Cathy and Paul Schroeder could also be Breeders’ Cup rookies. However at the least they’ve cloaked themselves within the embrace of people that have been there and accomplished that, together with a filly who has earned a proper to strut on racing’s greatest stage.
Cairo Memories is her name, a gun-metal gray daughter of Cairo Prince who in her only appearances has shown her heels to a couple of flabbergasted California fields, including the 10 who chased her in the Oct. 3 Surfer Girl Stakes at Santa Anita Park. That race put Cairo Reminiscences on the quick monitor to the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1T) Nov. 5 at Del Mar, when the racing world will discover out if California kind can maintain a candle to an invading horde from Europe and the jap U.S.
To explain Cathy Schroeder as excited on the prospect short-changes the time period. She was born in Kansas and raised within the L.A. suburb of Whittier, whereas her husband is a California native from the city of Alhambra, simply up the street. Business actual property firms owned and operated by Paul Schroeder have put them in a spot to spend the $50,000 Cairo Reminiscences value as a yearling.
“After the Surfer Lady I used to be about three ft off the bottom,” Cathy Schroeder stated. “We went to the Runhappy Lounge with mates and watched the race a number of extra occasions. It was virtually an excessive amount of to imagine. She gained it once more, each time, and never solely was it a stakes race, however a race that meant she may go to the Breeders’ Cup. The sensation was indescribable.”
Cairo Reminiscences and Kent Desormeaux fly dwelling within the Surfer Lady Stakes at Santa Anita Park
There will likely be a short pause right here to understand the truth that, even after 37 years of watching powerhouse stables and legacy ownerships win a lot of the cash, the prospect of competing for a Breeders’ Cup prize for a modest steady nonetheless makes the guts flutter and the palms sweat. The Schroeders, each of their late 70s, have been racing and breeding Thoroughbreds for about 15 years and up to now have had precisely one graded stakes winner (the Surfer Lady is a listed race value $200,000). Bob Hess Jr. has been their coach from the beginning.
“Bob isn’t the form of coach to magnify or encourage false hopes,” Schroeder stated. “When he known as someday as informed us that Cairo Reminiscences is one of the best horse we ever owned, we might hardly imagine it. However she’s definitely proved him proper.”
The filly ran for the primary time—solely 80% prepared, in keeping with her coach—in a one-mile turf maiden race Sept. 5. With Kent Desormeaux aboard, Cairo Reminiscences lingered with the pack after which burst away on the finish to win by 4 1/2 lengths. The time was modest, however the value was proper, at 16-1, and that ruckus individuals might need heard in a Newport Seashore neighborhood was coming from contained in the Schroeder home.
“There we had been, screaming out heads off on the bigscreen TV,” Cathy stated. “We might hardly imagine it. I am certain she might have gained by simply as a lot within the Surfer Lady, however Kent was considering forward to the subsequent race, so why ask her for greater than the couple of lengths she gained by? And now have a look at what that ‘subsequent race’ has turned out to be.”
Cairo Reminiscences heads out to coach Oct. 31 at Del Mar
Cairo Reminiscences is by the Pinoeerof the Nile stallion Cairo Prince , but if you blinked, you probably missed his racing career. At 2, he ran Honor Code to a nose in the 2013 Remsen Stakes (G2), with Wicked Strong lapped on in third. The following winter, Cairo Prince won the Holy Bull Stakes (G2) so easily that he was being fitted for a blanket of roses before he cooled out. His subsequent fourth as the favorite in the Besilu Florida Derby (G1) was too bad to be true, so it made sense when an injury was blamed, and he never raced again. Cairo Memories is from his fourth crop, foaled and raised at Aidrie Stud in Kentucky, where the stallion stands for $15,000.
Cathy Schroeder named their filly with an obvious nod to both the sire and the dam, Incarnate Memories, who is by the In Excess stallion Indian Charlie, the 1998 Kentucky Derby (G1) third who succumbed to cancer in 2011, at age 16. Noodling around in the female family of Cairo Memories eventually leads to Your Hostess, her sixth dam, and her full brother Your Host, winner of the Santa Anita Derby, favorite in the 1950 Kentucky Derby, and sire of Kelso.
“The people at Airdrie loved Incarnate Memories and thought she was going to be something special as a racehorse,” Schroeder said. “Sadly, she only ran once and fractured her pelvis, so her racing was nipped in the bud.”
A foal of 2008, Incarnate Memories was healed enough to begin her broodmare career by giving birth to a filly in 2014. Her second filly, Cariba, won a small stakes in 2020 at Saratoga Race Course. One month later, on the advice of Hess and agent Davant Latham, the Schroeders purchased Cariba’s full sister on the Keeneland September Yearling Sale.
