Post Position 1

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photo by Horsephotos/NTRA

Career Earnings: $1,602,800

• Preakness winner was originally purchased by Midnight Cry Stables for $57,000 at the Keeneland September yearling sale.

• After Curlin’s 12 ¾-length maiden win February 3 rd at Gulfstream, Midnight Cry sold 80 percent of the colt to Bolton , Stonestreet and Padua for approximately $3.5 million.

• John Moynihan, a Lexington , Ky. , bloodstock agent brokered the sale of Curlin by Midnight Cry to Stonestreet, Padua and Bolton .

• Trained in his first start by Helen Pitts, former assistant to trainer Ken McPeek.

• Curlin is named after Charlie Curlin, a slave who fought for the Confederate Army in the Civil War.  Charlie Curlin is the great-grandfather of Shirley Cunningham Jr., one of the partners in Midnight Cry Stable.

• Curlin’s sire Smart Strike raced eight times with six victories and one second.  Smart Strike won the Grade 1 Iselin Handicap and Grade 3 Salvatore Mile when he was 4.

• Belmont Stakes winners Native Dancer and Nashua are great-great-grandsires of Curlin.

• Curlin’s only loss came in the Kentucky Derby when he was third behind Street Sense and Hard Spun.

• The Belmont Stakes will be Curlin’s first start at Belmont Park .

• Is trying to become the 19 th horse to win the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. The last to do so was Afleet Alex in 2005.

• Horses whose first name starts with “C” have won 20 Belmonts , more than any other letter.

TRAINER - Steve Asmussen began training Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses in New Mexico in 1986.

First major Thoroughbred was Valid Expectations, owned by the Ackerley Brothers Farm, and winner of seven stakes races from 1995-97.

Won the first grade 1 race of his career in 1999 with Dreams Galore in the Mother Goose at Belmont Park.

Major clients are Bob and Leland Ackerley, George Bolton, Bill and Corinne Heiligbrodt, George McCarty, Padua Stable, James Cassells, The Verne Winchell Family Trust, Bob Zollars and Oceanfront Property Stable, which includes country music superstar George Strait as a principal. Also trained for Golden Eagle Farm, Nelson Bunker Hunt, Richard Englander, Mike Pegram, Gary Tanaka, Team Valor, The Thoroughbred Corp.

One of the best horses he's trained is the now retired Lady Tak, winner of the 2004 Ballerina.

Has won training titles at Lone Star Park, Keeneland, Fair Grounds, Churchill Downs, Remington Park, Sam Houston Park, Ellis Park and Retama Park.

Is the all-time leading trainer at Lone Star and was inducted into that track's Hall of Fame in 2007.

Leading trainer by wins in North America in 2002 with 407 victories. That enabled him to become only the third trainer in racing history to reach the 400 single-season win plateau, joining Jack Van Berg and Scott Lake.

In 2003, he ranked second with 452 wins and third in earnings of $11.7 million.

In 2004, Asmussen shattered Jack Van Berg's record of 496 victories in a single year, set in 1976, when he won 555 races. He ranked third with earnings over $14 million . He was an Eclipse Award finalist in 2004.

2005: Another stellar year running horses across the country from divisions in New York, Chicago, Kentucky, Texas and Louisiana.

Currently has about 150 horses in training under his care …  Won the Kentucky Oaks with Summerly and celebrated a career milestone of 3,000 wins when Forest Music took the Honorable Miss Stakes at Saratoga. “It is extra significant to win it in a stakes race at Saratoga with a filly like this,” he said afterward. “It is kind of how my career evolved. When there is a filly like this that the owner paid so much for and moved into my barn; there is no success without that opportunity.”

Year-end stats for 2006: 241 wins from 1141 starts for earnings of $7,715,373, ranking him 9th in earnings for North American trainers.

JOCKEY - Robby Albarado Born in Lafayette , La. , Albarado, 33, started riding at bush tracks when he was 12.  He has earned riding titles at Fair Grounds, Arlington Park , Keeneland and Oaklawn Park .  The winner of the 2004 George Woolf Memorial Award, Albarado’s best mounts have included 2003 Horse of the Year Mineshaft, Joyeux Danseur, Quiet Resolve, Morluc and Tijiyr.  Albarado and his wife, Kimber, have two sons, Kaden and Kash. Kimber is pregnant with the couple’s third child and is due on Friday, June 8, the day before the Belmont Stakes.

OWNER - Stonestreet Stables, Padua Stables, George Bolton and Midnight Cry Stable

      Stonestreet Stables is owned by Jess Jackson, who was raised in San Francisco and graduated from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School .  He produced his first bottle of wine under the Kendall-Jackson label in 1982 and continues to run the winery with his family.  Jackson has been in the forefront in calling for reforming practices at horse auctions.  Jackson purchased Buckram Oak Farm for $17.46 million and renamed it Stonestreet Farm.  Jackson has an estimated net worth of $2.2 billion.

      Padua Stables is owned by Satish K. and Anne Sanan. Satish is 57 and Anne is 56, and they live in Clearwater, Fla. The family includes daughters Nadia and Charmain and son Sasha. Founder and former CEO of IMR Global Inc., a company that supplies computer outsourcing and software services worldwide. Company is best known for anticipating the potential threat that the "Millennium Bug" would pose to computers around the world. As a result the share value of his company increased significantly in the late 1990s on the American NASDAQ stock exchange. Sanan was honored as the 1999 national Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the software information services category. At the 2001 Keeneland September sale, Sanan paid $2.5 million for a Seattle Slew colt he later named Vindication. Vindication won the 2002 Bessemer Trust Breeders' Cup Juvenile. Padua's breeding operation currently stands such stallions as Yes It's True, Exchange Rate, Delaware Township, Dance Master and Snow Ridge as well as Vindication located at Hill ‘n' Dale, in Ky. Sasha's Prospect is bred exclusively to a handful of Padua's mares, which number over 110. Sanan has been instrumental in creating the Alliance for Industry Reform, an organization dedicated to creating standards governing Thoroughbred sales practices.

      George Bolton is a San Francisco-based venture capitalist.  Now 43, Bolton grew up on a farm on the edge of Baltimore and watched his first Preakness when he was 5.  He attended the University of Virginia and returned to Baltimore to be the managing director at Alex. Brown & Sons before being transferred to San Francisco .  Bolton ’s father, Perry, won the 1998 Maryland Hunt Cup with Welterweight and continues to raise horses for fox hunting and steeplechase. 
     
      Midnight Cry Stable is owned by William Gallion, 55, and Shirley Cunningham Jr., 52.  Gallion was born in Ashland , Ky. , and is a resident of Sanibel Island , Fla. and Nicholasville , Ky.   Cunningham was born in Cadiz , Ky. and owns residences in Georgetown , Ky. and Fort Lauderdale , Fla.   They entered racing in 2000 by purchasing yearlings.  The first horse they won with at Saratoga in 2002 was named Midnight Cry.  They have campaigned graded stakes winners Einstein and Hard Buck.  Cunningham owns Hillcrest Farm in Kentucky .