Secretariat’s daughters gave the Thoroughbred industry the stallions A P Indy, Storm Cat, Gone West, Chief’s Crown, Volksraad and others. That’s a tough group of mares to rise above, but one Secretariat mare stands alone at the top by one measure – the number of stakes winners she produced. That mare is the exquisitely-bred Lady Winborne.
A member of Secretariat’s second crop born in 1976, Lady Winborne was bred and raced by Diana Manning, whose daughter Diane Perkins eventually took over the family bloodstock. As a broodmare, Lady Winborne didn’t just produce five stakes winners herself, including two at G1 level – she launched several generations of stakes winners through every single one of her daughters.
In her case, family definitely tells. Lady Winborne was out of the well-named Priceless Gem, tracing tail female to the great foundation mare La Troienne. There are too many top horses to mention that come from this phenomenal female family, but they include numerous Hall of Fame members and a whole host of champions over a span of almost 100 years.
Priceless Gem herself was a talented racehorse. At 2, she won five of seven races and defeated future Hall of Famer Buckpasser (another La Troienne descendant) in the 1965 Futurity Stakes. It was the brilliant colt’s only defeat that year after finishing fourth in his first race.
Despite Priceless Gem’s achievements at 2, she was overshadowed by fellow 2-year-old filly Moccasin, who won the divisional championship and the Horse of the Year title after going unbeaten and untested in eight starts. The two fillies never met on the racetrack; Priceless Gem came out of a second effort against Buckpasser with sore shins and was done for the season.
A third member of the same crop, Lady Pitt, would be the champion 3-year-old filly the next season, but finished behind Priceless Gem the two times they met at 2. Unfortunately, Priceless Gem never regained her juvenile form after being compromised by physical problems at 3.
However, she wasted no time making an impact as a broodmare and did her family proud.
The mare’s second foal was Allez France, one of the world’s all-time greatest female Thoroughbreds. She was a divisional champion in France every year she raced, from 1972 to 1975, and was French Horse of the Year in 1974 after an undefeated season capped by a victory in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
After foaling Allez France in 1970, Priceless Gem was sold at auction; Manning was the buyer at $395,000, then a record for a broodmare. The mare produced a Vaguely Noble colt in 1971; named Noble Bijou, he was unraced but became a leading sire and broodmare sire in New Zealand.
Lady Winborne arrives
Meanwhile, with the help of her mother, Perkins and husband Peter purchased land in Paris, Kentucky; the couple already had a breeding operation in Argentina. The Kentucky property was just a stone’s throw from legendary Claiborne Farm, where Secretariat was at stud. It was named Wimborne Farm, taking the family name of Manning’s father.
In 1975, Manning decided to breed Priceless Gem to Secretariat. “We all thought that was a super idea,” recalled Perkins recently. “Secretariat was certainly an amazing horse, and we wanted to send the best to the best.” The resulting foal, a bay filly born May 8, 1976, was supposed to be named Lady Wimborne, but a typo resulted in the registered name Lady Winborne.
Sent to Ireland to race, the filly didn’t make her first start until the summer of her 3-year-old year. In Manning’s colors she won her debut at Gowran Park on August 13, 1979. Less than three weeks later, she tried G3 company, finishing a respectable third in the Brownstown Stakes at the Curragh.
That was it for her racing career, and Lady Winborne was sent home to Wimborne Farm; by then Manning’s horses were transitioning to Perkins. Little did they know at the time just how well the mare would carry on the family name.
In the end, she produced a total of 15 foals, a remarkable 13 of which started, and even more remarkably all 13 won at least one race. Five won stakes races, including two runners who succeeded at the highest level; three more were stakes-placed.
Successful sons
Nine of her foals were male, including her firstborn by Believe It in 1981. Named Al Mamoon, he was Lady Winborne’s leading earner at $1,249,906.
Originally sold as a yearling for $310,000, the youngster was sent to Europe to begin his racing career; he was later purchased privately for an American campaign. The first of the mare’s two G1 winners, Al Mamoon won the John Henry Handicap as a 6-year-old in 1987, although he had won several other Graded stakes earlier in his career. He clearly preferred turf, setting two course records on the surface but was also stakes-placed on the dirt.
Three additional sons of Lady Winborne became stakes winners, all by different stallions.
Lost Soldier was a 1990 colt by Danzig. Sold by Wimborne as a weanling for $500,000, he was G2-placed in England at 2 and won stakes in Dubai before becoming a G3 winner in the U.S., taking the Isle of Capri Casino Louisiana Downs Handicap in 1996. A versatile sort, he set a track record for nine furlongs on the dirt at Sam Houston Race Park and a course record for a mile on the turf at Woodbine. He is perhaps best remembered as the sire of popular champion sprinter Lost In The Fog.
