The night before the 2004 Breeders’ Cup at Lone Star Park, Texas, as trainer Marcelo Polanco grabbed his coat to leave a pre-event party — one of those glitzy affairs where the Champagne flows like lava — he stepped outside, looked up to the heavens and cursed his luck
Towards him rolled a wall of mist, in the air the metallic zing of a looming rainstorm.
“She did not like an off-track,” Polanco said about his 2004 Breeders’ Cup Distaff hope, Island Fashion, who would eventually finish fifth, gummed down in the rain-sodden track behind monster-mare Ashado.
The following year, Polanco returned with Island Fashion once more to the Breeders’ Cup, held at Belmont Park. By this time, the stable matriarch appeared a step behind her best and would eventually finish tenth behind Pleasant Home.
While neither year left Polanco garlanded in riches, to a trainer, an event like the Breeders’ Cup can bring other not insignificant commissions. A shot over the bow to peers in the training ranks. A calling card to owners. A rubber stamp of personal affirmation.
But by and large, the years since have given Polanco few invitations to racing’s top table.
In 2004 — the year Island Fashion kick-started a globetrotting campaign with a tidy win the G1 Santa Monica Handicap at Santa Anita — Polanco earned more than $1.8 million in prize money. Last year, that total had dipped below the six-figure mark.
And so, when Marcel Polanco picked up the phone earlier this year to an offer to train one of South America’s most exciting fillies, he sniffed a prank.
“When he called me, I thought it was a joke,” said Polanco about a call he received from Fernando Fantini Braun, who manages the racing holdings of Haras Pozo de Luna, the owner of the aforementioned filly, Blue Stripe, who is less than a week away from lining up in the latest iteration of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Del Mar.
‘This business is like a roller-coaster’
“But the joke turned into a reality,” he said, before alluding to recent fallow years. “This business is like a roller-coaster. You can go really high, then you go down.”
For Fantini, Polanco was a no-brainer. Their families were tied through generations. “And for many, many years I thought it was unfair that Chileans wouldn’t support Marcelo,” he said.
But, with Blue Stripe, Fantini found himself in a quandary, reluctant to wrench the exciting filly entirely out of her Argentinian trainer Nicolas Martin Ferro’s orbit.
And so, Polanco and Ferro have forged what Fantini describes a working partnership towards Blue Stripe’s preparations. The two speak on the phone several times a week.
As a further sweetener for Polanco, “I told him I’m going to give him a 2-year old filly and a champion miler in Argentina,” said Fantini.
‘Jesus, that’s a lot of heart’
Earlier this month, the 2-year-old, Fortunata Tensio, won nicely at Santa Anita on only her second start, while Irideo — a G1 winner back home in Argentina — is working steadily away towards a Stateside debut.
As for Blue Stripe, what a filly to land in any barn, let alone one looking to plant its flag once more at higher summits.
On breeding alone, Blue Stripe’s as royal as a Windsor princess, being a half-sister to the 2019 Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner Blue Prize.
And, on what she’s shown on the track so far back home in Argentina, she’s inherited plenty of the family’s talent, winning four of her six starts, signing off with a tenacious victory in the G1 Gran Premio Criadores at Palermo Racecourse — a ‘Win and You’re In’ for the Breeders’ Cup.
“At one point, it didn’t look like she was even going to get third,” said Polanco, about a ding-dong battle down the long Palermo stretch. “But she put her ears down, kept fighting, kept fighting. Jesus, that’s a lot of heart.”
That race was in May. Since then, Blue Stripe has packed her bags, booked tickets to Florida and then to Polanco’s barn in Southern California, where the trainer let the filly settle in before slowly building her up to her date with Del Mar destiny.
The yawning gap between races “was the plan from day one”, said Polanco.
Fantini describes it as a strategic move. “With horses that change hemisphere, their second run, 90 percent of the time, it’s not a good race.”
Neither expects the gap to prove problematic.
