McCormacks Building a Classic Legacy in Canada

Cool Catomine | Michael Burns Photo Ltd.

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The evening of Monday, July 24, transplanted Irishman Bernard McCormack and his wife Karen pulled onto the property of their Mapleshade Farm about 90 kilometers, or about 55 miles, northeast of downtown Toronto, following a long drive home from Kentucky where he was–what else?–looking at horses. Weary though they were, yet another longish car ride was in the offing the following day, as the McCormacks'-bred Cool Catomine (Spring At Last) was making his first start against winners in the second leg of the Canadian Triple Crown, the Prince of Wales S. at Fort Erie Racetrack, some three hours away.

“We were exhausted, but we said, 'we have to go, we can't tempt the racing gods that way,'” Bernard said.

The effort was worth it, as the bay colt fought his way to the wire first at odds of 14-1 (video), providing the couple with a second Classic winner as a breeder in as many years, having also bred 2016 Queen's Plate hero Sir Dudley Digges (Gio Ponti).

“We strive for these days,” said the affable McCormack. “They show up not by our command, but by the horses' performances. It's not easy to do, and if it were, everybody would be doing it.”

The Cool Catomine story has its roots six years in the past, when McCormack, who consigns horses under the Cara (Irish for friendly) Bloodstock banner found himself shopping the 2011 Keeneland November sale. But it wasn't Cool Catomine's dam, Smart Catomine (Smart Strike), that McCormack was after–not at first, at any rate.

“I was looking for her foal [hip 2904], I'll be quite honest with you,” he admitted. “It was the Milwaukee Brew, Canadian-bred foal and it was in the back ring. I looked at the foal and I looked at who else might be interested and it was a friend of mine.”

Graciously bowing out so as not to unduly drive up the price of that filly, McCormack called an audible and focused his attention on the filly's dam who was to immediately precede her produce into the ring.

“She was a Canadian-bred Smart Strike mare out of a Storm Cat dam [Gather the Storm], I mean what's not to like?” he reasoned. The mare hammered for $25,000 in foal to Quiet American.

Both mare and foal were being consigned by the Ontario-based Anderson Farm, operated at the time by David Anderson, whose father Bob had passed away about a year prior.

“I really think of Bob Anderson when I talk about [Smart Catomine], because he loved this mare,” McCormack said. “Bob was a great breeder here in Ontario. His son David is a good friend.

He continued, “David told me it was very hard to put this mare on the van. I told him that it would be very easy for me to put her on my van! We kind of laughed in the back ring and I said, 'well if I'm not going to buy the weanling, I'll switch my attention to the mare and we were fortunate enough to buy her. Obviously it's worked out beautifully and now we've had a Canadian Classic winner out of her.”

As if her breeding up close wasn't attractive enough, Smart Catomine was possessed of a deeper pedigree, as her third dam was Martessa (Ger) (Solarstern {Fr}), the German mare of the year, champion miler and champion 3-year-old filly of 1991. After producing a filly by Quiet American in 2012 and a colt by Rebellion (GB) the following year, Smart Catomine was put on a Bluegrass-bound van for a date with Spring At Last, then at WinStar Farm.

'She's a lovely, kind mare,”McCormack said. “[As a racemare], she had speed in the mornings, but for whatever reason, it didn't work out at the track. Her foals have generally shown good speed, but in the mating for this horse, I was looking to stretch out a bit and maybe tap into that German bloodline a little bit for a bit of stamina. She's a stocky type, she's built like a small sprinter. That was the basic plan. And it worked, thank God,” he said with a chuckle.

Though he'd shown some promise in his morning work, Cool Catomine was no better than third from a pair of tries sprinting over the Poly to begin his career and was a listless seventh trying two turns for the first time June 10.

“He ran in 'fits and starts' and his jockey [Luis Contreras] recommended the addition of blinkers and said he'd stick with him,” McCormack said.

Though he was supplemented to the Canadian Triple Crown with hopes of making the July 2 Queen's Plate, Cool Catomine was instead ticketed for a maiden on the Plate undercard. Despite having to cover some extra ground, he was up to score by a neck while doing his best work late at odds of 14-1 (video). The proverbial light bulb had gone on and from here, the sky's the limit, if you ask McCormack.

“I like the way he won his maiden on Queen's Plate day,” he said. “He came running into the lead right at the wire, he was going forward at the wire, and that gave me encouragement. When good horses start putting it together, they can start to become dangerous at a price. I felt he had a shot [in the Prince of Wales]. I think he was running on at the end, too, and I think a race like the [C$400,000] Breeders' S. [12 furlongs on the turf Sunday, Aug. 20] certainly would seem to be within his scope.”

In a business where timing is everything, Cara Bloodstock just so happens to be consigning a Flashback (Tapit) half-sister to Cool Catomine as hip 75 to the CTHS Canadian Premier Yearling Sale at the end of August.

“This filly is typical,” McCormack said. “She's quite well-bodied and not overly big, but correct and she's a filly, so if she doesn't get done in the ring, it'd be OK to maybe keep a daughter too. It's nice to have that option.

He continued, “The mare throws a nice foal, plenty of muscle, good frame on them. She's an amazing mare. She's in foal for the 11th season in a row. We weren't going to breed her, we were going to give her the year off. She gave us a nice colt by Goldencents [this year]. We looked after her during the foal heat and we short-cycled her and she was there to be bred and we bred her to Silent Name (Jpn). I figured, if I gave her the year off, she might take a year off. She's such a great mom and an easy foaler and we're looking forward to her foal again next year.”

It would not be the first of Smart Catomine's produce to sell well at the Ontario sale. McCormack consigned the aforementioned Wild Catomine to the 2012 event when she was knocked down to trainer Mark Casse for C$110,000 before she went on to win the 2014 Fury S. and finish runner-up in that year's Woodbine Oaks. She had sold for $22,000 as a weanling at Keeneland just after McCormack struck for Smart Catomine.

McCormack is clearly a horseman who loves his trade and he had the ideal upbringing, serving the legendary E. P. Taylor's Windfields Farm-the former home of Northern Dancer–as its general manager from 1987 and for the next two decades. Among the sires he managed were Northern Dancer's second-crop son Vice Regent and the latter's son Deputy Minister, and the Windfields experience is one he recalls with tremendous fondness and appreciation.

“Windfields was 'my career job,'” he said. “We were a team working with Charles Taylor and Ric Waldman and the staffs in Maryland and Ontario. That was, to me, not a day of work. It was just a very enjoyable experience. Northern Dancer yearlings could make anything exciting, and they did. It was a great, great career job and I thought it would be my career for my whole involvement in the business. But as things evolve, things naturally change and I knew it wouldn't be my whole career. I enjoyed my time with it. When it was over, it was sad–I miss the people and the horses and the stories. My kids grew up on the farm and there are just some great memories.”

And now, at Mapleshade and through Cara Bloodstock, Bernard and Karen McCormack are creating memories of their own.

“To be breeding Classic winners in our own name, I would have hoped that to be a storybook ending, but I wouldn't have written it down,” he said. “What I learned at Windfields, I was able to apply with some dollars of my own and see if it could work. And I'm kind of liking how the story is going so far.”

 

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