By Bill Heller
Though they raced 600 miles apart at Aqueduct and Keeneland, two talented New York-breds, the undefeated two-year-old filly Iron Orchard and the four-year-old gelding Rhetoric, reached the same destination Saturday, the winner’s circle after a Grade 1, Breeders’ Cup `Win and You’re In’ stakes. “Isn’t that amazing?” Martin Zaretsky, the president of Pine Ridge Stables where Iron Orchard was foaled, said. “The New York-bred program is fabulous.”
Mallory Mort, who co-bred Rhetorical with his wife Karen, concurred: “Pretty good day for the New York-bred program.”
Edward Childs’ CSLR Racing Partners and R.A. Hill Stables own Iron Orchard, a daughter of Authentic out of Onebrethatatime by Brethren, trained by Danny Gargan. She made her first two starts against New York-breds at Saratoga, taking a maiden special weight by 5 ½ lengths and the $145,000 Seeking the Ante Stakes by 6 ¾ lengths. She went off at odds of 3-5 in both races. Sent off at 2-1 odds in the one-mile $400,000 Frizette Stakes, she won by a nose under Joel Rosario, her jockey in all three starts. Changing tactics, he let her settle off the pace. It was a flawless ride.
“You never know how good a horse will be,” Kenny Toye, the farm manager at Pine Ridge Stables, said. “Raising that filly, she had to overcome a lot.”
That’s because her dam, Onebrethatatime, became ill not long after Iron Orchard was born. “Her dam was a joy to be around, a sweet horse,” Toye said. “She’d eat right out of your palm. She got sick. She kept deteriorating.”
When she died, Iron Orchard was matched with a nurse mare. “A lot of times when the mares die, the foal goes through a lot of stress,” Toye said. “There was a brief period, 24 hours or less, where Iron Orchard was stressed out. Once she got the nurse mare, she bonded right away.”
Subsequently, Iron Orchard sold for $140,000 as a weanling, $78,000 as a yearling and $500,000 at the Ocala Two-Year-Old Sale.
She’s taken Zaretsky, who has been breeding horses for some 25 to 30 years, on quite a ride. Zaretsky had an unorthodox entry into racing. He made his living in the packaging business, folding cartons for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
An avid skier, he’d take his three children, daughter Dina, now 56, Craig, a 54-year-old surgeon in New Jersey, and their sister Blake, now 36, to Windham, a skiing resort in upstate New York. “We’d go from January through March,” he said.
One day, he saw an ad in the New York Times Magazine real estate section, offering a gentleman’s farm near seven ski areas in North Chatham, NY. The house belonged to Lucy Arnaz, daughter of the comic and movie legend Lucille Ball, and her husband Larrry Luckinbill. “I didn’t get to meet Lucy Arnaz, but there were a lot of pictures of her mother in the house,” Zaretsky said.
He didn’t buy that house, but his real estate agent offered another property in North Chatham, where Zaretsky would establish Pine Ridge Stables. “I bought the property and I got into horseback riding with the kids. I fixed the barn. I bought a few horses. I rode in the Old Chatham Fox Hunt. I got into riding. I wanted to breed my horses and my friend Jerry Bilinski (a prominent New York breeder at Waldorf Farm who served as Chairman of the New York State Racing and Wagering Board) said, `Find a horse to buy and make money.’ I bought one for $22,000 and her baby sold for $22,000.”
He’s been in the game ever since: “I used to have 15 mares, but when I retired at 78, I sold off a lot of my horses. I still race. Linda Rice is my trainer. I was making a lot of money when I worked and the horses were a decent write-off. I’m 82, so I’m somewhat geared down.”
Yet he got the thrill of a lifetime breeding a Grade 1 winner Iron Orchard: “This is my first Grade 1 to my knowledge. It’s very exciting.”
Mallory Mort offered the same word talking about Rhetorical’s three-quarter-length victory in the $1,038,750 Coolmore Turf Mile Stakes at odds of 9-1 at Keeneland in a quick final time of 1:33.61 three hours after Iron Orchard’s victory at Aqueduct. “Obviously, it was very exciting. We knew he was a pretty good horse. Very exciting. Very satisfying.”
Rhetorical’s owners, Gary Barber, Cheyenne Stable and Wachtel Stables, couldn’t be more satisfied. Irad Ortiz Jr. rode Rhetorical, a son of Not This Time out of Silent Humor by Distorted Humor, who now has five victories and a third by three-quarters of a length in six career starts. He sold for $320,000 at the 2022 Saratoga August Yearling Sale, and three years later gave trainer Will Walden his first Grade 1 stakes triumph. Walden began training in 2022. Barber, Cheyenne and Wachtel Stable bought Rhetorical this May after his after a dominating New York-bred allowance victory.
Mort has been with Gallagher’s Stud in Ghent, NY since 1979, just a year after the farm opened. Now the farm’s farm manager, he grew up on his family’s farm in southern Pennsylvania. “I competed in 4H horse shows,” he said. At Penn State, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Production, working for two years in the university’s Quarter Horse program. “They have a great Quarter Horse program,” he said. “Then Gallagher’s Stud was looking for someone. It’s been a great relationship.”
Mort worked with all facets of the farm’s equine and cattle operations, taking care of champion Angus cattle and graded-stakes-winning Thoroughbreds. He’s managed the entire farm operation since 2005.
In 2015, Mort’s wife Karen mentioned that he might do well to buy a dam. They had taken a break from getting a dam every year. “She suggested, actually a little more than suggested, insisted I buy one mare,” Mort said.
Karen explained why: “He was on the board of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders. I didn’t think it made any sense if he wasn’t a breeder himself. I insisted. I didn’t threaten him. I strongly encouraged him to get back into it and have a mare again. Look forward to every spring.”
Mort did, purchasing Sheet Humor: “She was a $240,000 NRA. She was in foal to Midnight Lute. Unfortunately, we sold her before Sterling Silver ran.”
Too bad. Sterling Silver has posted nine victories, including a Grade 2 stakes, seven seconds and seven thirds in 34 career starts, with more than $1.1 million in earnings. In her last start on September 27th at Aqueduct, she finished third in the Grade 2 Gallant Bloom Stakes.
The Morts sold Sheet Humor in foal to leading New York-bred sire Central Banker for $3,000 in the 2021 Fasig-Tipton about a month before Sterling Silver won her debut.
Rhetorical is the last foal the Morts bred out of Sheet Humor. All he’s done in six starts is earn $824,700.
The Morts were celebrating their anniversary out of town when Rhetorical stepped into the starting gate at Keeneland. “We were on a weekend getaway in the Adirondacks,” Karen said. “We could only watch it on an I-Pad. It was a very nice anniversary present for him to win.
“It was very exciting and a little unbelievable. We’re a small breeder. In the past 40 years, we’ve had one mare a year. Lightning has struck us twice with Sterling Silver and Rhetorical.”
And New York-breds had a second Grade 1 victory on the very same afternoon.
