By Steve Sherack
In six career starts for the late Hall of Famer Bobby Frankel and Prince Khalid Abdullah's Juddmonte Farms, Soothing Touch (Touch Gold) failed to find the winner's circle. The $550,000 KEESEP yearling purchase, however, has quickly proven her worth as a broodmare.
Her first foal Emollient (Empire Maker) immediately put the 11-year-old on the map as a producer, scoring in a quartet of Grade I events while banking $1,350,400. The promising Courtier (Pioneerof the Nile)–a painful second in the grassy Kitten's Joy S. at Gulfstream Jan. 24 (video)–will attempt to become the second stakes winner for Soothing Touch when he returns to action in Friday's GII National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame S. at Saratoga.
“It's certainly a beautiful pedigree,” Juddmonte Manager Garrett O'Rourke commented. “When we bought the filly, she was a little bit disappointing as a racemare, but then Emollient comes out as her first foal and then she follows up with this one. We've also got a star foal by Tapit out of the mare as well. That's the beauty of getting involved with exceptional families. When they get you a good one, they get you a very good one.”
Soothing Touch, a Flaxman-bred daughter of the two-time stakes-winning and multiple graded/group-placed A.P. Indy mare Glia, was bred back to Pioneerof the Nile this spring. She also produced fillies by First Defence in 2013-14.
“This fellow [Courtier] has always been a very good looker from the very beginning so it made sense to go back there,” O'Rourke said of breeding Soothing Touch back to the WinStar stallion.
After rolling a pair of sixes with trouble in his first two attempts, including a grassy maiden at first asking at Saratoga last summer, Courtier has done very little wrong. A runaway maiden winner over the Keeneland lawn Oct. 8, the Juddmonte homebred returned 18 days later to gamely record a first-level allowance at Churchill. He came up only a head short to subsequent GIII Spiral S. winner Dubai Sky (Candy Ride {Arg}) after setting a pressured pace in the Kitten's Joy. The bay had a small chip removed from an ankle following that effort, reports O'Rourke.
“We had him here on the farm for a couple of months and just had him laid up here,” O'Rourke said. “We then sent him back to Bill [Mott] and he honestly hasn't had an off day through all of that. His schedule has been very smooth. It's obviously his first run back off a layoff, so I guess that would be the only apprehension we'd have, but other than that, everything has gone well with him. He's been a sound and healthy horse. Everything is good for his return.”
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