Prominent Owner Maggi Moss Dips In to Retire Two More

Posted: Thursday, September 03, 2009 11:04 AM
(photo by John Chun)
by Jeff Lowe

Two recent winners of the Cornhusker Handicap (G2) are now retired after each was claimed for $5,000 this summer.

Prominent owner Maggi Moss was involved in claiming both Lord of the Game and Siphon City, winners of the $300,000 Cornhusker in 2005 and ’06, respectively.

Moss said Lord of the Game would return to his breeder, WinStar Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, after being claimed out of a second-place finish on August 29 at Mountaineer Race Track.

A half brother to WinStar Grade 1 winner and stallion Bluegrass Cat, the eight-year-old Saint Ballado gelding also won the 2005 Hanshin Cup Handicap (G3) at Arlington Park and finished second by a head to Super Frolic in the Hawthorne Gold Cup Stakes (G2) before spending more than three years on the sidelines with a tendon injury.

“He had a bit of a respiratory problem and the tendon is there—I don’t know how long it would have lasted—but he’s serviceably riding sound,” Moss said. “He needed some weight, but other than that, he’s a pretty happy camper.

“WinStar deserves a lot of credit. We need more breeders to stand up like that.”

Trainer David Fawkes claimed Siphon City on Moss’s behalf on June 28 at Calder Race Course. A $500,000 purchase in the 2004 Ocala Breeders’ Sale Co.’s Calder sale of two-year-olds in training, Siphon City scored by six lengths in the Cornhusker in July ‘06. He never won again in 17 subsequent starts, including six this year. He is now retired at a farm in Florida.

Moss is part of a network of friends and Thoroughbred rescue activists who have worked together to retire horses like Lord of the Game, Siphon City, and Tour of the Cat, an 11-year-old graded stakes winner claimed for $5,000 this summer at Presque Isle Downs.

“It’s from resources of the Internet and rescue operations throughout the country,” said Moss, a finalist for the Eclipse Award as outstanding owner in 2007. “Those groups are what start it, and there are plenty of horses that aren’t famous. There’s a Saint Ballado colt we took out of Mountaineer three weeks ago that someone was running with a fractured cannon bone. There was just a woman in Chicago that loved him and saved him. It’s what we call the good folks.”