If you are a race horse owner, you know that the highs make you feel like your brain is going to explode, and the lows break your heart, over and over. My own race filly just broke her maiden, and made me the happiest person on earth for a day. August 18, the low happened – millionaire, champion, and multiple grade one winning four-year-old Unique Bella fractured a sesamoid in training and was retired.
The sesamoid is a tiny bone in the ankle that absorbs much of the intense pressure of running, but at least today a fractured sesamoid, though career ending, isn’t always life threatening. This huge, gorgeous, gray Tapit made her name with her resounding victories, making other top-class fillies look like nags as she, under Mike Smith, put multiple lengths between herself and them down the stretch of such races as the Santa Ynez S.-G2, the Las Virgines S.-G2, and the Santa Ysabel S.-G3. Named Champion Three-Year-Old filly after her grade one win in the La Brea Stakes, her two grade one wins this summer, in the Beholder Mile at Santa Anita and the Clement L. Hirsch, at Del Mar, a race that much-loved Zenyatta similarly owned, sadly marked the end of a stellar career.
Out of the Unbridled’s Song mare Unrivaled Belle, her pedigree represents what has now become a classic cross for Tapit. The addition of any In Reality/Dr. Fager to Tapit’s pedigree, already rich in these American speed influences, makes top class race horses like Unique Bella. Owned by Don Alberto Stables, she was purchased for a bargain $400,000 in the Keeneland September Sale in 2015. This wonder woman was trained by the ever-careful Jerry Hollendorfer, who was known to break into a smile when discussing her, a huge show of emotion for this man with his patented poker face. Unique Bella will be missed by all who love racing.
On a Saturday racing card that was owned, it seemed, by the usual suspects (Tapit, Medaglia d’Oro, War Front, Curlin, etc.) in two-year-old races, the sixth at Saratoga stood out because it was a maiden special weight won by Code of Honor, by a length and a half, a son of first crop stallion Noble Mission. Noble Mission is a full brother to another wonder horse, the legendary Frankel, and he stands at Lane’s End. Code of Honor was his fifth winner, and won at first asking, at six furlongs on the dirt. His Dixie Union dam undoubtedly brings the dirt influence to his otherwise grass pedigree, but what is most interesting is that he is owned and bred by W.S. Farish, Mr. Lane’s End himself.
Dixie Union also stood at Lane’s End his entire career, making Code of Honor a complete Lane’s End production. Always a bastion of class and devotion to its stallions, Lane’s End and Mr. Farish are to be congratulated for this excellent maiden win. They support and make their young studs, with Noble Mission being the rule rather than the exception. Standing for $20,000 stands and nurses, he would appear to be well on his way to a similar success that his brother Frankel is already experiencing.
— Roberta Smoodin