Former owners of Lion Heart, Wimbledon still pull for the Derby entries.
By BRANT JAMES
Published April 28, 2004
Joseph Greeley Jr. knows the best ones get away. That's just business.
Any thoroughbred horse breeder accepts that sales checks in hand cash a lot easier than purse money a colt might win in years to come. So it will be with satisfaction, not hair-pulling frustration, that the manager of Sabine Stable will root on two Kentucky Derby starters Saturday his family bred and owned, if only briefly.
Though Lion Heart and Wimbledon race for new owners, their lineage is forever tied to Joseph and Winifred Greeley's burgeoning farm in Micanopy, south of Gainesville.
"This is very exciting," said Greeley Jr. in one of his wordier moments. "You always have the expectation of doing something like this, and when it does happen, it's so absolutely fantastic."
Three years ago, Lion Heart and Wimbledon were nameless, wobbly-legged youngsters in a crop of 20-odd weanlings arriving back home in Marion County after being bred and foaled at Blackburn Farm near Midway, Ky. Each year Sabine Stable sends the majority of its 26 mares to Blackburn, where they breed. The mares and foals return to Florida when they are strong enough to travel, then are weaned and broken on the farm by trainer Jose Becerril. Lion Heart and Wimbledon technically are Kentucky-breds, but their Florida roots are strong.
So, said consignor Eddie Wood, are the foals the Greeleys produce. In an era when the market favors high-end potential at the risk of fragility, Sabine stock is a safe bet.
"They appear to stay around forever," the Irishman said, "anything Sabine and the Greeleys breed. They've kind of developed their own broodmare band from having their own fillies and keeping them, and they've turned out a phenomenal bunch of mares for a smaller breeder."
Lion Heart enters the Derby with a second-place finishes in the Grade I Blue Grass Stakes and Grade II San Rafael. Wimbledon has two wins in three starts this year, including the Grade II Louisiana Derby.
The Greeleys, former Long Islanders, started establishing their line after buying their 147-acre farm in 1994. A former stock broker in New York City, Greeley was introduced to the horse business in 1986 after a friend took him to Aqueduct and introduced him to local trainer Bobby Barbara. Greeley bought a few horses, boarded them in Ocala during the winter and never has stopped building the business.
"Everything seemed to go right," said Greeley Jr., 38, who built duplexes in Queens before relocating to manage the operation.
The Greeleys bred Graeme Hall, who finished last in the 2000 Derby, but neither he, Lion Heart nor Wimbledon qualify as the family's favorite. That is reserved for a homebred named Mining Burrah - Wimbledon's mother's brother - whom the family was unable to sell and eventually campaigned to two stakes wins and two thirds in the mid 1990s.
"Sometimes it turns into a blessing in disguise," Greeley Jr. said.
No one was willing to venture the $95,000 asking price for Lion Heart when he was offered at the 2002 Fasig-Tipton select yearling sale. But he was purchased by Flying Zee Stable for $100,000 at a sale later that year before Derrick Smith and Michael Tabor paid $1.4-million for him at the 2003 Fasig-Tipton Florida select 2-year-olds in training sale at Calder.
Unlike many races, the Kentucky Derby does not pay breeders a share of the total purse. Still, there is financial reward to be reaped from Lion Heart and Wimbledon's success. Though Sabine sold Wimbledon's dam, Strawberry Clover, it lists Satin Sunrise, mother of Lion Heart, among 26 broodmares.
Not that you would hear them complain, or brag.
Wimbledon's trainer, three-time Derby winner Bob Baffert, and Lion Heart's conditioner, Patrick Biancone, do not need any extra publicity, but the Greeleys do not grant interviews, their son said, to allow the trainers to "take all the credit."
That's standard procedure around Sabine, Wood said.
"It's the quiet man rule," he said. "Someone runs their mouth all the time it just kind of goes by you. When Joe Greeley finally comes along and says something, it's going to be important."
Wood has seen many young horses pass through a sales ring, enough to know the ones with the big price tag are not necessarily bound for greatness. Enough to know anyone who claims to have seen roses in the eyes of a yearling is telling tales.
"That look-in-the-eye thing is a crock," said Wood, who consigned a $425,000 purchase of Wimbledon to current owner James McIngvale at the 2003 Fasig-Tipton Florida February 2-year-old in training sale.
"(The Greeleys') hearts will be in their mouths at the quarter pole come Saturday. I suppose to some extent you think, "Geez, I'd love to own him now and be going to the Derby,' but at the same time there have been several horses who sold for a whole lot of money and never made anything. You've got to take the good with the bad. Do you want all of them back, too?"
