SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY-Just like Rachel Alexandra (Medaglia d’Oro) and Zenyatta (Street Cry {Ire}) in 2016, Beholder (Henny Hughes) and Tepin (Bernstein) will be entering the National Racing Museum’s Hall of Fame on Friday in their first year of eligibility.
Six years after a no-brainer election package, Walk of Fame voters have selected two outstanding mares of the second decade of the 21st century to join the finest club on Union Avenue. Although they excel on different surfaces, there are many similarities. Both were critically acclaimed in their career debuts. Both won multiple division titles. Both won the Breeders’ Cup. Both beat men in Class I races. Both were the first Hall of Fame horses to be managed by their Hall of Fame trainers. Neither was a particularly expensive purchase: Spendthrift Farm bought Beholder for $180,000; Robert Masterson bought Tepin for $140,000.
Together, Beholder and Tepin have won 31 of their 49 career starts, 63.2%, and finished in three leads 43 times, 87.7%. Their total purse income is $10,594,518.
What does it tell their trainers that they are the first Vote Honorees?
Mark Casse on Tepin: “It just shows what I already know, that she’s amazing.”
Richard Mandella on Beholder: “I’m not surprised. I think she impressed everyone with her achievements. She did things that not many or no horses could do. Cannon and mare run 1 1/4 mile in under two minutes? I’m not saying no one has, but I don’t know that many people have. And to win Class 1 by 2-3-4-5 and 6, I think, speaks for itself. “
Beholder and Tepin, the only two selections in this year’s contemporary competition, are among the group of eight that will be introduced at a ceremony that begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion. The Historical Review Committee elected trainer Oscar White and his horses Hillsdale (Take Away) and Royal Heroine (Ire) (Lypheor {GB}). Pillars of the Turf picks are James Cox Brady, Marshall Cassidy, and James Ben Ali Haggin.
In five seasons with Mandella, Beholder won 18 of his 26 starts. 13 of those wins were in graded bets and 11 at the top level, Class I. She has won all three of her Breeders’ Cup starts, the 2012 GI Juvenile Fillies and the GI Distaff. in 2013 and 2016. Her illness prevented her from continuing to compete. events in 2014 and 2015. In 2015, she was scratched two days before a scheduled showdown with the Triple Crown winner. American pharoah (Pioneer of the Nile) in GI Classic. In her career finale the following year, she beat Distaff by a nose to Rick Porter’s Songbird champion (Medaglia d’Oro) after a long epic battle. Her incredible score against Songbird helped her win her fourth Eclipse Award with the title of 2-year-old girl in 2012, the 3-year-old girl’s crown in 2013 and the title of older girl of the year 2015. .
At Del Mar in 2015, she beat the GI Pacific Classic for men by 8 1/4 in a time of 1:59.77, a fast time while Mandella said she was being pulled by racer Gary Stevens.
“Every trainer should train such a horse,” says Mandella. “You can come up with all the fancy training ideas you want and most of them you just throw it in the wind. But this, I don’t think anyone trained her that matters, she’s been amazing every year. “
Beholder finished second in three starts against 2016 Distaff — including a five-match loss to California Chrome (Lucky Pulpit) in the GI Pacific Classic — and won 3-1 against Songbird.
“She was very hot that summer,” Mandella said. “It was the first year she started doing it, it was so obvious. And I think her thinking is not quite the same. But she was out there a few weeks before Breeders’ Cup and someone interviewed me and I said, ‘She’s back. She will run her race this time. ‘”
Mandella is not involved in the Spendthrift group’s Beholder purchase. However, when Spendthrift’s owner, B. Wayne Hughes, asked him to select some of the ranch’s ponies for training, he chose her. He said it soon became clear that she was a special horse.
“She’s just a fat 2-year-old who doesn’t take her workouts seriously,” he said. “But she showed she can run.”
