The 2007 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale was a prosperous one for Tommy and Lori Fackler. From that sale, the Florida breeders picked up the dams of two grade 1 winners for less than $35,000 with Slew’s Quality and Flirting With Fate. Those two mares ended up being the investments of a lifetime for the Facklers, taking their small Reddick, Fla. farm to the game’s highest heights with their offspring over the past decade.
Flirting with Fate produced 2014 Blue Grass Stakes (G1) winner and Kentucky Derby (G1) starter Dance With Fate while Slew’s Quality’s daughter Shamrock Rose landed Breeders’ glory in the 2018 Filly & Mare Sprint (G1).
Although it’s been five years since Shamrock Rose’s stunning Breeders’ Cup upset, her dam Slew’s Quality is very much keeping the Facklers in the limelight with her daughter Loyalty ‘s recent victory in the Nov. 11 CA$175,000 Bessarabian Stakes (G2) at Woodbine.
Co-bred by the Fackler’s Best A Luck Farm and Godolphin, Loyalty captured her second graded stakes race of the year in the Bessarabian. The 4-year-old daughter of Hard Spun had notched the Hendrie Stakes (G3), also at Woodbine, earlier in the year for owners Gainesway Stable and LNJ Foxwoods. Bloodstock agency Solis/Litt signed the ticket on Loyalty as a yearling for $270,000 at the 2020 Keeneland September Sale.
The Facklers initially chose Slew’s Quality, who Fackler said was only an “average-looking mare” because they were fans of her sire, Elusive Quality. A $35,000 acquisition, the mare quickly rewarded the Facklers when her fifth foal, Bet On Mike, earned a black-type placing at Woodbine. Her sixth foal, by First Dude, was Shamrock Rose.
Tommy and Lori Fackler with Slew’s Quality at Best A Luck Farm
Trained by Mark Casse, Shamrock Rose scored handily in the Raven Run Stakes (G2) at Keeneland before defeating a top-class field of fillies and mares on racing’s biggest stage. In a thrilling last-to-first stretch drive, she won the Filly & Mare Sprint en route to being crowned that year’s champion female sprinter.
“(The Breeders’ Cup) was extremely exciting,” Lori Fackler recalled. “She didn’t have great odds that day (25-1) and it had only been a few weeks since she had won the Raven Run. We thought those two races were pretty close but Mark (Casse) obviously knew what he was doing and she ran against some nice, stiff competition and got it done. Then she got the Eclipse too so it was very, very special for us.”
Shamrock Rose wins the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint at Churchill Downs
Loyalty is the second stakes winner and the fourth stakes performer overall produced from the 19-year-old Slew’s Quality.
“We’re very lucky with Slew’s Quality and her foals that we’ve sold have landed in the right places. Everything has just been aligned for her,” Fackler said. “She’s been very special to us. She hasn’t been a disappointment at any point and it’s been very exciting to be around her. She’s given us so many opportunities with what she’s been able to accomplish with her foals.”
Unraced on the track, Slew’s Quality’s offspring have all varied in physical make-up, but all share a straightforward disposition and star-like potential.
“Loyalty didn’t have the size that Shamrock had as a baby, Shamrock was probably a little scopier,” Fackler said. “Being by Hard Spun, Loyalty is a more typier, compact horse versus Shamrock who was more like her dad (First Dude), being very long and big.”
The Facklers currently have Slew’s Quality’s youngest foal in training in Ocala, a yearling colt by Authentic .
“He’s a totally different-looking horse (than his sisters),” Fackler said. “He’s more of an elegant-looking horse. He’s been doing very well in his training so far. He’s the one that when he comes on the track everyone asks who he is so we have high hopes for him.”
Fackler indicated that the colt would most likely be offered at next spring’s OBS April Sale and would be consigned under the Best A Luck Farm banner.
Barren this year, Fackler said Slew’s Quality could be bred back to Hard Spun again during the 2024 breeding season. In the meantime, the Facklers will keep a hopeful eye on Loyalty from afar as she continues her racing career into the new year. The winner of seven of 11 starts and earnings of $398,647 for Canadian trainer Jose Carroll, the future appears bright for the ever-improving Loyalty.
“It’s once in a lifetime to have a mare produce a grade 1 winner and to have two mares produce that is something else,” Fackler said. “And who knows Loyalty keeps improving at the end of the day so maybe she’ll keep going and we’ll get another one.”
