Mercante rewards owner-breeder Pollard and his champion filly from 25 years ago
More than two decades after her championship season, Caressing's last foal by Gun Runner is on the scene as a graded stakes winner
By Frances J. Karon
It was more than a few years ago ago, back in 1999, that Hermitage’s Carl Pollard bought a filly from the first crop of Honour and Glory for $180,000 (through agent Mike Ryan) at the Keeneland September sale. For Pollard and trainer David Vance, that filly—as Caressing—won the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Churchill Downs en route to the champion 2-year-old filly Eclipse.
Together, Vance and Pollard also found success with Jetto (Easy Goer), winner of the 1996 G3 Honeybee; Kiss the Devil (Kris S.), a $150,000 yearling purchase in September of 1999—the same sale where Caressing was acquired—and she was a Grade 3 winner in 2003; My Trusty Cat (Tale of the Cat), a $130,000 yearling who was a Grade 2/Grade 3 winner in 2004 and Grade 1 winner in 2005; and Kiss Moon (Malibu Moon), a Grade 3-winning homebred daughter of Kiss the Devil, in 2015.
And Pollard co-owned Take Me Out (Cure the Blues)—having bought him out of the 1992 Keeneland January sale as a 4-year-old and already a graded stakes winner—with Warner L. Jones. Trained by Bill Mott, Take Me Out won the G3 Tropical Park H. a month before Jones passed away in 1994. Pollard went on to buy Hermitage Farm from the Jones estate that year. He sold the farm in 2010 but is still associated with the farm and Hermitage name.
Despite Pollard’s association with some nice graded stakes winners, Caressing, of course, holds pride of place in his history. The only champion he raced, he also bred a champion out of her, and that was West Coast, champion 3-year-old male in 2017. But West Coast raced for Gary and Mary West, whose agent Ben Glass paid $425,000 for the Flatter colt in Hermitage consignment at the 2015 Keeneland September sale. The winner of the G1 Travers, West Coast earned over $5.8 million.
Last weekend, 26 years after her purchase as a yearling, Caressing’s final foal, Mercante (Gun Runner), became a graded stakes winner, in the same red silks with a black sash and wearing a red shadow roll, just like his dam. A 5-year-old gelding trained by Brian Knippenberg—whose day job is managing Hermitage Farm—Mercante was making his stakes debut in the G3 Kentucky Cup Classic at Turfway. He won by a length at 13-1 to become the second graded winner produced from Caressing, who foaled him when she was 22; and the first graded stakes winner for his trainer.
It’s pretty rare for a first-generation link between graded stakes winners, in the same owner’s silks no less, to extend 20-plus years. It also seems maybe that much more special because Mercante is the last foal from Caressing, who died in 2021.
MERCANTE (2020 Gun Runner – Caressing, by Honour and Glory)
B: CFP Thoroughbreds LLC
O: Carl F. Pollard
T: Brian Knippenberg
Record: 11-4-0-3, $367,017
Highest achievement: Grade 3 winner
Last Auction Price: none (withdrawn from 2021 Keeneland Septemer sale)
A few days after Mercante’s Kentucky Cup Classic win, Hermitage Farm’s longtime general manager Bill Landes said, “Caressing began her breeding career somewhat star-crossed. She lost her first foal, a Gone West filly, and had a smallish Storm Cat filly (who became a wonderful producer in Japan), a few winners, but encouragement came with graded-placed horses by Empire Maker and Indian Charlie—obviously something was there. She hit pay dirt with Flatter (on a share season) with champion West Coast (how many champion mares beget
champions?). Then Mr. Pollard being taken with Gun Runner in his second year gets a real promising graded stakes winner!”
Mercante is the 40th stakes winner sired by Gun Runner. Gun Runner, Horse of the Year in 2017, was co-owned by Winchell Thoroughbreds and Three Chimneys Farm. There’s a link there, too—Verne Winchell bought and raced Mercante’s unplaced fifth dam Donut Queen (Arctic Prince). From there, Winchell bred Mercante’s fourth dam Queen Hostess (My Host), third dam Forest Princess (Fleet Nasrullah)—as an aside, Forest Princess is the granddam of Winchell’s three-time Grade 1 winner Sea Cadet (Bolger), a foal of 1988—and second dam Lovin Touch (Majestic Prince). To emphasize just how old this female family is, how many racehorses can you find today with Majestic Prince—winner of two-thirds of the Triple Crown in 1969—as the sire of the second dam?
Mercante is turning into a feel-good story that you’d be hard-pressed not to smile about if he goes on to bigger and better.
“Caressing,” said Landes, “is buried on Hermitage by the foaling barn and she, Raja Baba [from the Warner Jones era of Hermitage] and Mr. Pollard’s blue hen In My Cap”—Pollard bought her as a broodmare in 1995 and bred some expensive yearlings from her—“are the only horses so honored.”
Thank you Miss Frances!
Arthur Mercante, Sr. was the referee for the first Ali/Frazier boxing match. Any connection?
Dick Powell