Jay Hovdey’s wonderful series detailing his personal favorites continues with the canny claim who became a west coast star for Hall of Fame trainer Jerry Hollendorfer
USA: There are Thoroughbreds who leave a lasting mark because of their towering accomplishments. There are Thoroughbreds who become personal favorites because of their style, their swagger, and their connection to particular moments in time. Then there are those Thoroughbreds who labor in a swirl of history, leaving the stage forever associated with events that transcended their considerable impact.
Vasilika reigned as the dominant female grass horse in California through two solid seasons, during which she won 13 of 17 starts on turf in the West. Only a narrow defeat by the Joseph O’Brien filly Iridessa in the 2019 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf kept Vasilika from the national acclaim she so rightly deserved.
Still, had Vasilika won that race – instead of falling a neck short under a crestfallen Flavien Prat – she would have taken a backseat in all storylines to the plight of her trainer and part-owner, Jerry Hollendorfer, who was forced to hand over both his ownership and training role for that Breeders’ Cup because of actions taken against him earlier in the year by the management of Santa Anita Park and its owner, the Stronach Group.
The 2019 season in California began with a wet winter of rampant discontent, during which an inordinate amount of fatal equine injuries occurred at the track during both training and racing. There was enough blame to go around, beginning with the weather and track maintenance, but certainly including management’s stated policy of encouraging full fields of entries and the economic pressures put upon trainers and owners to run their horses.
Fatalities that winter were spread out across more than 20 different stables. But when a fourth horse in a period of six months from the large Hollendorfer stable was fatally injured, track management immediately banned the trainer from the grounds and barred entries in his name – enforced at all tracks owned by the Stronach Group, even though the trainer continued to be licensed and in good standing by the California Horse Racing Board. The ban included Golden Gate Fields, where Hollendorfer maintained another large stable.
One month earlier, on May 27, Hollendorfer had saddled Vasilika to win the Gamely Stakes at Santa Anita, her second G1 victory in a remarkable career arc that had landed her in the Hollendorfer stable as a $40,000 claim. Vasilika won four graded stakes during that winter-spring meeting, separating herself from both the local competition and invading talent trained by the likes of Chad Brown and Brad Cox.
Horseplayers, fans, and the opposition would brace themselves for the Vasilika finish, during which Flavien Prat, her boon companion, would extricate himself from the trailing pack, tip his mare to the right, and haul down horses that under normal circumstances would have been home free. The Gamely marked Vasilika’s 10th straight win on the Santa Anita turf.
“You’d think there would be a race named after her with that kind of record,” said Dan Ward, Hollendorfer’s top assistant.
They certainly could do worse. Vasilika was a racehorse to be admired from all angles, with a rare consistency born of soundness, class, and just enough pedigree to set her apart from the crowd.
Foaled in Kentucky on April 25, 2014, Vasilika is a daughter of Skipshot, by 1998 Horse of the Year Skip Away, while her dam, La Belle Marquet, is by Marquetry. Both grandsires played hard and won big at the top of the American game.
With $9.6 million in earnings from 38 starts, Skip Away was a tireless racehorse. As a stallion, he passed on his durability, but not necessarily his brilliance. Only 21 of his 489 foals that raced became stakes winners.
As for Marquetry, he was a flashy chestnut son of Conquistador Cielo bred in Kentucky by the internationalist Edward Cox Jr., who also bred Irish champion Woodman in partnership. Marquetry’s female line leads through various North American mares before arriving at Miss Grillo, the Argentine champion who mastered US males with regularity in the late 1940s.
At Keeneland in 1988, the yearling version of Marquetry was snapped up for $110,000 by eagle-eyed George Blackwell, acting for Juddmonte Farm, and dispatched to Guy Harwood in England. After a maiden win in four races at two, it was clear that Marquetry had more of a future in the US with Juddmonte’s California trainer, Bobby Frankel. Bouncing the colt back and forth between dirt and turf, Frankel found Marquetry to be a willing accomplice, taking down G1 prizes in the Hollywood Gold Cup at Hollywood Park and the Eddie Read Handicap at Del Mar.
Juddmonte sold Marquetry to Frankel and partners Dale and Morley Engelson at the end of the 1992 campaign, but it did not matter to the horse. Marquetry won four more significant stakes in 1993 and ended his career on a bittersweet note in the Hawthorne Gold Cup, losing by a neck while giving the winner eight pounds.
Marquetry was a prolific stallion from the break, with 101 named foals of 1995 in his first year at Vinery in Kentucky. The preponderance of his best performers were males, led by Breeders’ Cup Sprint winners Artax and Squirtle Squirt. His fillies, however, did go on to produce such profitable stakes winners as Promises Fulfilled, Discreet Marq, Cinco Charlie, and Arctic Cosmos, hero of the 2010 St Leger.
