This story first appeared as a Why It Worked feature in the October issue of BloodHorse magazine.
Fans of Eclipse Award champion older mare Close Hatches who were in the Saratoga Race Course grandstand Aug. 25 likely experienced déjà vu while watching the Personal Ensign Stakes (G1).
On a sloppy track, they watched Juddmonte Farms’ silks atop the front-runner heading into the first turn. This year’s color-bearer, Idiomatic , would not concede the lead to another runner with jockey Florent Geroux effectively setting modest fractions of :24.53, :48.84, and 1:12.61. In the stretch, with pressure from Secret Oath who was a length behind, Idiomatic’s pace quickened and produced a final time of 1:49.12. The final eighth was run in :12.39.
Nine years ago, Close Hatches ran a similar but more aggressive trip in the slop, taking the field through opening fractions of :23.05, :46.61, and 1:11.12. Jockey Joel Rosario was able to ease off the gas in the stretch where the daughter of First Defence had a 6 1/2-length lead and no one closing the gap. She would ultimately win by five lengths in 1:50.62, with her final eighth run in :13.68.
Idiomatic and Close Hatches have close family ties. Idiomatic is a fourth-generation Juddmonte homebred and the first foal out of multiple grade 1-placed, stakes winner Lockdown, who is a full sister to Close Hatches. The full sisters are the best performers out of the Storm Cat winner Rising Tornado.
As individuals, however, Idiomatic and Close Hatches are very different horses, according to Garrett O’Rourke, manager of Juddmonte Farms’ American operation.
“When Close Hatches was a yearling, she had all the attributes (trainer) Wayne Lukas said he looks for in a filly: a head like a princess and a butt like a fry cook and a walk like a hooker,” said O’Rourke. “In her Personal Ensign, she walked into the paddock and looked like a million dollars. She was pumped up and you just got that feeling like, ‘Wow, they’re going to have to be bears to beat her or she’s going to have to do something wrong to be beaten.’ “
Up to that point in her career, Close Hatches had already won the Mother Goose Stakes (G1), Cotillion Stakes (G1), Apple Blossom Handicap (G1), and Ogden Phipps Stakes (G1). Her 2014 campaign would later earn her honors as the year’s champion older mare.
Idiomatic did not win her first stakes until this year. The 4-year-old daughter of Curlin earned black-type in the Latonia Stakes at Turfway Park back in late March but has steadily improved since then.
“This filly is a great big, 17-hand, very tall, leggy filly, who is narrow in front and has a good hind leg, so it took her a while to grow into herself,” O’Rourke recalled. “Really we were early into this year before I could look at her and say, ‘You’re starting to look like a racehorse.’ With each step forward, I thought, if you don’t do any more you have already out-performed my expectations, and then she just kept on getting better and better and better.”
With trainer Brad Cox, Idiomatic followed her Latonia win with a second in the Ruffian Stakes (G2) to then-grade 1-placed Pass the Champagne. She next won the Shawnee Stakes (G3) at Churchill Downs by 2 1/2 lengths and then captured the Delaware Handicap (G2) by a hard-fought head over Classy Edition .
In this year’s Personal Ensign, O’Rourke said Idiomatic unquestionably faced the toughest field of her career.
“In the paddock, your eyes went straight first to Nest , then Clairiere , and then to Secret Oath, and you think, ‘Well, everything’s got to go right for us to win this one,’ ” he said. Nest is a three-time grade 1 winner and runner-up in the Belmont Stakes (G1). Clairiere is a four-time grade 1 winner, and Secret Oath won last year’s Kentucky Oaks (G1) and was third in the Arkansas Derby (G1).
“And in fairness, we got the best scenario,” O’Rourke continued. “The draw was perfect for that pace scenario, and she showed up. I think getting that :48 3/5 half, it was all over at that stage.”
The late Prince Khalid bin Abdullah, who founded Juddmonte in 1980, got involved in Idiomatic’s family with her great-great-granddam Monroe, a group 3 winner, group 1-placed runner by Sir Ivor out of the highly influential mare Best in Show.
“I knew Monroe but I’ve known this family prior to my involvement with Juddmonte,” said O’Rourke, who for four years managed Robert Sangster’s Creekview Farm near Paris, Ky. Sangster owned Sex Appeal, a Buckpasser half sister to Monroe and a half sister to grade 1 winner and multiple graded stakes producer Blush With Pride (by Blushing Groom).
“Monroe was a five-furlong sprinter; there was a group 1 winner in the family, Chief Contender, who won over two miles, and then Blush With Pride who was winning on the dirt. So here was a family that within two generations was getting grade 1 winners on dirt and turf and grade 1 winners at five furlongs and grade 1 winners at two miles,” he said. “Anyone who watches pedigrees sees families like this and sometimes they go away and never come back. This family has been red-hot probably since the 1970s in multiple people’s hands, so it really is an amazing family and obviously cultivated very well by Prince Khalid through Monroe.”
The family also is bolstering the status of Juddmonte’s homegrown grade 1 winner and sire First Defence as a broodmare sire. The son of Unbridled’s Song has, as a broodmare sire, been represented by a higher percentage of stakes winners than he has as a sire (5% vs. 3%) and his daughters have produced more graded/group stakes winners so far (10) than he’s sired (six). First Defence stood at Juddmonte during 2009-16 and then was sold to Haif Stud in Saudi Arabia in 2016.
“Not being unfair to First Defence, but the quality of the mares probably has plenty to do with it,” said O’Rourke. “Close Hatches and Lockdown are two exceptional mares—one a multiple grade 1 winner and the other placed in the Kentucky Oaks—no matter who they were by, we would’ve had very high expectations of them.
“Prince Kahlid supported well the stallions he stood and now his sons are following a similar pattern, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similar to other horses like Secretariat, when you breed the very best mares out there, regardless of what level of a stallion you are, I think you’re going to become a good broodmare sire just because of the pedigrees of the mares,” he said.
Regarding the mating of Lockdown to Curlin, O’Rourke said the strategy in part followed the “breed the best to the best” philosophy but also aimed to add some distance to a family with proven speed.
“Close Hatches won four grade 1s at 1 1/16 miles and could carry that to a mile and an eighth, and Lockdown won at eight and a half furlongs and placed in the Oaks, but you’re always dreaming about the Kentucky Derby and there is no better influence than Curlin,” he said.
With Curlin can come some later maturity, which Idiomatic showed and was accentuated by her large frame.
“She was so big and we don’t have any reason to rush horses, so she had all the time she needed,” O’Rourke said. “She won her early races and had a few developmental issues that made us decide to bring her back and give her a few more months off. When she came back, she hasn’t looked back…definitely her size and maybe the Curlin influence would be reasons for her to be later maturing, but definitely the speed side of her family, you can say that all comes from all the way down to Monroe, and she does have speed.”