All Lady Winborne’s stakes-winning sons were globetrotters. Born Wild, a Wild Again colt foaled in 1992, was sold as a yearling for $290,000 to Frank Stronach. He won stakes at Fair Grounds and Turf Paradise, and managed to squeeze in a successful journey to Austria, where he won the Magna Austrian Derby in 1995.
Lady Winborne’s final stakes winner, born in 1995, was Lord Of Warriors. A son of Perkins’ pride and joy stallion, Lord At War (more about him later), he sold as a yearling and again as a 2-year-old, and was exported to Hong Kong for racing. There, he won six of 23 starts over four seasons, including two stakes – the Happy Valley Trophy and the Centenary Vase. The latter became a G3 the year after Lord Of Warriors won his edition. Shipped to New Zealand, the colt raced three more times there but failed to return to winning form. In total, he earned over $700,000.
Two more sons of Lady Winborne were stakes-placed, including the Wimborne-raced Baranof, G3-placed in France, and the American G3-placed runner Long War, who was raced by Wimborne in partnership.
Of the mare’s remaining three sons, two were winners and the third was unraced.
A female dynasty
Any breeder would be thrilled to have a mare that produced four stakes-winning sons, including a G1 winner. But, for Perkins, Lady Winborne delivered so much more. Five of her six daughters produced stakes winners themselves, and all of them produced stakes winners down the generations.
The best was La Gueriere. Born in 1988, she was the first of Lady Winborne’s six foals by Lord At War. A champion Argentine homebred for Perkins, the colt was sent to the California barn of trainer Charlie Whittingham in 1984. Lord At War won five straight stakes over the winter of 1984-85, culminating with a victory in the prestigious Santa Anita Handicap. “If he hadn’t had thin-walled feet, he would have been unbeaten and Horse of the Year. He was just unreal from the very beginning,” Perkins said proudly.
So it’s not surprising that she was positively giddy when the first mating between Lady Winborne and Lord At War produced the mare’s second G1 winner in La Gueriere. It was, after all, truly a family affair. “We were very proud of La Gueriere because not only did we breed her, but my husband Peter trained her.”
The filly won four stakes; three were at Keeneland topped by the G1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Invitational on October 26, 1991. She was dead game in that race, having a head in front at the eighth pole, losing the lead, then battling back to win by a nose over Satin Flower.
Perkins was at the races that day temporarily in a wheelchair, having fallen off a horse not long before. The winner’s circle ceremonies were on the turf course, meaning she had to get across the dirt track. “The most terrifying part of that day was when they wheeled me across the racetrack,” she said, in hindsight able to laugh at the memory of the men struggling with her and the chair.
Retired a year later with a final tally of six wins in 20 starts, La Gueriere continued the family legacy as a broodmare. She produced G1 winner Icon Project and multiple Graded stakes winner and sire Lasting Approval. Her unraced daughter La Comete is the dam of stakes-winning full siblings Munnings and Munnings Sister. Multiple Graded stakes winner Munnings is currently a well-regarded sire; he also carries a Secretariat cross through his sire Speightstown.
There are stakes winners aplenty descending from Lady Winborne’s other daughters. Her 1992 foal by Little Current, Lady Lady, produced stakes winner Lovat’s Lady; two of that one’s daughters produced Graded stakes winners themselves. Lady Lochinvar, Lady Winborne’s 1993 foal by Lord At War, produced multiple Graded stakes winner Master Command and G3 winner Aurora Lights. And Lady Winborne’s two daughters by Arctic Tern, Light Ice and Caspian Tern, both produced stakes winners.
Lady Winborne’s only daughter who did not produce a stakes winner herself was Benguela. That mare by Little Current more than made up for the rare shortcoming in the family by becoming the ancestress of G1 winners Honor In War and Circus Maximus.
The last foal out of Secretariat’s star producer was born in 1998, and Lady Winborne succumbed to the infirmities of age in 2000. She was buried alongside Lord At War at the top of a picturesque hill at Wimborne Farm. Perkins downsized and sold the farm in 2002, and the location is now preserved as part of Rosecrest Farm.
Perkins remembers Lady Winborne, and what she represented for Wimborne Farm, fondly. “She was a lovely mare and did a very good job raising her foals. She never asked for anything special. We worshiped that family.”