La Belle Marquet, from Marquetry’s 2004 crop, was bred by John and Martha Mulholland in Kentucky. She was sold as a yearling for $190,000, which made sense since her dam, the Topsider mare Good For Her, won a half-dozen races for the Mulhollands and managed to snare a little black type with a win at the now defunct Detroit Race Course.
La Belle Marquet was retired after only two races. Her first foal, by A.P. Warrior, was bought as a yearling in 2010 for $30,000 by Mikhail Yanakov, a native Russian who was planting his flag in the US racing and breeding business. Yanakov named the colt Guyar and sent him to clients in Russia, where he won the 2012 Krasnador Derby, the marquee race at the southern Russia track. Suitably impressed, Yanakov then bought La Belle Marquet in a private transaction.
At that point, Yanakov already had landed Skipshot at the 2009 OBS auction of two-year-olds in Florida, while in partnership with the Raut Farm of owner-trainer Gennadi Dorochenko. Skipshot remained in the US and was campaigned in California with Jerry Hollendorfer for Yanakov’s Olympia Star, Inc. partnership. He banked more than $330,000 and defeated Santa Anita Derby winner Sidney’s Candy in the Swaps Stakes before retiring to stud in Kentucky.
Skipshot’s dam, Heavenly Note, was by Kentucky Derby winner Sunny’s Halo. She also produced Skip Code, a full-brother, who won Canada’s prestigious Grey Cup Stakes. Skipshot was Heavenly Code’s tenth and last foal to make it to the races. Vasilika was from Skipshot’s first crop.
At the time, Yanakov was doubling as stable trainer in Florida, and he was not shy about his faith in Skipshot as a stallion. As that first crop hit the track, Yanakov dangled them in claiming races in hopes of getting Skipshots in as many discerning hands as possible.
Vasilika broke her maiden in her eighth start in Florida and was claimed for $25,000, then went through two more stables before landing with Robert Falcone, who got her for $32,000. At Santa Anita in early 2018, Falcone stepped her up to $40,000, won the race, and lost her to Hollendorfer on the claim.
Ownership of the new shooter was shared by Hollendorfer, George Todaro, All Schlaich, and the Gatto family of San Diego. Not only did Vasilika benefit from the stable’s familiarity with Skipshot, Dan Ward had been close to Marquetry during his tenure as assistant to Bobby Frankel.
“She came to us really good,” Ward said. “And coming to us with all kinds of conditions, it gave us a chance to really let her develop. She won five races in a row for us before we even tried her in a graded stake, and by then she didn’t think anybody could beat her.”
So dominant was Vasilika against the B-teams from other barns that she had to carry 129 pounds in her final starter handicap, which she won by nearly five lengths. Vasilika made her graded stakes debut in the John C. Mabee at Del Mar during the summer of 2018, with defending champ Cambodia very much in form at the time. But, as Ward suggested, Vasilika was feeling invincible, no matter what the company. She beat Cambodia by a length, with Prat grinning like a kid at Christmas.
“She was special,” said Prat, who at the time had only two-and-a-half seasons of US racing on the books. “She was very game, and very smart. It wasn’t that she listened to me, either. It was more that I would listen to her, because she knew exactly what she was doing all the time.”
Prat described Vasilika as pretty much a finished product from their first of 16 races together. There was no hint that she had once been offered for as little as $25,000. In the egalitarian culture of US racing, there have been any number of former claimers who made good as top-flight stakes horses.
John Henry is their patron saint, closely followed by Stymie and Lava Man, all of them earning a place in the racing Hall of Fame. And while it was widely known that Hollendorfer made a career out of upgrading claims before his stable became home to a higher percentage of stakes-class athletes, his work with Vasilika was extraordinary.
“Sometimes you get a horse that fits right in with the way you run your stable, and once they get going they can maintain their form,” Hollendorfer said. “They’re happy, and they just keep going.”
The reflection is not on Vasilika’s previous caretakers, but rather a comment on the mental toll that can be taken on claiming horses as they move from circuit to circuit, barn to barn. By the time Vasilika was led to the Hollendorfer shed row, on the afternoon of Feb. 11, 2018, she had been with five different trainers at seven far-flung tracks over a period of 17 months. Finally, Vasilika had found a home.
“Throughout the stable’s history, we’ve done very well with fillies,” Hollendorfer said. “Maybe they like the way we train. We always were quiet around the barn, so she became accustomed to that atmosphere, which might have helped her brighten up being stabled with us.”
