| HARNESS JEWELS |
YEAR: 2019
TICKLE ME PINK:2015 3 B f Muscle Hill - Luby Ann
OWNERS: Breckon Farms-The Perfect Ten Syndicate
BREEDER: Breckon Farms Ltd
TIME: 2:29 Mile Rate: 2-01.6 Last 800m: 60.3 Last 400m: 28.8
There aren’t many New Zealander’s that put more into the game than Ken & Karen Breckon.
The Auckland couple have spent the last two decades putting themselves into the position of being able to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Saturdays win in the Three Year Old Ruby with Tickle Me Pink would have to rate right up there for the couple who up until a few months ago must have wondered whether the winner of four of her first five starts back at the races.
“She probably shouldn’t have gone to Australia, “said Ken Breckon.
“Tony trialled her a week out from travelling where she was beaten in a pretty good time. He had a quiet word with me saying he was a bit disappointed in her.
“He took her home and had a look at the time she went and said maybe he was being a bit harsh on her, but if we had our time again she would never have left as Tony was probably on to something.
“The flight tipped her the wrong way, and when she got there the weight really started to fall off her. She was off her food and raced way below par,” he said.
She ran fifth in the time-honoured Redwood Classic before managing a third placing in a heat for the Breeders Crown, but on her New Zealand form, were races she should have been winning.
“She didn’t get beat by much but Tony was beside himself, she had lost another 20 kilos and even though she had qualified for the Breeders Crown final and was still a big show he told me he wanted to send her home which is what we did,” said Breckon.
“She made it home and began to deteriorate even more, and Tony was quite emotional about it. We thought with the weight she was losing and the speed she was losing it that she had cancer or something horrific.
“It ended up being a very bad blood infection. She had abbesses on both front feet and luckily Noel Power and our staff did and incredible job round the clock monitoring her and her feet. It was a real slow road to recovery.
That long slow road to recovery just made the taste of success even sweeter when Tickle Me Pink returned to the track.
In late April she sat parked and beat a strong crop of male trotters in the Group 2 Sires Stakes Trotting Championships. She did so fresh up without a race under her belt since the failed Breeders Crown mission in August last year.
“It blew us away, Tony expected a good run and she had trialled well in the lead up, but going against some hardened colts we could never have expected that.
“Tony said if she ran in the first five he would be happy. She just has this big ticker and keeps going, she’s beautifully mannered, has an incredible gait and she can get off the gate where she avoids a lot of the early skirmishes in those trotting races.
“Nothing worries her, she’s foolproof. She just knuckles down and keeps going,” he said.
Tickle Me Pink beat the boys again two weeks later when winning the Northern Guineas, once again staving off the New Zealand Derby winner, Lotamuscle. She was far too good for her own sex a week later in the Northern Trotting Oaks, telling the camp she was more than primed for a run at the Jewels.
Remarkably she wasn’t on the leader board a month out from the race, only to end up qualifying third in stakemoney earned.
Tickle Me Pink was looking to become only the fourth filly to win the Three Year Old Ruby, with Pocaro, Sunny Ruby and Donegal Bettorgretch having blazed the trail before her.
The odds were significantly against her. Where the pacing fillies & mares are given a plethora of Group One racing opportunities against their own sex, the trotting fillies and mares don’t have a single race in their own to speak of.
Only eight trotting fillies have saluted in the 26 Two & Three Year Old Ruby’s and only one mare from thirteen attempts in the 4YO Ruby.
Tickle Me Pink becomes just the 18th filly or mare to win a Group One race in the last 10 years. That is from 118 Group One trotting races being carded showing just how hard it is for our trotting girls to win black type, but they also have to compete against the males.
Tickle Me Pink left the arm of the mobile on even terms with the blueblood Australian visitor in All Cashed Up (the first progeny of French champion sire Ready Cash to ever race in New Zealand).
The daughter of Muscle Hill’s job was aided when firstly Enhance Your Calm made a mistake 100m after the dispatch, and then again when the son of Ready Cash galloped after finding the front before she did.
Tony Herlihy and Tickle Me Pink outlasted them for a further mile to be a head in front of them at the finish, only to have to survive a protest from the second place finisher.