After finishing in fourth place, being beaten by 8.5 lengths in her Hollywood Park debut in June 2012, she broke her maiden easily and was hit by an Executiveprivilege nose (First Samurai) in GI Del Mar Debutante. Two races later, she beat Executiveprivilege by a long distance in the junior track.
All of Beholder’s wins go to California. Her second and final achievement was her fourth in the 2014 GI Ogden Phipps at Belmont Park. Mandella said she probably cost her a win in the GI Kentucky Oaks when, he said, “she chose a fight with the horse and the rider went to the gate” in front of a huge crowd at Churchill Downs . She is second at only half the length behind the Princess of Sylmar (Mighty Warrior).
Mandella said: “She had some behavioral problems. “She is 5% explosives and the other 95% is a lover. But when she’s ugly, she’s really bad.”
Mandella has singled out a number of starts as the top of his list of favorite Beholder moments.
“Wow, the Pacific Classic is breathtaking,” he said. “And then the final race, to beat Mr. Porter’s second great mare, Songbird.”
Mandella was looking forward to attending the introduction, but had to cancel her trip from California because she tested positive for Covid-19.
Tepin took a little more time to emerge as a star for Casse. He described her as a good 2-year-old during a four-race season, including winning the GIII Delta Downs Debutante. Casse moved her to the grass in the second race of her 3-year-old winless season.
Casse said: ‘The last time we drove her as a 3-year-old, she wasn’t running well. “She was really upset after the race and [Masterson] and I looked at each other and he said to me, ‘Why don’t we send her home?’ We sent her back to Ocala and gave her a little break, just giving her a few months off.”
Casse said he likes 4-year-olds to have a little more time before they start facing older ponies. She left the races from August until March.
“We did that, and then when she came back as a 4-year-old, she was a monster,” Casse said. “It’s like another horse. The rest is history”.
Tepin quickly returned to three straight wins, led by a half-way win over Filimbi (Mizzen Mast) in GI Just a Game S. at Belmont Park. The huge success between March 21 and June 6 is a foreshadowing of what lies ahead. By the time she finished her career with a second place finish in the 2016 GI Breeders’ Cup Mile, she was dominant in 11 of her 15 starts and finished second in the four she didn’t win. . Two of those failures, one at GI Diana H. and the other by a GII head of Ballston Spa S., arrived in Saratoga after Just a Game.
A seven-time win in the GI First Lady S. at Keeneland encouraged Casse to try her hand at the males on the same course four weeks later in the GI Breeders’ Cup Mile. Penalized $4.90-1, she used her speed to win 2 1/4 lengths. With a 5-2-0 record in seven races, she was voted the Women’s Lawn Eclipse.
Tepin extended his unbeaten streak with four more wins to open 2016 and was then presented with another challenge, running at Royal Ascot in the G1 Queen Anne S.
“To be honest with you,” Casse said, “I wasn’t too excited to go to Royal Ascot simply because I thought we might have the best turf horse in the country, maybe in the world, and I just felt it was a request of hers. “
Tepin completed the task and finished first in the 13-horse race half the length under her regular rider Julien Leparoux.
“If I knew what I know now, I don’t know if I would have married her because it was so difficult,” Casse said. “It just shows you how amazing she really is.”
Tepin continued his career in September with a victory over men in the GI Woodbine Mile at Woodbine. She came in second to Photo Call (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) in First Lady and only excelled in the finale, losing half to Traveler when she tries to repeat in Mile. Her 6-2-0 record in eight starts spawned another Eclipse.
“The crazy thing about her is that maybe the best race she’s ever run in her life was her last start,” Casse said. “She should have won the Breeders’ Cup again. She came back unlike what she liked there. The normal Tepin coming home would have been right in the lead. She’s back and she’s going wide and TravelerJoel [Rosario] ride a horse Traveler that day. He snuck up on the rails and got in front of her and she still nearly knocked him down. I’m always looking at that, even though she didn’t win it, for possibly one of her greatest races.
“The race of her life was Royal Ascot and she gave us an experience that I will probably never go through again.”
