[Kasept]

She was some kind of nice racehorse.. Saw her a bunch of times.


Yanks Music, champion filly, euthanized
By GLENYE CAIN OAKFORD

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Yanks Music, 1996's champion 3-year-old filly, was euthanized on May 15 because of complications after colicking, the manager of Adena Springs, Steven Nicholson, confirmed Friday.

Yanks Music was 15 and was carrying a Thunder Gulch foal who was not saved. Her 2008 Smart Strike colt is doing well.

Adena's owner, Frank Stronach, purchased Yanks Music in foal to Storm Cat for $1 million at Keeneland's November mixed sale in 1997.

Yanks Music, an Air Forbes Won mare, had an inauspicious career as a broodmare, producing just two starters and one winner - the Touch Gold colt Yanks Gold - from seven foals. But she was justifiably famous for her racing exploits for her owner and breeder, Michael Fennessy, and his partner Audrey H. Cooper.

Fennessy, who bred the filly in the name of his Irish American Bloodhorse Agency, had tried twice to sell Yanks Music at auction, turning down $6,500 for her at the 1994 Keeneland September yearling sale and $20,000 at the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co.'s spring juvenile sale the following year. In the end, he kept her and put her in training with Leo O'Brien, where his belief in her was borne out. Yanks Music won four Grade 1 races for a total of seven victories in nine lifetime starts, and she earned $787,600.

Yanks Music won all four of her Grade 1 races in 1996 and was beaten only twice that year, when she finished second in the Acorn and the Monmouth Breeders' Cup Oaks. She won the Mother Goose over future champion Escena and later took the Alabama, Ruffian, and Beldame, defeating such fillies as the 1995 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner, My Flag, 1995's champion 3-year-old, Serena's Song, and Grade 1 winner Clear Mandate.

Her owners flirted with the possibility of taking on Cigar in the 1996 Breeders' Cup Classic, but an ankle injury forced Yanks Music to the sidelines. While claiming her championship several months later at the Eclipse Awards banquet, Fennessy announced that Yanks Music would retire. Initial plans called for her to be bred to Cigar, who had retired after finishing third in the 1996 Classic, but that was upset by the horse's infertility. Mated to Storm Cat, Yanks Music was put in the sale where Stronach purchased her.