2003 Cal-bred News

An Unusual Story

ARCADIA, Calif. (Nov. 6, 2003) -- For a horse once offered for sale in a newspaper ad, Unusual Heat could set off some sparks in his debut as a California Cup stallion.

The 13-year-old horse, who stands at Old English Rancho in Sanger, was represented by four offspring -- two sets of full siblings -- when entries were drawn Wednesday for the 10 races which will make up the $1.325 million Cal Cup XIV at Santa Anita on Saturday.

Only three stallions -- Cee’s Tizzy, In Excess and the late Bold Badgett, with five offspring apiece -- were better represented in this year’s Cal Cup entries.

Three of Cee’s Tizzy’s runners -- Hot Market, Tizawinner and Tizbud -- are in the $250,000 Classic, the richest race on the Cal Cup card. Cee’s Elegance, a daughter of Cee’s Tizzy, is the probable favorite in the $150,000 GTT/TOC Cal Cup Matron Handicap.

Only three of Unusual Heat’s offspring may run on Cal Cup day. The Usual is likely to be scratched from the $125,000 Robert H. Walter Cal Cup Juvenile Fillies Stakes in favor of a grass race on Friday’s Oak Tree card.

“She drew the 14 post and we’d prefer not to run a 2-year-old from all the way out there,” said owner-breeder Madeline Auerbach. “It would be reckless.”

The Usual, out of non-winner Style of the Year, but herself a winner of two of her three career starts, is a full sister to 4-year-old gelding Lennyfromalibu, who will contest the $175,000 John C. Mabee Cal Cup Mile.

Cassidy Loves You, their 3-year-old full brother, broke his maiden Wednesday at a mile on turf.

Like The Usual and Lennyfromalibu, Cassidy Loves You is trained by Barry Abrams, who was Unusual Heat’s final trainer in 1996. The stallion is owned by Mrs. Auerbach in partnership with Russell Wolkoff and David Abrams, the trainer’s brother.

“We claimed him out of an $80,000 race at Hollywood Park at a mile and a sixteenth on the grass,” recalled Barry Abrams, “which he won. Then we ran him in the Shoemaker Mile, where he was sixth, beaten four lengths. Then we brought him right back for $125,000, again at a mile and a sixteenth at Hollywood Park, and he won again. But that was his last race.”

Auerbach, whose late husband James founded a furniture manufacturing business she still runs 3 ½ years after his passing, said there is no souvenir of Unusual Heat’s last trip to a winner’s circle.
“He bowed in that race and we never got to take a photo of him,” she said.

Then fate stepped in.

“Apparently, he’d had the problem for a while,” Mrs. Auerbach said. “My husband and I had been breeding some mares, but we didn’t have any stallions and our partners in Unusual Heat thought we should sell him. So we took out an ad in the Daily Racing Form offering him for $50,000. We got one offer, but the person making the offer backed out. We took one look at how royally bred Unusual Heat is, so we decided to keep him. Obviously, we’re thrilled we did.”
Unusual Heat is by French champion Nureyev, one of the world’s leading sires of stakes winners. His dam, Danish-bred Rossand, by the unraced stallion Glacial, was one of Scandinavia’s great racemares. As a 3-year-old, she achieved the unprecedented quadruple sweep of the Danish and Swedish Derby and Oaks.

From breedings exclusively to mares owned by Auerbach, Unusual Heat has produced earners of more than $1.2 million this year and he is listed among the leading third-crop sires in North America.

Besides full siblings The Usual and Lennyfromalibu, Unusual Heat is represented in the Cal Cup entries by 4-year-old filly Thermal Ablasion in the Cal Cup Matron and by 3-year-old filly Tucked Away in the $150,000 John Deere Distaff.

Both Thermal Ablasion, trained by Mike Mitchell, and Tucked Away, from the Paddy Gallagher barn, are out of Chemelo, a Be Your Native mare who was trained at the end of her racing career by Barry Abrams.
-- Larry Bortstein