TDN: Team Valor buys Summer Soiree with Oaks in mind
 

War Front Filly Purchased by Team Valor for Oaks
from Thoroughbred Daily News

Summer Soiree (War Front), a 10 3/4-length winner of last Saturday's GIII Bourbonette Oaks at Turfway, has been purchased for an undisclosed sum by Team Valor International. The 3-year-old filly will be pointed to the May 6 GI Kentucky Oaks. Graham Motion, who trains all of Team Valor's North American stock, will receive the War Front filly Monday afternoon, after she is flown from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Lexington, Kentucky.

Guess Barry had some Gitano Hernando money to use.

I like Graham Motion but this was a classic Larry Jones move-up. Going to be VERY interesting to see if she holds together.

captain bodgit

filly version


-bt-

They better hope she doesn't become the pumpkin she was before Larry Jones trained her.

I wish I could book her purchase.

I guess he didn't learn after the brilliant Valiant Passion purchase from last Summer.

If only such a thing was possible!!

The last horse my partnership owned was trained by GM. He is a super nice guy and a very good trainer. However, I wasn't really a fan of horses who trained at Fair Hill and it always seemed like he worked them to death rather than run them into shape. #FrustratingAndExpensive

I wish him the best with this filly.

When did DT become Twitter?

It was an easy buy for him however. Given that a Team Valor horse won the major colt stake at Turfway that day, and is now headed to the KY Derby, selling shares in this filly will be a piece of cake, as many of Animal Kingdom's owners will likely buy into her in order to have an Oaks filly as well. Plus, on paper at least, she looks great.

Obviously, you and I think it will prove a disasterously bad purchase.

Yep.

However, if I could book the listed purchase prices of some horses who sell for a lot of money at 2yo sales - I'd be yielding some insane ROI.

There are sometimes horses who sell as high as the 100K to 250K range - that aren't worth much more than the meat they have on them. They have no hope even if they stay healthy.

Summer Soiree seems to have found a home on the grass. The field for the Boiling Springs wasn't exactly stellar but she crushed them.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/hor...ory?id=6704639

That was definitely some performance.

All the other races carded for the turf were rained off that day. You can see some super exaggerated margins of victory on wet turf courses sometimes.

Will be interesting to see how she performs on a firm turf. She did win that stake at Turfway by a million lengths in her only synthetic race though -so who knows.

Cool breeding: War Front to a Mazel Trick mare. Mazel Trick ran like friggen Swaps for Frankel once he took him off the turf and ran him on dirt. That horse never lost on dirt - and looked like the best in the country at any distance in '99.

Did that horse ever run further than 8.5f?

How far was the San Diego? 8.5f or 9f?

8.5f

"When Mr. Irwin bought this filly from Larry Jones, he felt the grass was probably in her future."
Comment from Motion after the race.

I'm sure he mentioned this along with the Oaks when selling shares.