Jeff Gural owns the Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey and two other tracks, but he said he’s “been waiting 40 years for someone to ask me about a horse I own.”
Saturday, Gural’s four-year-old trotting mare Perfect Alliance will try to extend her 2014 undefeated streak to 12 races when she leaves from post four in the $266,000 final of the Armbro Flight, carded as race five on a Pepsi North America Cup card at Mohawk Racetrack that has a first race post of 6:45 p.m.
“It’s been a good run. I never thought I’d own a horse that could win 11 straight races,” Gural said.
The Manhattan real estate tycoon, who also owns Tioga Downs and Vernon Downs in New York State, said Perfect Alliance has been full of surprises this year.
Gural purchased the daughter of Credit Winner out of Yalta Hanover as a yearling for $75,000 in Lexington in 2011 on the advice of his trainer, Bob Bencal, and bloodstock expert Bruce Brinkerhoff.
“She really didn’t show much at two and she won a race at The Red Mile, one of those late closers and I think she paid $100 and I didn’t bet a penny on her. I felt like such an idiot because I was there and I didn’t bet the horse,” Gural said.
At June of her three-year-old campaign last year, Perfect Alliance won an elimination of the Empire Breeders Classic at Vernon Downs and Gural offered his old horse racing friends Dave Stolz and Art Geiger, along with Jason Settlemoir, the CEO and general manager of the Meadowlands, the opportunity to buy a piece of the mare.
“I have a deal with them that if I ever get a good horse I would let them buy in at a ridiculous price,” Gural said. “So, I thought, ‘This is going to be a good horse’ because she wired the field in the Empire Breeders Classic and I had high hopes. I thought we’d win the final, to tell you the truth. So, I valued the horse at, I think, $100,000 and I figured they’d get their money back in one start because the final goes for $200,000.”
Perfect Alliance finished fourth-placed-third in final and didn’t win again the rest of the year in 12 starts. Gural said he was tempted to breed the mare at the end of 2013, but Brinkerhoff talked him out of it.
“Brinkerhoff said, ‘Why don’t you try to see if she can make $100,000? It will look good on the [pedigree] page.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right because that’s what I look for.’ If you didn’t make $100,000, you weren’t a good horse. If you did, it meant something.
“Usually we’re pretty conservative. We turn the horses out for two months, we send them to Florida and baby them and they come back in May. In this case, I saw that she was eligible to that late closer at the Meadowlands. Bob [Bencal] goes down to Florida, so there was no sense taking the horse to Florida.”
So, Gural sent the horse to her current trainer, Julie Miller and Perfect Alliance was back in action after just a month’s rest. The winning streak began in Perfect Alliance’s first start for Miller on Jan. 17 at the Meadowlands. As the streak grew, Gural said he didn’t think much of it because Perfect Alliance wasn’t racing top-flight horses, until she came to Canada to race in the Miss Versatility on May 19 against the likes of the reigning North American Horse of the Year Bee A Magician.
Gural was watching the race at home on TVG and couldn’t believe the odds the punters were putting on his mare.
“I said to myself, ‘I can’t believe they’re making this horse the favourite or close to the favourite. If I were a betting man, I would bet $10,000 against this horse because she hasn’t beaten anybody. She’s beating bad horses.’ You can’t go from non-winners of three to racing Bee A Magician. That’s like a jump in class from the bottom to the Free-For-All.”
Yet, Perfect Alliance defeated Bee A Magician by one-and-a-quarter lengths in a 1:51.2 world record that night. Perfect Alliance’s next start was in her $35,000 Armbro Flight elimination on June 6. She won by a whopping six and a half lengths over Rockin With Dewey in a Mohawk track record of 1:51.4. She was promptly installed as the 6-5 morning line favourite for the Armbro Flight final. Yannick Gingras will do the driving. Gural will be watching from his farm.
“I can’t come up [to Mohawk],” Gural said. I run a charity called the I Have A Dream Foundation. I have 130 kids coming to my farm [Saturday]. So, it is more important. It would be hard to change and tell 130 kids to come on a different day. Everybody penciled it in.”
Geiger, Stolz and Settlemoir will be at Mohawk to represent the owners. Gural’s schedule has been so busy he’s only been at the track to see Perfect Alliance race once this year.
“Here’s the first good horse that I’ve owned and for one reason or another I can never go,” Gural said. “Though, I have been almost afraid to go because I thought I would jinx her.”
Still, the excitement in Gural’s voice is palpable. He said a win in the Armbro Flight would tell him a lot about Perfect Alliance.
“This is really a true test. If she wins this race, then she’s the real deal,” he said.
To view entries for Saturday's 14-race card, click the following link: Saturday Entries - Mohawk Racetrack.
For a free, printable program of Mohawk’s Saturday card (courtesy of TrackIT), click here.
(WEG)