Champion Tepin Set To Make 2016 Debut at Tampa
Friday, February 12, 2016
    







  
   OLDSMAR – To their connections, they are once-in-a-lifetime horses. The kind that defy common wisdom, get better with age and show large measures of enthusiasm for training and competition. And don’t forget an abundance of talent.

    Robert E. Masterson’s 5-year-old Tepin fits the bill on all counts. Her 2016 debut, which is scheduled to take place in tomorrow's Gr. III, $150,000 Lambholm South Endeavour Stakes on the grass at Tampa Bay Downs, has been eagerly anticipated by insiders and horse racing fans since her dominant victory in the Breeders’ Cup Mile on the turf at Keeneland against a field of males on Oct. 31.

   Tepin nailed down the Eclipse Award as 2015 Champion Grass Female with that effort, to go with three other graded stakes victories, including the Gr. I Longines Just a Game at Belmont Park and the Gr. I First Lady at Keeneland.

   Trainer Mark Casse is making no secret of his desire to put Tepin in position for a run at another Breeders’ Cup triumph and back-to-back Eclipse Awards. He is tentatively planning to point her to the Gr. I Maker’s Mark Mile against males at Keeneland on April 15.

   “We feel she is training super,” said Casse, whose son Norman is mainly responsible for the Kentucky-bred’s day-to-day care. “She is the same Tepin we saw last year, and we’re expecting big things from her again.”

    Julien Leparoux, who rode Tepin in each of her seven 2015 starts, has been named to ride her in the mile-and-a-sixteenth Lambholm South Endeavour.

    The daughter of Bernstein-Life Happened, by Stravinsky, is one of four horses entered by Casse for the Festival Preview Day Presented by Lambholm South card, which offers $650,000 in stakes purses. Post time for the first of 12 races is 12:15 p.m. The Lambholm South Endeavour is the eighth race on the card.

    Other expected starters from the Casse barn include Gary Barber’s 5-year-old mare, Lexie Lou, in the Lambholm South Endeavour, with Antonio Gallardo slated to ride; Barber’s 3-year-old gelding Whatawonderflworld, in the Gr. III, $250,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes, with Jose Lezcano in the irons; and John C. Oxley’s 6-year-old, Sky Captain, in the Gr. III, $150,000 Tampa Bay Stakes, with Gallardo aboard.

    The Sam F. Davis, to be contested at a mile-and-a-sixteenth on the main dirt track, is the fifth race on the card. The Tampa Bay Stakes, a mile-and-a-sixteenth turf event, is the 10th. Also on the card is the $100,000 Suncoast Stakes, a mile-and-40-yard main track race for 3-year-old fillies carded as the ninth race.

    The Lambholm South Endeavour Field also includes multiple graded-stakes winner Lady Lara, from the barn of trainer William Mott; Gr. I winner Photo Call, trained by Todd Pletcher; and multiple-stakes winner Partisan Politics, trained by Chad C. Brown.

    The 12-horse Tampa Bay Stakes shapes up as an extremely competitive race. Sky Captain will be making his first start since Nov. 15, and while his ledger includes a victory in the Gr. III Dominion Day Stakes at Woodbine in July of 2014, he has not entered the winner’s circle in six subsequent starts.

 

Leave a comment below
comments powered by Disqus