With a win total that by now has reached 7,761 – behind only Steve Asmussen and Dale Baird – Hollendorfer can point to a host of major winners, beginning with King Glorious, winner of the 1988 Hollywood Futurity and the Haskell Invitational in 1989. The boys in Hollendorfer’s band have taken down two Santa Anita Handicaps, two versions of the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, and the Metropolitan Handicap, among other major prizes.
However, it is the fillies with whom Hollendorfer will be forever associated, including his three champions – Songbird, Unique Bella, and Blind Luck – and two more Kentucky Oaks winner as well as Blind Luck, Lite Light (1991) and Pike Place Dancer (1996). Stir in the G1 winners Hystericalady, It Tiz Well, Tara’s Tango and Tuscan Evening, and the record speaks loudly for itself.
Which is why the final racing chapter for Vasilika is so enduringly poignant. Hollendorfer took Santa Anita management immediately to court over his unceremonious ban, which was imposed without the hearing guaranteed by the contract of the standard stall application between trainers and management.
Del Mar management attempted to follow Santa Anita’s action, citing the “toxic” effects of association with Hollendorfer (because, went the reductive thinking, of the Santa Anita ban). But the trainer secured an injunction and was able to race during the summer of 2019, allowing Vasilika to win her second John C. Mabee Stakes in a thriller over the accomplished invader, Juliet Foxtrot
Because a defense of Vasilika’s victory in the 2018 Rodeo Drive Stakes at Santa Anita would have been impossible with Hollendorfer’s name attached as either trainer or part- owner, she was diverted to the First Lady Stakes at Keeneland and finished an admirable third in very deep water to Uni, subsequent winner of the Breeders’ Cup Mile.
Back home, there was no way Vasilika could miss the opportunity to run in the Breeders’ Cup on her home court. By then she was stabled and training across town at Los Alamitos, enjoying the same environment that benefitted California Chrome during his career and American Pharoah as an early two-year-old.
But Breeders’ Cup horses needed to be stabled at the site of the event, and Breeders’ Cup officials deferred to Santa Anita’s ban of the trainer. Hollendorfer sought injunctive relief, but was denied by the same court that sided with Santa Anita earlier. To get Vasilika into the Filly & Mare Turf, Hollendorfer had to remove himself from his ownership stake and turn her over to Ward as trainer.
“It was disappointing the way Jerry was treated,” Ward said. “But she deserved to run. They put us in a small barn behind the track kitchen. By the time we got to the race it was exciting. I mean, here was a horse that already had won 10 races over the course. If she wins, and my name is there, they can’t take that away. Of course, if you run second they forget about you real quick.”
She ran second, but Vasilika fans – this Vasilika fan – won’t soon forget the sight of her tracking the front-running longshot Mirth before Iridessa joined the hunt with a resolute jump at the top of the turf stretch. Caught briefly between Iridessa and the retiring Mirth, Vasilika seemed to idle for a stride or two but then refused to yield. To the eye, the margin was closer than the official neck, but the verdict was the same.
Hollendorfer watched the race from his hotel room in the nearby town of Monrovia. “Dan put the saddle on pretty good that day,” Hollendorfer said.
Otherwise, he keeps his thoughts to himself when it comes to the fallout from the Santa Anita ban. At the time of his ouster, he was on track for a 2019 season on pace with previous years of $9m-plus in stable earnings. While Hollendorfer stayed in California to train and race at Del Mar and Los Alamitos, Ward went on the road with strings to Monmouth Park and Oaklawn Park.
In the meantime, Hollendorfer waged a long legal battle in search of restitution for the financial blow that resulted from Santa Anita’s unilateral action. In June 2022, a settlement was announced, although no details have been released, other than the fact that neither side is allowed to reveal any specifics.
Vasilika was retired after the 2019 Breeders’ Cup with just shy of $1.9 million in earnings and was earmarked for the Keeneland sale of blue chip broodmares. Before she left, Prat drove his young family across town to Los Alamitos for a private farewell.
“She meant that much to me,” Prat said. “I had to say goodbye.”
A few days later, Vasilika was sold to Katsumi Yoshida for $1.5m. She now resides at the Yoshida family’s Northern Farm on Hokkaido, where in 2021 she produced her first foal, a son of the late Japanese dual classic winner Duramente. His name is Clutch Player.
While Ward flies the stable flag in the East and Midwest, Hollendorfer continues to train a small string based at Los Alamitos. “We’ll see about Del Mar this summer,” he said. “I hope to have horses that are competitive there.”
If not, you won’t hear Hollendorfer complain. He turns 77 in June 18, and if Vasilika turns out to be the last outstanding Thoroughbred of his landmark training career – a canny claim that became a star – both history and Hollendorfer will be satisfied.
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