“I was feeling sick. I’d had a small punt on her, but I felt more so for the syndicate and the members involved. I get really nervous for the others involved and for me it’s the thrill of seeing them get a win, and some of them are first-time owners.
“I thought gosh, to lose this race on a Group One Day, on a Jewels Day which is the second biggest day on the racing calendar it would have been bloody terrible. Initially we thought it was into the favourite who had galloped, but when you hear its second into first from the Winning Owners Bar, it wasn’t nice.
“We got the result and it capped off a huge day. For what she overcame and to get a Group One under her belt is just huge for the horse herself and a remarkable three or four months.
In overcoming the odds, she isn’t short on breeding.
She is by North America’s leading trotting sire Muscle Hill from the imported American mare, Luby Ann who was acquired from Bill and Jean Feiss.
Breckon acquired Luby Ann in 2011 when the Feiss’ were having a clearance of their broodmares and were turning their focus to buying pacing colts at the sales, which has gone rather well for them.
Luby Ann’s first foal was last season’s Three Year Old Trotting Filly of the Year, Luby Lou. She burst onto the scene as a late three year old having suffered a bad injury at two. She recovered to win the Southland Trotting Oaks, New Zealand Trotting Oaks and a New Zealand Derby before missing her whole four-year-old season due to ongoing injury concerns.
Luby Lou is the first foal from the Andover Hall mare Luby Ann and is raced on lease by Breckon Farms’ Six of the Best Syndicate
Tickle Me Pink, who is the second and only other live foal is raced by The Perfect Ten Syndicate.
A somewhat surprising aspect of all this was that Luby Ann doesn’t belong to particularly strong or well-known American trotting families.
Luby Ann is from Luby (1.54.4), a good trotting filly by Donerail who won a Delvin Miller Memorial at three and who is also the dam of Lubbock (1.53.1, $293,000) and Lutetium (1.52.4, $420,000), but there isn’t anything else of any note in that maternal line for a long time.
Luby Ann was a four-year-old when she began racing and was a nice enough mare, winning four races over the next 12 months, with two at Cambridge and one at Ashburton over Stent when he was on the way up as a four-year-old, and the last of them in Auckland.
Luby Lou and Tickle Me Pink are probably just examples where it is the immediate family and pedigree that is really only relevant.
In these two bluebloods we have fillies by Muscle Hill from a handy enough mare by Andover Hall whose dam was a top youngster in America, and who is perhaps starting a family all of her own.
Muscle Hill over an Andover Hall is also responsible for 81% foals to starters in North America, and is hailed as this generation’s trotting ‘Golden Cross”. The average earnings for those foals is north of $80,000 with 32% of them being sub 1:55 and the same percentile being $100k earners.
The good news for Luby Lou fans is that she is not far from resuming back into work and with fingers crossed be prominent in some of the feature Open Class trotting features next season, adding some much needed depth.
How do the full sisters stack up on ability against each other? Would be silly not to ask the owner!
“They are both foolproof in their gait even though Luby Lou broke at Ashburton on a horrible day in the Hambletonian. Something blew over the track that caught her eye causing her to go off stride. They just trot,” said Breckon.
“Whether Tickle Me Pink has the sheer speed of her sister, I don’t know. I think Luby Lou might be quicker. Talking to Tony, he thinks due to her illness, it probably affected her development physically.
“If you look at her today she is still quite weak and is why he wanted her tipped out. In saying that, is there a lot between them? Not really, as Tony said, give her another six months and she has fully grown into her body and she might be anything,” he said.
“The way the syndicate is its interesting. We usually retire them at four and being mares there isn’t a great deal for them past their three-year old season as they’re racing the boys every week. Tony is beside himself, he said this mare won’t be retiring, she’ll be Open Class even if I have to hide her from you,” laughed Breckon.
Unfortunately, Luby Ann has not had a foal since Tickle Me Pink, having been unable to carry them full-term.
An embryo transfer to Love You was tried last season but she missed at that as well.
Thankfully for Breckon she is safely back in foal to new Woodlands sire and son of Muscle Hill, What The Hill.
And thankfully for us trotting fans, the wait over winter will be well worth it to see the Jewels winner and her full sister back out on the track in the near future.
Credit: Brad Reid