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2024 DraftKings Travers: Close Hatches and Puca’s undeniable influence

by Alicia Hughes

In the nearly nine decades that have passed since thoroughbred racing first embraced the practice of naming and crowning divisional Champions, it has become commonplace for the Grade 1 Travers to serve as a conduit for such coronations.

Along with the 24 sophomore males who have captured Saratoga Race Course’s signature test en route to earning year-end honors, 16 other would-be divisional heroes were recognized as the superior members of their class despite falling short in the country’s oldest race for 3-year-olds. And if there is a strong bet to be made where Saturday’s 155th edition of the $1.25 million DraftKings Travers is concerned, it is that at least one member of the field is likely to have their campaign recognized in the 2024 Eclipse Award balloting.

Adept as the 10-furlong race is at identifying the most remarkable runners of a generation, this year’s Travers carries the added perk of serving as the latest display of aptitude for a couple of former stablemates now vying for accolades in their second career. And by virtue of the presence of their respective offspring in the 1 1/4-mile test, it is near certain at least one of the pair is poised to earn a defining piece of industry hardware.

Though they only shared a shedrow for a handful of months during their racing days, champion Close Hatches and fellow Hall of Famer Bill Mott-trainee Puca find themselves linked once more due to their exceptional ability to pass on their best attributes.

The two runners-turned-broodmares are each set to earn the distinction of having produced multiple Travers starters as Puca, dam of upset 2023 Grade 1 Kentucky Derby winner and subsequent Travers seventh-place Mage, is slated to be represented in this year’s race by Grade 1 Belmont Stakes presented by NYRA Bets hero Dornoch while Close Hatches, whose first foal, Tacitus, ran second in the 2019 Travers, is the dam of Batten Down, winner of this year’s Grade 3 Ohio Derby and recent third-place finisher in the Grade 2 Jim Dandy presented by Mohegan Sun. Close Hatches, in search of her first Grade 1-winner, will also be represented on the Travers card by the talented 4-year-old filly Scylla in the seven-furlong Grade 1, $500,000 Ballerina Handicap.

The face value significance of producing multiple graded stakes winners is something that already allows both Puca and Close Hatches to occupy the rarified air of elite broodmares. For Puca, her standing in racing’s annals is one that continues to rise as the heroics of Mage and Dornoch allowed her to become just the ninth broodmare to produce two U.S. Classic winners and the first to throw Triple Crown race winners in consecutive years since Better Than Honour achieved the feat when Jazil [2006] and Rags to Riches [2007] each annexed the Belmont Stakes.

It is especially extraordinary for top race mares to succeed in producing foals that match their level of quality. Yet, Juddmonte’s Close Hatches - the Champion Older Mare of 2014 – now has thrown three graded winners for the operation founded by the late Prince Khalid bin Abdullah in Tacitus, Scylla, and Batten Down, all of whom are by Champion sire Tapit. Should Batten Down notch a Travers victory for Close Hatches, it could allow the daughter of First Defence to make her own case to be named 2024 Kentucky Broodmare of the Year – an honor for which Puca is currently the odds-on choice.

“I think for an operation like ours, if you put as much time and effort into the breeding game as Juddmonte does, having a broodmare of the year is one of those huge accolades,” said Garrett O’Rourke, general manager of Juddmonte USA. “There is only one every year and they’re very hard to get. And if you have one, it means that they’ve done something very special. They haven’t just produced you one really good horse, they’ve produced you multiple horses and they are very, very rare.”

The old bloodstock credo of breeding the best to the best and hoping for the best is one Close Hatches has justified at every point of her career.

Herself a product of Juddmonte’s heralded breeding operation, the dark bay mare has trafficked in excellence from the time she won by seven lengths on debut at Gulfstream Park in January 2013. Among her five career Grade 1 victories were triumphs in the 2014 editions of the Ogden Phipps and Personal Ensign, the latter of which saw her canter to a frontrunning five-length win.

Those outings would help earn Close Hatches that year’s Eclipse Award for Champion Older Female as she retired with a record of nine wins from 14 starts and more than $2.7 million in earnings. Having earned the right to go to any stallion her connections desired, Close Hatches had her first meeting with Gainesway stalwart Tapit in 2016, with the resulting foal becoming the mercurial but talented multiple graded stakes winner Tacitus.

“She was a queen from the day she was born, O’Rourke said of Close Hatches. “She was a beautiful looker, easy temperament, honest, gave her all in all of her races. Everyone around her just really liked her, ones like her are the easy ones to have. “She was a Champion, and you think of horses like [Hall of Famer and multiple Grade 1 producer] Personal Ensign and there are only a handful of mares who got to that level as broodmares. Some of them produced one but it’s rare that they’ll produce more than one and become that kind of elite mare. Close Hatches is special, and she throws lovely lookers. Every foal she produces is a lovely individual and that makes them a pleasure to be around.”

During a 29-day stretch in June, the racing community was inundated with reminders of how prolific Close Hatches has become at passing on her best intangibles. On June 1, the 4-year-old filly Scylla would earn her first graded win in the form of a triumph in the Grade 3 Shawnee at Churchill Downs. 21 days later, Batten Down would head to the winner’s circle in the Ohio Derby at Thistledown and seven days after that, Scylla was again being feted after she wheeled back to annex the Grade 2 Fleur de Lis on June 29.

“Tacitus didn’t really look like Close Hatches, he had a lot of Tapit in him,” O’Rourke said. “Scylla is a tidier type and obviously got the strength and speed of her mother. Batten Down is somewhere in between. It’s hard to put your finger on what it is that makes them so good when they don’t produce exactly alike but I guess the best explanation is there aren’t too many bad genes getting transferred. That makes it an awful lot easier when they only transfer the good genes.”

