Cal-bred News

Bob Black Jack’s Breeders
Eager for Kentucky Derby

By Riverside Press Enterprise
HEMET, Calif. (May 1, 2008) -- This is a busy time for Gary and Marlene Howard.

Tiffani, 20, their only daughter and the youngest of their three children, will be married on May 25.

"She’ll ride out in a horse and buggy," Marlene Howard said. "All three of our kids worked around horses when they were growing up. She’s the only one still close to the animals."

Young Tiffani and her parents will take some time out Saturday from wedding plans--and attending to the horses at their training center--to watch the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby on television.

Leaving the starting gate from the 13th stall in the field of 20 3-year-olds will be Bob Black Jack, a colt the Howards bred and who is probably the most unlikely competitor in this year’s Run for the Roses.

"He was here for the first nine months of his life," Gary Howard recalled, "and though he was a nice-looking colt, a little tough-acting, we would not have imagined in a million years he would be running in the Kentucky Derby."

So improbable is Bob Black Jack’s ascension to America’s most famous horse race that the colt’s berth in the field at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., wasn’t assured until early this week.

"We had planned to go to Kentucky," Gary said. "But when we didn’t know if he’d get in the field, we couldn’t make plans and then when he finally got in; it was too late for us."

Berths in the Derby are determined by the amount of money horses have earned in important stakes races. Until Bob Black Jack finished third in the San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita, and most recently, second in the Santa Anita Derby, the colt’s stakes performances had come in restricted races, exclusively for horses bred in California.

Bob Black Jack, who ranks 19th on the Derby earnings list, is one of eight horses rated by Churchill Downs linemaker Mike Battaglia as a 20-1 chance to win the 1 ¼-mile event. He is trained by James Kasparoff, who at 34 is the youngest trainer in this year’s field, and will be ridden by Richard Migliore, at 44 making his fifth appearance in the Run for the Roses.

Bob Black Jack doesn’t have a typical pedigree for a Kentucky Derby runner.

His sire, Stormy Jack, now 11, was a good sprinter but none of his eight victories in 21 trips to the post came in a race longer than seven furlongs. His dam, 14-year-old Molly’s Prospector, won only one of her four races and earned $19,325. When she delivered, on March 29, 2005, the dark bay foal who would become Bob Black Jack, the Howards were in the process of selling most of the Hideaway Farms property they had owned for two decades.

"The real estate market was going through the roof at the time, just the opposite of now," Gary recalled. "We had a chance to make $10 million, so we took it, and we ended up selling this foal for only $4,500. We probably could have gotten more, but our partner, Bruce Dunmore of Albuquerque, had been diagnosed with cancer. He’s still battling the disease. It was time to sell."

Ben Warren bought most of the farm’s acreage and renamed the facility Warren’s Thoroughbreds. Gary and Marlene, both natives of Utah, still operate a training center nearby and have retained the Hideaway name.

Stormy Jack, who they originally stood at stud when they owned the big farm, now is at Harris Farms in Coalinga, one of California’s most prominent breeding operations. His stud fee is $2,500, the lowest of any stallion with an offspring in this year’s Kentucky Derby. The Howards still own him.

"If Bob Black Jack runs well Saturday, I’m sure Stormy Jack will be a lot more valuable as a stallion," Gary said.

Bob Black Jack remained in the Inland Empire until he was 2 years old. Robert Harabedian of Los Alamitos, who purchased him for $4,500 from the Howards, also named him. "I’ve always been known as ‘Bob Black’ because I was a pool and bowling hustler," Harabedian said.

He sent his acquisition to Getaway Thoroughbred Farms in Romoland, where Bob Black Jack received his early training.

"From the time our exercise rider, Jesus Lopez, first got on him, he looked like he could be a very nice horse," said Nadine Anderson, Getaway’s farm manager. "But nobody could have imagined this."

Not even his present owners, Jeff Harmon of Laguna Niguel and Tim Kasparoff of Rowland Heights, the older brother of the trainer. They spent $25,000 to buy Bob Black Jack from Harabedian in the spring of 2007.

"We thought he’d be a good sprinter," the trainer said. Bob Black Jack won the seven-furlong California Breeders’ Champion Stakes on Dec. 26, opening day of Santa Anita’s winter-spring meet. In his next outing, the Sunshine Millions Dash on Jan. 26, he made history.

In the race limited to Cal-breds and Florida-breds, he blazed six furlongs in 1:06.53, a world record for the distance.

Admittedly, Santa Anita’s Cushion Track was yielding extremely fast times before it underwent renovation in early February.

"But I always felt this horse was more than a pure sprinter," the trainer said. "He’s very fast, but he’s not rank. He showed that in the Santa Anita Derby at 1 1/8 miles. He lost by half a length to Colonel John and at the 16th pole he looked like he’d won."

Colonel John, the 4-1 second betting choice on the morning line for the Kentucky Derby, and Bob Black Jack will be making their first start on natural dirt.

In his pre-Derby workout at Churchill Downs on Monday, Bob Black Jack went a half-mile in 48 3/5 seconds under Migliore.

"I don’t have any concerns about the surface," Kasparoff said. "He worked great on the training track at Santa Anita, which is regular dirt, when the Cushion Track was closed because of he rains."

Overall, Bob Black Jack has won three of his seven races, finished second twice and third once, and has earned $442,925.
-- Larry Bortstein