She’s not big and burly, enjoys her training. Unlike some South American imports who, by virtue of fashions south of the equator — morning training without saddles, for example — can suffer a little arrested development on their hemisphere swap, Blue Stripe took to the North American way with aplomb, said Polanco.
As he puts it, “She’s very intelligent.”
And, if looks are any gauge, she’s in rude health — as other horses are growing out their winter coats, hers shines brighter than a queen’s coronet, all without the aid of a clipper’s blade.
‘It’s amazing to think about’
Polanco is steeped in racing like a scotch aged in oak, cutting his teeth on the backstretch of one of Santiago’s two racetracks, the Club Hípico de Santiago.
Polanco’s father trained, as did his father before him. “That’s him, up there, Pedro Polanco, my grandfather,” said Polanco, pointing to an old newspaper cartoon on his office wall (see below).
It depicts a resplendent-looking gentleman in top hat and tails, polished black shoes with fancy bows. In his hands are two large duffel bags, horses’ heads poking out. A train shuffles by in the background — a nod to Grandfather Polanco’s great success sourcing future champions from elsewhere in South America and shipping them back by rail to Chile.
“He won the Triple Crown twice with fillies,” said Polanco, of his grandfather, with a sense of awe. “It’s amazing to think about.”
Throughout Polanco’s time in the United States, he’s kept good company with equally fine horsemen, working for the likes of Hall of Famer Ron McAnally and Breeders’ Cup-winning trainer Julio Canani.
Polanco also travelled with many of Bobby Frankel’s glittering galaxy of other-worldly beings. “I got to work with a lot of nice horses like Marquetry,” said Polanco, of the 3-time G1 winner. Another was Toussaud, who arrived at the Frankel barn from John Gosden’s Newmarket academy.
“She was fun to work with, that filly. Very nice filly. But could be a pain in the ass. When she first came over, she didn’t even want to go forward.”
Toussaud would of course later become the sapphire of Juddmonte’s coop of blue hens, producing the likes of Empire Maker, Honest Lady, Chester House and Decarchy.
From its verdant nest back in Argentina (see video above), Haras Pozo de Luna has proven a potent force both domestically and internationally.
Wind the clock back a few years, and McAnally flew the stable flag high with the likes of Suggestive Boy —winner of the 2013 G1 Frank E Kilroe Mile Stakes — and Interaction, winner of that same year’s G2 San Juan Capistrano Handicap.
More recently, Gosden trained the Pozo de Luna-owned Furia Cruzada to a series of highly credible Group-placed performances in the spring and summer of 2016, including a second in the G2 Duke of Cambridge Stakes at Royal Ascot.
‘It’s a little gift’
The Gosden and Fantini families also intertwine generations. Indeed, Fantini tells the story from “many, many years” back of the holy trinity of his father, McAnally and Gosden and a well-lubricated summit at a notorious Del Mar watering hole, one that ended with intervention by the local constabulary.
“John Gosden tells the story very well,” said Fantini, with theatrical relish.
And so, when some five months back, Fantini rang Frankie Dettori with the offer to ride Blue Stripe in the Distaff, he didn’t hesitate, said Fantini — nor did he renege when Fantini checked back in a month ago. “It’s a little gift,” said Fantini, with the gleeful air of someone pointing to a Porsche as their little run-around.
Majority ownership of Pozo de Luna belongs to Mexican businessman Jose Cerillo Chowell, who’s expected to be at Del Mar for the contest, along with Fantini and Ferro and an assortment of family members.
“It’ll be on fire,” Fantini said, of any post-race celebrations should Blue Stripe overhaul much more fancied opponents in the Distaff, none more fearsome than the likes of Letruska, Malathaat and Shedaresthedevil.
Polanco remains circumspect. “When you get to these kinds of races, you’re running against champions,” he said. “But, looking at the ability she showed in her races, and what she shows in the morning, she’ll be very competitive.”