Where Close Hatches and her Championship resume made her an obvious candidate to yield babies bred in the purple, Puca’s ascension into blue hen status has been its own superb journey.

While Jerry Crawford’s Donegal Racing partnership has gained acclaim over the years due to the success of runners like 2015 Travers winner Keen Ice, his modest breeding program has quietly been able to develop bloodlines that are having an emphatic impact. Owned and co-bred by Crawford out of his homebred mare Boat’s Ghost, Puca signaled her brilliance when she broke her maiden by 16 lengths at Belmont Park in October 2014, an effort which prompted her team to send her right into deep waters in the form of a start in that year’s Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.

As a sophomore, the daughter of Big Brown would finish second in the Grade 2 Gazelle at Aqueduct to earn herself a spot in the field for the 2015 Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks. Her lone stakes win would come during her final season of racing in 2017 when she showcased versatility by prevailing in the Steve Pini Memorial over the turf at Suffolk Downs.

“Bill [Mott] knew that Puca was special. He liked to say from his earlier days training her that he was ‘very fond of Puca’— which, if you know Bill, is high praise,” recalled Crawford, who added he has only bred ‘about 5-10 mares in my lifetime.' “Puca, though small, was near-perfectly conformed. And while she had a great disposition off the track, she was a determined and fierce competitor on the track. She has passed this onto her offspring as both Mage and Dornoch are both incredibly resilient competitors.”

After initially selling for $275,000 at the 2017 Keeneland November Breeding Stock sale following her retirement, Puca would land in the savvy hands of former Three Chimneys owner Robert Clay when his Grandview Equine purchased the bay mare in foal to Gun Runner for $475,000 out of the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Mixed auction. Under the Grandview banner, Clay made the genius decision to send Puca to young Hill ‘n’ Dale at Xalapa stallion Good Magic for both 2020 and 2021 – matings that produced a pair of colts that would take turns shocking the racing community with their respective Classic triumphs.

Where Mage gets his looks from his sire, it is Dornoch who very much plays the part of his mother’s child in terms of his physical presence and demeanor. Barely one month after John Stewart’s Resolute Racing purchased Puca privately for $2.9 million at the 2023 Keeneland November Breeding Stock sale when she failed to meet her reserve, Dornoch began making that price look like bargain territory as he took the Grade 2 Remsen in December, the first of what is now four graded wins for the pro-tem leader of the 3-year-old male division.

“It’s been awesome to watch what Puca has achieved,” said Chelsey Stone, director of breeding and bloodstock for Resolute Racing. “We were just kind of hanging out at Keeneland sale last year and [bloodstock agent] Alex Solis walked up and said Puca had RNA’d and told us ‘If you all are looking for a mare, that’s the mare you need to get.’ I remember it was dark when we went to look at her and when we pulled her out under the lights and she just had such a regal, classy look about her. And that was it.

“It was a case of ‘What does it take to buy her?’… and John was like ‘Done.' The rest is history,” Stone continued. “John will say he is very decisive in what he does, and that decisive decision right there has really paid off for us just with what has happened this year. Going into the Belmont, John kept saying he had a feeling about Dornoch and...to see him barreling down that homestretch was very surreal, especially knowing that Mage had just won the Derby last year and that we have another full brother on the ground on the farm. It’s crazy to be having your morning coffee and just look out our window and know we have the full brother to a Derby and now a Belmont winner in the field behind our house.”

For the sophomores set to go to post in the 155th Travers, the 10-furlong test will undoubtedly confirm where they stand in the divisional pecking order. For Dornoch, a win will all but clinch year-end honors in his favor while Batten Down will be aiming to throw a wrench into the equation in the march toward the Breeders’ Cup in November.

What is not in question is the fact the two colts are the manifestation of the inherent excellence of two of the industry’s most unique producers. As much as each thrived in a competitive setting, it is fitting both Close Hatches and Puca continue to have their say in some of the sport’s most prestigious tests.

“John and I often look at each other and are like ‘This is crazy,'” Stone said. “With Puca’s baby, the colt that is on the ground, he’s 3-months-old and he already looks like he’s ready to go to the racetrack. He must have social media in his stall because I think he knows who his brothers are, he has that air about him. It’s definitely fun to be a part of.”

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The Travers [Race 13, 6:10 p.m. Eastern] is one of five Grade 1s scheduled for Saturday’s lucrative 14-race program, which also features two Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” qualifiers with the Grade 1, $750,000 Sword Dancer presented by Resorts World Casino [Turf] in Race 9 and the Grade 1, $500,000 Ballerina [Filly and Mare Sprint] in Race 10; as well as the Grade 1, $500,000 Forego in Race 11 and the Grade 1, $500,000 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial in Race 12. First post is 11:20 a.m., with gates opening to the public at 9 a.m.

An expanded edition of Saratoga Live will begin at 11:30 a.m. on FS2 with continuing coverage on FS1 at 1:30 p.m. FOX Saratoga Saturday will present live coverage of the DraftKings Travers Day stakes action plus analysis in a special broadcast on FOX beginning at 3 p.m. For the broadcast schedule and channel finder, visit https://www.nyra.com/saratoga/racing/tv-schedule/.

NYRA Bets is the official wagering platform of Saratoga Race Course, and the best way to bet every race of the summer meet. Available to horse players nationwide, the NYRA Bets app is available for download today on iOS and Android at www.NYRABets.com