Monmouth.   Then Finnegan's Wake wins the Arlington Handicap. Finally, O'Prado Ole runs the race of his lifetime in finishing second in the Stars and Stripes and only a questionable call by the stewards keeps him from being the winner.

A nearly quarter of a million dollar eight days for the Donegal coffers. To say nothing of the joy and the excitement this portends for the remainder of 2014. A month ago I told you we could well be sitting on the precipice of a big second half of the year and this is exactly what I was talking about!

Special thanks to Dale Romans. Dale has been focused and determined and the condition these two horses were in when they showed up in the paddock made it clear Dale had them ready to run.

O'Prado Ole (a $35,000 purchase) could be one of our real sleeper horses ready to step into the big time. He ran a 97 Beyer on Saturday and will step up in class next out. Likely to either the $400,000 St. Ledger at Arlington on August 16 (Million Day) or the $500,000 Grade I Sword Dancer the next day at Saratoga.

Finnegan's Wake. The little engine that could. Matt Gannon and I bred this horse and we sold him to Donegal for $25,000. Finn has now earned over $600,000 for the partnership. Finn is exactly the reason we bought PUCA (half sister; Derby Dreams VI). We knew she could have big time residual value as a broodmare if Finn won a stake. Now he has. And on top of it Mott really likes her as a racehorse!

Next up for Finn could be the Arlington Million August 16 or the Grade II Turf Classic at Woodbine the next day.  We will even take a peak at the Pacific Classic. We are playing with house money now. Even better would be a juicy purse in the same time frame that didn't require us to run in either of those.

A quick word about Victor Espinoza and Channing Hill. Both rode as close to perfectly as they could have. I told them both that with the lack of speed in these races both horses would be laying much closer to the lead than they usually are.   The result was that Finn (without doing anything outside his comfort zone) had very little ground to make up when the running started. Same with Ole. If only we could have those fractions more often!

Later today you will receive a stable update in terms of upcoming races. Also an email with some sales/general updates.

Stay tuned!

Jerry