Cal-bred News

Sunshine Millions Sprint Showcases Cal-bred Grade I Winners

ARCADIA, Calif. (Jan. 24, 2007) -- Bordonaro begins his 2007 racing campaign Saturday when he attempts a defense of his 2006 Sunshine Millions Sprint title.

Meanwhile, Miss Excitement, his 15-year-old dam, by Rajab, awaits a date with a top Kentucky stallion near her new home in the Bluegrass.

“I sold my share in her to my partner last week and he’s taken her to Kentucky,” said Fred Carrillo, who with Daniel Cassella bred and own Bordonaro.

“He says he wants to get a Kentucky Derby horse out of her. I’m 80 years old. I don’t have that luxury. I don’t know who she’ll be bred to in Kentucky. There’s a long list of stallions.”

Bordonaro, by Memo, is one of three grade or group I winners among the nine runners entered in the $300,000, six-furlong Sprint at Santa Anita Park.

The $3.6 million series of eight races for California- and Florida-breds, four races each at Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park, is being run for the fifth time.

Trained by Bill Spawr, Bordonaro, who won the Sunshine Millions Sprint last year in Florida, will be making his first start since running fourth in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs on Nov. 4. The race was won by fellow Cal-bred Thor’s Echo, who Monday received the Eclipse Award as the best sprinter in North America for 2006.

Proud Tower Too (Proud Irish-Dara’s Tower, by Irish Tower), a 5-year-old homebred of Daniel Cardenas’ Tricar Stable Inc., and 8-year-old Debonair Joe (Ole-Malita, by Debonair Roger), bred by Craig Lewis and Mira Loma Thoroughbred Farm LLC, are the other grade or group 1 winners in the Sunshine Millions Sprint field.

Proud Tower Too, trained by Sal Gonzalez, led Thor’s Echo and Jet West, another Cal-bred, across the finish line last March in the group I Golden Shaheen at Nad al Sheba Racecourse in Dubai. He previously won the grade I 2005 Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita.

After a long layoff following his Dubai adventure, Proud Tower Too returned on New Year’s Day with a third-place finish in the grade III El Conejo Handicap.

Debonair Joe achieved his biggest victory in the grade I Malibu in 2002. He will be making his 44th career trip to the post in the Sunshine Millions Sprint—his first for new trainer Peter Miller, who claimed him for $40,000 out of a second-place effort at Santa Anita on Jan. 12.

Though Miss Excitement has left California, she leaves behind two full-brothers to Bordonaro.

Furioso Star, a 4-year-old colt, recently broke his maiden at Santa Anita. Fedrico, a 3-year-old colt who carries Carrillo’s actual first name, is in training with Spawr, who also oversees Furioso Star. Miss Excitement also has a 2-year-old Mud Route filly.

Dara’s Tower, Proud Tower Too’s dam, now 16 years old, also has produced Proud Tower, his full-brother and California champion 2-year-old of 2000, and two other Proud Tower offspring—Proud Cardenal, a 7-year-old gelding who won the Phoenix Gold Cup at Turf Paradise in 2005, and Proud Cecy, a 4-year-old filly who is unplaced in nine starts.

Malita, the dam of Debonair Joe, died at the age of 11 in 2000 after producing one more foal, a winning Larry The Legend filly named Broadway Deb.

Joe Valenti, after whom Debonair Joe, was named, is the son of the late Pete Valenti, who owned the now-shuttered Mira Loma Thoroughbred Farm, located bear Alta Loma, Calif.

“We sold it a couple of years ago when the I-15 was getting too big and too noisy,” Joe Valenti says.

He no longer is in the breeding business, but owns several horses, all offspring of Larry The Legend, the 1995 Santa Anita Derby winner, who was trained by Lewis, Debonair Joe’s co-breeder, and also the trainer of Valenti’s runners.

Larry The Legend, who was a Mira Loma stallion until the farm was sold, has been moved to Warren’s Thoroughbreds.

Valenti was unaware that Debonair Joe was entered in the Sunshine Millions Sprint. But he was aware the horse was claimed out of his most recent race.

“If I’d known ahead of time he was in that race, I might have put in a claim for him,” Valenti says. “It would have been like bringing back a member of the family.”
--Larry Bortstein