“I preferred her the primary time I noticed her as a yearling,” Hess stated of Cairo Reminiscences. “Though I’ve obtained to confess I did not suppose she’d be this good. That is the great thing about this recreation.”
Bob Hess Jr. at Del Mar
Within the wake of the filly’s maiden win, the Schroeders offered a half curiosity in Cairo Reminiscences to David Bernsen, a veteran horse proprietor whose enterprise pursuits embody the Las Vegas-based International Wagering Group. Bernsen was half proprietor of Roy H when he clinched an Eclipse Award with a victory in the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Sprint (G1) at Del Mar. Bernsen celebrated once more at Churchill Downs in 2018 when Roy H repeated within the Dash and Stormy Liberal took the Turf Sprint (G1T) for the second straight year, this time with Bernsen along for a minor share.
Desormeaux also brings good karma to the mix. The Hall of Famer, now 51, will be trying to win a Breeders’ Cup race in a fourth consecutive decade after his first of six BC wins in 1993 aboard Kotashaan in the Turf (G1T) and his most recent with Roy H in the 2017 Sprint. The rider also has a deep and abiding connection with Hess, who has stuck with Desormeaux through troubled times in the past.
“He’s like a brother,” Hess said. “I rely on his judgement. Kent worked the filly before she ever ran and said she was a good one. He persuaded me to run her long.”
Then there is the trainer, who has had seven Breeders’ Cup starters. Six were not quite good enough on the day, although River Special was a game third in the 1992 Juvenile (G1) and two others banked decent money for fourth. There also was the one that got away.
“I got beat a nose by Wayne Lukas,” Hess said, referring to the near miss of Merit Man to Hightail at Santa Anita in the 2012 running of the short-lived Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Sprint. “I supposed if you’ve got to get beat like that in a Breeders’ Cup race, you shouldn’t feel too bad if it’s by the all-time leading Breeders’ Cup trainer.”
At 56, Hess has been training a public stable since 1987, when he left the nest of his father, the respected Northern California horseman Robert Hess Sr. The elder Hess died in December of 2020 from the effects of COVID-19. His son was asked what advice his father might have offered going into a Breeders’ Cup race with a live chance.
“He’d never volunteer anything, but he didn’t need to because I would ask him things all the time,” Hess said. “He helped me keep things in perspective.”
History provides plenty of perspective, especially at Breeders’ Cup time, and it is a lot to ask of a relatively inexperienced Thoroughbred like Cairo Memories to carry the torch for an entire racing region. But unless Surfer Girl runner-up Helens Well or maiden race winner Baby Steps can slip into the field from the also-eligibles, the Hess filly will be the only California-trained runner among the 14 in the Juvenile Fillies Turf.
The race never has been kind to Californians, even though eight of its 13 runnings have been offered at either Santa Anita or Del Mar. The best the locals have done was the third-place finish of Colonel Joan for Eoin Harty in 2013 behind Chriselliam .
“There just hasn’t been much of a program for 2-year-old fillies on the grass in California until recently,” Hess noted. “When I won the Miesque in 2001, I think it was the only stakes for out here for that division. And there’s still not a lot.”
The Miesque Stakes at Hollywood Park was a grade 3 November event that is now run at Del Mar and called the Jimmy Durante Stakes (G3T). Otherwise, the black-type turf opportunities for young fillies out West remain scarce, while back East those so inclined can choose from races in Kentucky, New York, Maryland, Florida, New Jersey, and Ontario, in Canada, all of them just a short hop away.
It also should be noted that Hess is not opposed to pulling the occasional upset. He won that version of the Miesque with the 20-1 shot Forty On Line, who beat a field that included the major stakes winner Riskaverse and subsequent 3-year-old filly champion Farda Amiga.
Cairo Memories is likely to be similarly overlooked in the betting, but only because the incoming competition is thick with runners who have proven records. Hess put the finishing touches on her preparation the morning of Oct. 31 at Del Mar with five-eighths on the grass under Desormeaux in 1:04 2/5, accomplished around cones placed well past the center of the course.
Cairo Memories after training at Del Mar
“The cool thing about this filly is that she’s not what I’d call a Little League super star,” Hess said. “She’s a super model, and when she grows and fills out she’s going to be an even better 3-year-old and 4-year-old.
“But she is incredibly precocious, as well, and loves her job,” Hess added. “Nothing seems to faze her. She has earned a shot at this, so whatever’s meant to be, will be.”
